Best Chinese TV series for learning?

There is a series called 家有儿女 which shared amongst all the Chinese TV channels in shanghai, is more or less on 24/7. I guess 家有儿女, is meant to sound like 加油儿女 Anyway, they talk in day to day language and so its easier to understand than those many ancient Chinese 电视剧。Its very Beijingy so if you like your 儿's its especially good. next job: find it on dvd!

Ooof. Well, I have IE7 rather than IE5, but I was able to drill down to where my IE keeps the files, I believe. I found it in the options are of the IE pulldowns. Anyhow, I was unable to find any .flv files in the directory. :(

BULLSEYE！！！

Oh! I forgot to mention its intensily annoying!

up~~~up~~!

It's not Chinese, but Korean, but as I said in another thread, I found Winter Sonata ("Gyeoul yeonga" in Korean, or 冬季恋歌 in Chinese), a 20 hour TV series that between 2004 and 2005 saw played on CCTV 3 times. The first time I saw it, I couldn't seep at 3am in the morning and turned the TV on to see if the 2-3 night time channels had anything. Winter Sonata was playing, and even though I had just started studying Chinese full time, I realized I could understand them! It was drama, with lots of emotions so you could easily figure out what they were saying. Worth getting at a DVD store in China if you can. Mine is has a audio track for both Chinese and Original Korean with Chinese subtitles, about 5 discs if I remember right.

do you have any idea where we can order this DVD from?

http://zt.ku6.com/2006/jiayouernv/ You don't need a DVD, just patience to download.

Cool, thanks for the link Mark. As for Winter Sonata, of course it being Korean on the Internet not able to find it dubbed in Chinese like you can find in China, but if you are interested, Youtube has it: http://youtube.com/watch?v=20MPRFW9LDY

thanks, chittywang(cubed) and everyone else!

家有儿女 on DVD

Hey - thanks for the great info! This may sound like a dumb question, but how do I download the episodes of 家有儿女 from the link give in Mark's post? I went there, but couldn't figure it out. Thanks!

The link I gave is to an index page for all the episodes. After it finishes loading, you can click on the image for one episode that while load a page that contains a video object that plays the episode. I think you can right click and save from there, if you want.

hi user 18844, haha, i too had problems with my 新上海滩 DVDs, purchased in the u.s. ... i got to disc 3 of 6 and it contained episodes of "dragonball z" in japanese. fortunately i was able to take it back to the video store and they gladly exchanged it. but our shared experience does make me wonder if there are any legit copies in existence! and thanks for the csi tip.

Started actually watching 家有儿女 today, watching the whole episode instead of just flipping around. Found the script to the first episode here on a Korean site: http://k.daum.net/qna/view.html?qid=3H3A7 That helped me understand the first one a bit, to get their names and such down.

Mark, you said: "The link I gave is to an index page for all the episodes. After it finishes loading, you can click on the image for one episode that while load a page that contains a video object that plays the episode. I think you can right click and save from there, if you want." Unfortunately, that doesn't work. I'd really like to be able to download the episodes and watch them on my computer rather than watch them streaming. Also unfortunately, I can't yet read written Chinese, so all the characters on the screen are frustrating as I have no idea which one might (if any of them do) say "download"... More advise?

I'm with user3881 - I went to the site, but from what I could find, didn't see anything that looked like a download button (based on the links when I hover over each one, since I can't read much Chinese yet). I also tried right-clicking the video, but everything showed as a question mark, and none of the available options started a download. It looks like a great site tho! Any advice as to what specifically to do to download them? Thanks!

Okay, for getting these videos on your computer (which actually happens when you click the episode you want to watch and it starts loading in the player) to watch OFFLINE (so you don't have to watch grass grow each time you go back to watch it), here is what you have to do: 1) First, using Internet Explorer (recommended for thsi to work as Firefox caches it differenly) load the episode you want in the player as if you were going to watch it online (pause the and go do something else while it loads) 2) When it is finished loading, using a Window's file browser (i.e. "My Computer") change to this directory on your computer: C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\ (replace with the name you use to log into your computer, e.g. "Rich") 3) Click the "Search" button at the top of the window (assuming you are using XP, or just type step 4 in to the search box at the top of the window for Vista) and click "All files and folders". You should see "Context.IE5" in the "Look In:" field. 4) Type *.flv in the file name field. Press enter. Now it should show you the file it saved for the episode you played, something jibberish like 11715023879an29[1].flv 5) Right click the file, select CUT, go to the directory you want to store your 家有儿女 videos, right click "Paste" and then rename the file to something like "episode1.flv" 6) Now you have an FLV file. Now what? You need an FLV viewer (Youtube files are the same type too), so go to http://www.martijndevisser.com/blog/flv-player/, download and install. Now just double click on the FLV file you put in the directory and it should play. I get all this formation from a website that tells you how to view YouTube files often. The HOWTO site is: http://www.walkernews.net/2007/05/08/how-to-save-youtube- -for-offline-playback

oops... I stupidly used < and > symbles to put a variable in the path to the IE cache, and see that it disappeared. For step 2 it should be: 2) When it is finished loading, using a Window's file browser (i.e. "My Computer") change to this directory on your computer: C:\Documents and Settings\<your user name>\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\ (replace <your user name> with the name you use to log into your computer, e.g. "Rich")

I also bought the 新上海滩 series on compressed dvd a while ago. I got a little ways into it but somehow my dvd player would mess up. That was the end of that. Recently I've been watching the Chinese version of CSI: 案发现场. The language in it is not easy (lots of scientific/formal speech) but I enjoy it because it's not as annoying as other Chinese TV series.