Bilibili and the World of Chinese Vlogging

[happy_hyaena]

Sorry, this might be the wrong subforum to post in, but I wasn't sure where to post it exactly.

Some background about me: I'm a guy from Sweden in my early-to-mid twenties who studies Chinese as a hobby. I took a semester off to come to Nanjing and study Chinese full time. Before coming, I decided against getting a VPN, a decision I am happy I did.

 

So, first of all, what's Bilibili? Bilibili is a websute that has recently become very popular among Chinese teenagers/youth. From what I've gathered, it seemed to have started out focusing on anime, but has over time come to become something more. It'd be hard to make a 100% correct comparison with a Western website, but I would describe it as Youtube's vlogger + gaming community, with some streaming involved.

 

I'm Swedish and I first discovered this site when I was looking for episodes of Skam, a Norwegian tv series that is super popular in Sweden. To my surprise, it is also relatively popular among a certain group of youth in China, due to showcasing Norwegian High School life, with all its drama, partying and explicit scenes. Specifically, the gay romance between two teenagers. Sana, a character of muslim immigrant background, is also popular. (If you are interested in Nordic society, I can recommend it, though I have yet to watch that many episodes.)

 

From there on, I went on to discover a set of channels (频道) that helped to make up for the lack of Youtube. I mostly watch two types of channels: vloggers and street interviews.

In the beginning, I found it very hard to follow what they were saying, but as the semester went on, my overall Chinese improved (listening ability + reading speed + knowledge of Chinese slang like) and I've been able to pick up more and more. My Chinese has really picked up and I attribute a significant part of my progress to Bilibili.

 

Anyway, I could go on talking about this awesome website that seems to be very accessible even outside of Chine (and possibly the most underrated Chinese learning tool available right now...), but I'd rather just list some channels/people for everybody to enjoy.

 

I recommend starting with some of the foreigner vloggers. Not only is their Chinese is actually very good, but not too slang-y or too advanced like some of the Chinese vloggers. (Some of them have those weird or annoying quirks that Youtubers have become infamous for, but I try to ignore it.)

 

All of these channels have their own Sina Weibo you can follow as well. I personally like the Bilibili-format more and have yet to really make use of Weibo, which is more like Twitter anyway.

 

Non-Native Channels

 

拂菻坊 - William from the UK (My personal favorite)

http://space.bilibili.com/15834498

 

小马在纽约 - Ary from New York

http://space.bilibili.com/96145884

 

山下智博 - Yamashita from Japan (My second personal favorite)

http://space.bilibili.com/1643718

 

宫宫宫崎壮玄 - Miyazaki, is famous from Yamashita's videos but has his own as well

http://space.bilibili.com/24622055

 

real信誓蛋蛋 - Two French Guys

http://space.bilibili.com/32786875

 

Emma_Peng - (She's actually Chinese but her Chinese isn't too hard to understand, and she lives in the US)

http://space.bilibili.com/22722854

 

锡兰Ceylan - Ceylan from the Netherlands

http://space.bilibili.com/499023

 

蓝子龙nio - Spanish dude

http://space.bilibili.com/15551906

 

chinesemayonese - Italian + Chinese couple living in Milan

http://space.bilibili.com/109686816

 

哇娜哇娜在环游世界 - Irish-Chinese married couple with two young 混血 children. They like to stream as well. (They made a really weird/racist video where the guy dressed up as an indian man that I found a little weird, but I feel like I should put them up anyway...)

http://space.bilibili.com/78037071

 

阿福Thomas - Thomas from Germany. He lives in Shanghai with his Shanghainese wife, and have learned to speak Shanghainese as well. He's pretty famous in China, in part due to embracing his own big stature and making a lot of jokes about that.

http://space.bilibili.com/25807917

 

歪果仁研究协会 - Street interviews but focused exclusively on foreigners in China, especially university students. It's really good if you're interested in keeping up with what's new in the Chinese big cities. They've talked about stuff like Taobao, 外卖, bicycle rentals, etc; things that China really do better than any country in the world right now.

