Weird and wonderful Chinese TV

At my homestay's place we receive about 56 channels. They're all in chinese except for one CCTV channel that is all in english. For some reason we don't have this channel at our place, which is a shame cuz i feel so disconected without tv news reports. CCTV by the way are a set of channels all controlled and administered by the chinese government. I think theres about 11-12 of them. Theres also some other local regional and non-cctv channels.

I try to watch as much TV as i can to try and improve the listening skills. At my current skill level though it's pretty tough to keep up with the pace. Most shows have chinese subtitles too so at least that helps. Many of the tv series are set back in ancient times. They really seem to romanticize over that era.





The news here is quite different to the news back in oz. Every night on most news reports the first story is always about something to do with the government, whether it be a new policy, progress report, whatever. If you don't understand chinese though, looking at the pictures doesn't really help you understand the story. In almost every one of these stories the footage is simply shots of officials in meetings. Shots of the speakers sitting in their seats, giving their talks, or of officials intently scribling down notes. And seriously, this goes on for the ENTIRE report. Some of these reports aren't short either! I remember one lasting about 10 minutes and they seemed to keep coming back to the same shots of the guest speakers sitting in their chairs! Somewhere in the middle they might throw in some text or a simple bar graph, but thats the extent of the variety of footage.





looky here, another meeting and more shots of officials taking notes. What a surprise!

oh actually i lied. heres a shot of people in a house. In a house, watching a news report with footage from a meeting.









Ads focus around a smaller range of goods compared to oz. Almost every 2nd ad is either for a drug or multivitamin, or a private hospital. My teacher told me that lately the chinese ppl have put a much greater value on health, and it certainly shows in the amount of advertising!












The next heavily advertised item seems to be baby formula and milk. I don't know if the advertising has always been this aggressive or if it was stepped up after the melamine scandal last year. Certainly all the companies are trying to play the ethical note now though. I've seen some pretty corny ads. Take this one for example. I can't understand the mandarin in the ad, but i'm sure it's something like : "we swear we haven't added melamine to your baby formula....unless the farmer that sold us the milk already has" oh and look, they've even got 2 token white people here to bump up the credibility. Surely it must be safe to buy.....

Next most advertised is high grade alcohol, like bai jiu, then banks (theres like a million different ones) instant noodles in a bowl, and then kfc.

China is the first country where i've seen advertising during all weather reports! When they do the national report they'll flash up a local business ad for each city's temperature they show. This other pic i've added here just cuz it looks like they're forcasting money to be falling from the skies :)





Theres quite a few home shopping networks too. They look just as corny as the ones back home.




Theres some pretty strange items sold here. One is some sort of inflatable steam cocoon that's supposed to help you lose weight, and the other is some high tech jocks that does god knows what. From the pictures i'm guessing it's for avoiding prostate problems and increasing men's labido? I wonder if men actually buy this crap? i personally don't fancy the idea of having high power 'space' magnets anywhere near that area!






At around 1am the late night phone-in game show comes on. I thought i could get away from them here! At least the presenter here in china doesn't sound like she's on speed and 20 cans of red bull.






I've seen alot of variety concerts on too. Some of them are government run, for e.g. there was one to celebrate china's first space walk with an artistic dance movement piece complete with astronaut costumes! Theres been another one to commemorate 30 years since china openned diplomatic ties with the west. They're either showing short clips every night, or this is an ongoing celebration with new performances every night. It's been on for like weeks! The crowd is mostly composed of officials (millatary and government) and celebrities. I must say they're either not too enthused by the performances, or they really show restraint when it comes to giving an applause!







This last shot is not from a government run concert. I don't know if this guy is famous, or if it's like idol. I recongnized one character from the lyrics - 'to fly'. but you don't need to know chinese to get the idea of the song...