Resources for immersion, Chinese media, TV dramas, books, audiobook, guides to native platforms & more

[MoonIvy]

In regards to the use of the terminologies manhua and donghua instead of comic or anime/animation, we decided to use these words because that's what it's referred to in the growing oversea non-Chinese community. Both of these mediums are becoming increasing popular, you may or may not have noticed a few Chinese donghuas popping up on Netflix over the last 9 months. Oversea interest in manhua has been growing quite rapidly over the last few years, with Chinese publishers publishing translated manhua via a website and app especially made for the oversea audience. For example, Bilibili, a famous entertainment platform in China (some people call this the Chinese Youtube), released their oversea manhua platform early last year, and has already recieved 10mil downloads via Google App store. With increased awareness, comes increased interest in the language as some people want to read these in the original language.

 

In our Discord community, we've noticed a huge increase in learners who are interested in these type of entertainment, they often join especially looking for manhua and donghua. These seems to be the right terminologies to use. I'm aware that leaves out the non manhua and donghua fans, but it's all about finding the right balance. Neither manhua or comic is entirely correct, they are both equally confusing. Like @alantin said in their post, "comic" doesn't convey the type of medium we're trying to present. Comic to many people often means Western style or really old style comics that are usually in printed format, where panels are designed for a printed book. Modern Chinese manhua (what the oversea audience is familiar with) are always digital, often coloured, often drawn and layed out specifically to be read on a phone/tablet and the art style is entirely different from Western comic. Labelling it comic might miscommunicate to users that it's a page of Western comic that has been translated to Chinese, but in fact it's a page of original Chinese manhua in digital form. Like you've all mentioned, labelling it manhua sparks confusion for those that are unfamiliar with this type of media. At the end of the day, who do we cater for? Those that are completely new to this form of media, or those that are already familiar with it? We decided to go for the latter. Those that are already familiar with this, are the ones most likely going to use that resource. You might then say "but you're not introducing those that are new, maybe they'll become interested", well if someone is particularly interested in finding out what it is, as others have already mentioned, there's always Google. In a way you can say it is deliberately targeting fans, but at the same time it's also a chance for someone new to learn the term used by the fan community. If they ever become interested, they'll find that the subreddits are r/Manhua and r/Donghua. Going to r/Comic or searching for "Chinese comic" on Reddit will lead them to an entirely different community.

 

None of this is about the audience's level, but more about the type of audience and who will most likely click on those links. An advance learner who has been learning for years may never come across this word if this type of content isn't of any interest to them, but a beginner who barely knows pinyin would know manhua because it's something they already love (and maybe even have started Chinese because of their love for manhua).

 

So to conclude, we won't change the terminologies used on the homepage right now. We do plan on having some sort of glossary as manhua and donghua are not the only new and unfamiliar terms. 

We also have some Chinese characters thrown in places, because we also want to teach learners the Chinese word and character for these type of media and genres. For example, telling someone "Here's a list of fantasy novels" isn't nearly as useful as "Here's a list of fantasy novels and the Chinese word and character for fantasy is 奇幻, and novels are called 小说". By learning the word 奇幻 and other terms, learners will be eventually learn enough words that the top navigation of a Chinese webnovel website isn't as scary anymore. We can't teach every word (as we're not here to teach Chinese like we said) but we can help out a little bit here and there.

We noticed that not knowing what the Chinese word and characters for certain media and genre is a huge blocking point for learners from get into a Chinese website. I remember I couldn't navigation a Chinese webnovel platform till I learnt what all the genres were, and now that I've learnt them I know where to go to find webnovel of my favourite genre. 

 

In general, we try to use an English equivalent (alongside the Chinese word) when possible but that's not always the case.

@alantin You should be able to change the filter, by clicking "Filter" on the right (next to the search bar). You can customise it how you like, it won't effect the view for other users.

[MoonIvy]

Let me just post this screenshot from Google and let's just put an end to this discussion

[Lu]

On 4/21/2022 at 10:08 PM, MoonIvy said:

An advance learner who has been learning for years may never come across this word if this type of content isn't of any interest to them, but a beginner who barely knows pinyin would know manhua because it's something they already love (and maybe even have started Chinese because of their love for manhua).

I think the disconnect happening in this thread is that on these forums, you're finding the first group of people, while you and your contributers have been moving among the second group, and indeed belong to that group. The first group doesn't realise there is an entire ocean of content out there that they don't know about; the second group doesn't realise their knowledge is niche. I hope your list of resources can be a bridge between the two groups, that the first group can cross easily if they wish to do so. To that end, I hope that people here who don't understand something can point that out politely, and that you can then accomodate them. Your site is an amazing resource, thanks again for putting it together!

