No Drama, Real China

A friend of a friend has started a new video series in Beijing called No Drama Real China. The host is a Chinese girl named Rachel Guo. The concept is simple: ask a cross-section of Beijing’s population some interesting questions related to Chinese culture, and present the hodge-podge of answers in all its heterogeneous glory for the benefit of cross-cultural understanding (so, with subtitles, obviously). The result is interesting, funny, and perhaps even educational (especially for all you students of Chinese).

Here are some of my favorites:

Are Chinese People Rich?

Is China a Superpower?

What Are Chinese People Afraid Of?

For the linguistically sensitive, this next one has Rachel dropping what appears to be a few strangely out of place gratuitous F-bombs, but apparently she’s quoting a rather rude online user:

Do Chinese People Eat Everything???

(The video above also has a particularly amusing scene where the old lady can’t seem to understand the clear Chinese of the interviewer.)

No Drama Real China shows a lot of promise! Please have a look at these videos. If you can’t access YouTube, there are also a few on Youku.

Keep up the good work, Rachel!

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John Pasden

John is a Shanghai-based linguist and entrepreneur, founder of AllSet Learning.

Comments

  1. I loved the “Do Chinese people eat anything” video. Laughed so much.

  2. Nice tip. I especially liked the one about studying: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY82Lt4NzjI&feature=related

    Reblogged on my site!

  3. Yay! Realy people talking about real things! This looks very neat, not only because it provides difernt voices and ways of speaking Chinese, but also many different personalities and ways of thinking. Diversity for the win!

  4. Adam Morris Says: March 6, 2012 at 7:15 pm

    Yeah, gotta love those real life accents.

  5. Awesome! So many normal people… so refreshing…

  6. I’m with the old lady on Rachel’s pronunciation. I too would have missed that she was saying “frog”. Sounds like she’s saying fourth tone ‘wa’.

  7. mike nads Says: March 9, 2012 at 8:37 pm

    That’s great! Classic ‘what do you think is in those lamb kebabs’!

  8. “I can only eat dog meat for 5 minutes. After that I start to think….” FTW? Hahaha, awesome.

  9. […] seems to really enjoy No Drama Real China, so I thought I’d follow up my last post with an interview of the creator, Rachel […]

  10. Cassandra Says: April 27, 2012 at 4:43 am

    I really liked these videos! Thanks for posting and really informative too. It was interesting to see the answers and how different they were and the ages/jobs of the people. I hope there is more….

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