Monkey King: Havoc in Heaven

This is a cartoon movie that my wife used to watch when she was a little girl. It's a fun story about the Monkey King wreaking havoc with the heavens as all the Chinese Gods get jealous of his powers. They try and tame the monkey king only to have everything they do backfire. It's a fun film that is full of Chinese culture. The Chinese is pretty advanced, but I think people of all ages will like it. The animation is also top notch and there's good music.

Watch it at Amazon (click below). Free for prime members, otherwise rent or buy it.

New Chinese For Children 新儿童汉语

This is another book that a publisher sent me in promise of a review. I was really excited for this book, but ultimately ended up being very disappointed because it wasn't what I expected. HOWEVER, I must preface that this book might be a great option if your kids don't speak any Chinese at all and are a bit older (probably at least 6).

The book doesn't assume any knowledge of Chinese, and just jumps in with very basic words. There is no pronunciation guide, but there is a CD of MP3 files that walks you through the book. I'm not sure how effective that would really be, I guess a parent would have to walk the kid through it, and the kid would probably have to be pretty confident reading English. The pictures are fun, and there's some activities in the book to keep kids occupied, like filling in the blank, songs, and other questions.

However, my biggest complaint and the reason why I'm not sure this book is worth it is that the book is almost entirely pin yin. It hardly emphasizes characters at all. On one hand, I can appreciate that, and I understand that it's much easier to learn how to speak with pin yin and not with characters. That's how I learned to speak (this is the husband writing this). On the other hand, this book is way too extreme in hardly including any Chinese characters. In the very least, I think they should be placed there anyway, even if the pin yin is emphasized. Kids need to see the characters and start to get familiar with them, and this book doesn't do that at all. Kids also need to start writing a little bit, and kids think writing characters is fun.

I'm not sure how fair my evaluation is, since I'm not the target audience (my kids already speak Chinese), but I don't think this is the book I would seek out if my kids didn't speak Chinese and I wanted them to learn.

Our rating = C

New Chinese For Children

On the other hand, this book is available from Amazon with prime shipping... which makes it very convenient to buy and check it out. Buy it here:

The Big Spider 大蜘蛛 (My First Chinese Storybooks Series)

We've had this book for about six months now, and I've been meaning to get a review up here sooner. I promised the publisher I would write one, and we got extremely busy and haven't gotten around to it.

It's a fun book, and I would give it a great rating, but the story is a bit weird. It's about a boy who wants to play in his sister's room and play with her stuff, and the sister keeps lying to him about there being a spider in her room and in her stuff. This lie scares him away and he doesn't mess with her stuff. One day, there really is a spider, and the sister gets scared. She calls for her little brother and he comes in and saves the day, taking the spider outside. Then, brother and sister get along happily ever after.

The story never really resolves that it was wrong to lie, and because of this it's a book that I really don't like to read with my kids. It's not terrible, and if you read between the lines you sort of understand that the sister shouldn't have lied, but it's not clear, and that really annoys me. On the other hand, the pictures are fun, and the English and Chinese are both easy to read. I like that my son can read most of the Chinese by himself. I like that it's a real story and not just silly Chinese history or poems. I wish there were more Chinese books like this, but I wish the morals were better in this book as well.

Our rating is thus a C+

The Big Spider 大蜘蛛 (My First Chinese Storybooks Series)

Buy it on Amazon here:

熊出没 -- Boonie Bears Chinese cartoon

We just found another Chinese TV show that I really like. It's called Boonie Bears, in Chinese it's called 熊出没. It's sort of a slapstick comedy about 2 bears that try to stop a logger from chopping down trees. We watched three episodes today and I thought they were all pretty funny (this is the husband writing). It's way more entertaining for adults than something like qiaohu 巧虎. My kids (ages 3 and 4) still would prefer to watch qiaohu since they get a little scared with this show, but they certainly got some great laughs when the hunter (called 光头强) gets beat up. I think in time they will love it, they've just never watched very many slap stick comedy cartoons. [edit: my 4 year old now LOVES watching this show, even more than qiao hu!]

Every episode resolves the conflict, and they are only 13 minutes long, so even though there are a few scary parts it always ends happy. I think it's a very fun show, the animation is very good, and the Chinese is more advanced than qiaohu 巧虎. I think we'll build some good memories watching this together. It also improves my Chinese as a westerner, and the Chinese subtitles are good as well. It's a good show, check it out!

We give it an A.

Here's an episode with the playlist of all the shows. Has some English episodes in playlist.



Here's a different playlist, maybe a better one since it's only Chinese.

What do you think?

Chinese Sesame Street -- 芝麻街

I don't know why we didn't know about this earlier... but there is a Chinese version of Sesame Street! I think they only produced a few seasons of it, but it's fun. My kids are watching it right now. In Chinese, it's called 芝麻街. The episodes are short and they are all pretty repetitive, singing the same songs at the beginning and end. I think this is why my kids seem to get a little bit bored, but they love the stuff in the middle.

We rate it a B.

Here's a playlist on youtube that has a season of 23 episodes:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeEXqbHoCGI37SOEy6Jy85veT5fMGGO5E

And here's an episode:




Do you like this TV show? Comment below!