posted by mtpastille on December 15, 2012 | 2 comments
I like the advanced podcasts here on Popup Chinese, but they're kind of few and infrequent. At this level I'm probably slowly leaving this site's target audience, so I can see why the output of advanced podcasts is limited. What I'm looking for is more material in the same spirit: informal talks in natural chinese about interesting topics. That excludes stuff like the news. What do other advanced listeners around here listen to?
murrayjames on December 16, 2012 | reply
Hi mtpastille,Do you live in China? It sounds like your Chinese is further along than mine (I still find plenty to learn from the Intermediate podcasts here). If you live here it may be time to go native.For example... I'm a musician. I talk about music daily with my Chinese friends and at the conservatory where I work. I recently read a freshman music theory textbook in Chinese. I follow a lot of my musician friends on Weibo, talk to them on 微信, etc. None of these things is equivalent to an Advanced podcast, but it's native Chinese in a subject I'm interested in. And it's helped my Chinese tremendously.
Hi mtpastille,It's a good question. On the advanced level, conversational shows are actually pretty easy to produce. The deeper problem/challenge for us is that we don't really just want to put up random audio of people chatting as the main form of advanced audio, and it is a huge challenge to get really creative and high-quality advanced materials on a weekly basis from our voice actors, or even ourselves.So we record things and throw things out and then put up the stuff we like. The good news is that we do have more advanced stuff coming out soon. That said, when someone is at the level where they've already consumed all of our existing advanced content (as well as the short stories and film friday shows), the most helpful thing for them is probably intensive reading rather than more exposure to advanced conversational Chinese. One thing I found made a huge difference for myself was getting rid of my guilt over not reading more Chinese literature (I would put down the books and struggle to pick them up again), and simply buying translations of foreign (largely American) pulp fiction. I went through stages reading Philip K. Dick, Dashiell Hammett, Robert Heinlein, and other authors translated into Chinese. Some translations were awful, but some were quite good, and Amazon.cn is great for buying them - if you're in China they'll ship to your door COD once you hit 25 RMB and the books usually only cost a few dollars. The hardest thing is usually finding the Chinese name of the author, since searching for an English name rarely pulls up any results in Chinese language selections. Here are two good ones I enjoyed:http://www.amazon.cn/高城堡里的人-菲利普·迪克/dp/B0011AFYLI/http://www.amazon.cn/血色收割-达希尔•哈米特/dp/B009UOSHRK/For easier stuff, try searching for 戈登·科曼 (Canadian) or even 几米 (Taiwanese).On the audio front, the CBC and BBC both have Chinese-language radio news service. Just turning on the television when you're at home can also be useful. Most Chinese households will leave it on all the time without watching, so 入乡随俗 and all.