 

antiSpicy - A young Spanish + Chinese couple living in Barcelona

http://space.bilibili.com/2268526

 

TrevorJames吃货老外 - Canadian foodie who is also big on Youtube for his videos where he travels just to eat the food. This is his Bilibili cha

http://space.bilibili.com/18739124

 

c4show - They put up travelling videos. The host is British and quite funny.

http://space.bilibili.com/4468444

 

美国小伙Kevin - I found out about him on Youtube a long time ago as Monkey Abroad. He basically posts backpacking style videos with Chinese subtitles.

http://space.bilibili.com/79577317

 

Martina黄菲菲 - Young italian girl

http://space.bilibili.com/27149129

 

天天English - Channel by an English Teacher about learning English... I know It's a little strange but they talk about learning Chinese  as well and they use a lot of Chinese anways 

http://space.bilibili.com/19859602

 

Native Chinese Channels:

 

papi酱 

http://space.bilibili.com/1532165/#!/

 

毒角Show - Guy wears a horse head and will sometimes make videos that take place in the US with Americans as well

http://space.bilibili.com/39847479

 

拉宏桑 -  A seriously talented young girl (高中？) who makes very funny videos

http://space.bilibili.com/11870568

 

nya酱的一生 - One of the many Chinese students studying abroad

http://space.bilibili.com/1885078

 

弱肌店长Jeremy - Taiwanese dude who talks about training and... stuff

http://space.bilibili.com/66902629

 

我是黄文煜小盆友 - Chinese male teenager who makes funny ranting-type videos

http://space.bilibili.com/22693524

 

Kevin英语老师 - Young (Chinese) English teacher who often makes videos with his North American friend Jared.

http://space.bilibili.com/10345615#/

 

 

 

I also feel like I should put these by themselves:

 

Generic Street interview Channels:

I like to watch them because they often pose pretty intimate questions that you wouldn't think Chinese people would normally just ask strangers about, like about people's exes and break-up stories, lgbt matters, if dick size matters, etc...

 

学弟帮帮我 

http://space.bilibili.com/77885214

 

小君看美女 

http://space.bilibili.com/96122817

 

暴走街拍 

http://space.bilibili.com/29268794

 

歪星人工作室 - Has a foreigner interviewing people

http://space.bilibili.com/104611611

 

大嘴娱乐

http://space.bilibili.com/33792797

 

Just random:

味库美食视频 - Has hundreds of cooking videos

http://space.bilibili.com/31104682

 

 

Some Quick Internet Slang That Might Be Good To Know (I will try add more later):

 

开车, 啪啪啪, 那个, 嘿嘿嘿,..., = To have Sex

老司机 = Lit: Old Driver, aka Player with lots of experience

233333333333 = LMAO

66666666666 = Awesome (people also will do the hand movement for 6)

博主,up主 - Vloggers

 

 

 

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Anyways, that's it for now. I would like to hear other people's opinions and, if possible, recommendations on new channels I can watch.

 

Ps: To turn off the floating comments, there's a button you press next to the setting for quality (超清, 高清，流...).

[ALD]

This is exactly what I've been looking for! I have a guilty pleasure of following youtubers, and there only seems to be a few native Chinese youtubers (pretty much all Taiwanese, for obvious reasons). The only thing that would make this better is if they had Chinese subtitles like a lot of the youtubers. Have you ever come across any subtitled videos?

[xinhuar]

Wow thanks! This is really helpful. Before I only knew that people used bilili to watch things related to anime, but now I'll have to check out some of the channels you recommended 

[happy_hyaena]

Some do provide subtitles, some don't. I think it could be like 50/50?

 

 

Bilibili is seriously the most underrated website right now. Besides using it as a tool to consume media that, due to its format, in many ways naturally lends itself to language learning; it's also a really funny conversation topic with other young (teenage+college aged) Chinese people.

 

I hope we could maybe use this thread to discuss channels and maybe help each other clarify misunderstandings caused by people using "internet slang".

[zander1]

These are great, especially the street interviews - very fun. Already picking up some new slang “你上床的时候带不带?"

[RogerGe]

Just curious why you put Emma Peng as "non-native", the country where you are currently living in doesn't determine what your native language is?

[happy_hyaena]

On 7/11/2017 at 10:54 AM, RogerGe said:

Just curious why you put Emma Peng as "non-native", the country where you are currently living in doesn't determine what your native language is?

 

You are right. I put her there because she lives in the US and in some of her videos she speaks more English than Chinese. Also, the Chinese she uses I find to be on the easier/uncomplicated side of things. If you read my list as a definite list on "here are natives and here are non-natives", then it doesn't make sense. If you read it as a "these people over here are easier to understand and these over there are more difficult", it makes more sense.

[Flickserve]

On 6/6/2017 at 3:02 PM, happy_hyaena said:

小君看美女 

http://space.bilibili.com/96122817

 

I quite like this one. The guy asks one question and a range of answers on the same topic comes back. Some of the questions are quite racy and testing.