jiasen Posted June 8, 2015 at 03:59 PM Report Share Posted June 8, 2015 at 03:59 PM Any fans out there of 百家讲坛? I've been interested in learning about Chinese history for a while, but I don't have the time to take a course. So I was ecstatic when I stumbled across this show a couple of weeks ago. It is absolute gold. The lecturer uses a narrative style which is highly engaging and much more memorable than reading dry history books. Moreover he cites all his materials (mostly from 司马迁's 史记 so far). I did some fact checking afterwards and all his materials were 100% accurate (according to the source material, of course - whether the source material is 100% accurate itself is for the historians to answer). The latest series of shows I've been watching focuses on 秦始皇. The first episode was about Jing Ke's assassination plot, which served as the inspiration for the movie Hero. Then the next episode focused on the state of Qin and how it was formed. Its also a great way to study Chinese. It's all in standard Mandarin and, as mentioned, the lectures are in a simple and direct narrative style. A lot of the stories relate directly to 成语. From my experience, this is a much better way of learning them than going through billions of flashcards. Would be great to hear other people's thoughts. Cheers. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
li3wei1 Posted June 8, 2015 at 06:34 PM Report Share Posted June 8, 2015 at 06:34 PM Looks good. Do you have a link to the particular series you're talking about? It looks like a mixed bag, could be some good ones, but also some not so good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jiasen Posted June 8, 2015 at 07:54 PM Author Report Share Posted June 8, 2015 at 07:54 PM This is the series I've been watching: https://goo.gl/X5Qtqp. Love this professor. You can tell he is putting in great effort to speak standard Mandarin, although the odd strongly accented word will occasionally slip out. He has a good sense of humour as well, like when he is discussing 由余 (which is a hononym for 鱿鱼). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
li3wei1 Posted June 9, 2015 at 06:46 AM Report Share Posted June 9, 2015 at 06:46 AM You can tell he is putting in great effort to speak standard Mandarin, Are you sure it hasn't been dubbed? His lips don't seem to match the sound. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jiasen Posted June 9, 2015 at 08:12 AM Author Report Share Posted June 9, 2015 at 08:12 AM That hadn't crossed my mind, but is probably true. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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