This is perhaps the dorkiest post I’ve ever made. I came across a Big Bird special filmed about 30 years ago in China. It is unsurprisingly called Big Bird in China.
Yea, and I watched it. So you can take away my adult card now.
Anyways, what was funny to me is seeing how the producers basically just rolled film and didn’t seal off the locations. As a consequence, you can visibly see the reactions elicited by ordinary Chinese people. And how would you react if you saw a catoony yellow bird walking downtown?
While much has changed in terms of urban development and standard of living, many Chinese people in smaller cities still have never seen a foreigner and react similarly when they see individuals like me (with different color eyes and hair). Note: I think it was filmed in 1979 but it could be as late as 1983 (so just after Deng opened up China).
Part A:
I guarantee you’ll learn something from it, at least language wise. And while the segment filmed in the Master of the Nets Garden looks similar to court scenery I took of Nanjing last month, it is actually “down the road” in Suzhou.
Other places in the show: Ming Dynasty Tombs :: Suzhou :: Guilin :: Empress Feng :: Great Wall :: Mao’s Mausoleum :: Fenghuang :: Monkey King :: Peking Opera (who the King probably trained with)
One last note. As child-friendly as it may be, I really think stuff like Sesame Street probably is the easiest way to learn a language. I’ve had to use a slew of different materials to teach from at the various schools and language centers I have worked at. Bar none the best resources to teach beginners in my opinion are simple, caricatures that convey ideas in the fewest possible words. But that’s a subject for another time.
Oh and apparently Big Bird also went to Japan. I haven’t watched them, but here are the parts: A B C D E F