[MoonIvy]

On 4/22/2022 at 6:18 PM, Lu said:

I hope your list of resources can be a bridge between the two groups

That would be the dream! Slowly but surely someday we'll get there. Spread the love of modern Chinese media!

[realmayo]

I also wonder whether fact that the title of this topic stresses the word "immersion" might accidentally  encourage people to think it's all 'here's how you can be immersed in Chinese' rather than 'here's a list of links to some popular Chinese media content (described, tagged, arranged by difficulty etc)'. So they approach this topic with a mistaken set of assumptions.

 

[alantin]

On 4/23/2022 at 1:00 AM, MoonIvy said:

That would be the dream! Slowly but surely someday we'll get there. Spread the love of modern Chinese media!

To that end, how about adding short descriptions of the genre and how they differ from their western or Japanese or Korean counterparts on the top of their pages along with a recommendation or two of where to start?
 

On 4/21/2022 at 11:08 PM, MoonIvy said:

At the end of the day, who do we cater for? Those that are completely new to this form of media, or those that are already familiar with it? We decided to go for the latter.

I think Moshen had a point in that the advanced people are going to look for the content they want directly in the target language and the people landing on your page are going to be the intermediates looking for where to find Chinese content to consume without necessarily knowing what the genres are called or what genres are out there. This way you could cater to both of these groups with quite little effort I think.
 

 

On 4/21/2022 at 11:08 PM, MoonIvy said:

Modern Chinese manhua (what the oversea audience is familiar with) are always digital, often coloured, often drawn and layed out specifically to be read on a phone/tablet and the art style is entirely different from Western comic.

 

This could go perfectly on the manhua page beefed up a little with a pointer of where to start for the uninitiated. It gave me a lot more information about the genre that was different from what I expected.

[suMMit]

Skimmed through this thread a few days ago. I have close to zero interest in anime, etc. But I happened to see the word 漫画 in the wild this morning. Seems like a pretty easy one really, anyone beyond beginner knows both the words and characters 动，慢，and 画 and putting them together seems pretty easy to guess the meaning. 

 

Edit: just now chatting with my wife's girlfriends and one of them brought up 漫画. That's twice, randomly, in one day of this new to me word, so I guess it's a relatively common one. Anyhow, thanks for the 生词. 

[MoonIvy]

On 4/23/2022 at 9:28 AM, realmayo said:

I also wonder whether fact that the title of this topic stresses the word "immersion" might accidentally  encourage people to think it's all 'here's how you can be immersed in Chinese' rather than 'here's a list of links to some popular Chinese media content (described, tagged, arranged by difficulty etc)'. So they approach this topic with a mistaken set of assumptions.

That's a good point! Probably misunderstanding from the title. We definitely don't have anything that teaches how "how to immerse", just resource and information on what you can use to immersion. Are there anything out there at the moment that teaches a learner how to immerse? If there's a good guide/resource/course, we could definitely reommend it somewhere on the site!

 

On 4/23/2022 at 9:31 AM, alantin said:

To that end, how about adding short descriptions of the genre and how they differ from their western or Japanese or Korean counterparts on the top of their pages along with a recommendation or two of where to start?

Definitely! We've added that to our to-do! We also want to have pages similar to the Native reading app page, where we list some easily accessible apps for various different media like manhua, tv shows, podcast, audiobooks etc, as of right now, we just tag the platform these media can be found on without any additional information. 

 

On 4/23/2022 at 9:31 AM, alantin said:

advanced people are going to look for the content they want directly in the target language

Advanced people have used it for general recommendations. They may not need all the details of "how to use X platform" but having a list of recommendations of TV show, book is always useful for anyone of any level. But yes, definitely the gap for intermediate users is huge at the moment.

[abcdefg]

On 4/21/2022 at 3:08 PM, MoonIvy said:

Both of these mediums are becoming increasing popular, you may or may not have noticed a few Chinese donghuas popping up on Netflix over the last 9 months.

 

I watched a couple that were actually fun and pretty good language practice. Let me see if I can find them and return to post a link. Might be of interest to someone else whose skills are not too advanced. The language was clear and the Chinese subtitles were very well done, easy to read, they didn't vanish into the background like some tend to do. 

 

One was about a talented octopus on an undersea "space ship"; they effected a daring rescue before and during the first parts of a volcanic eruption near the Pacific "Ring of Fire." Also saved a whale who had gotten beached and was drying out. Does it ring a bell? If not, I can find it later today when I have more time. 

[MoonIvy]

On 4/23/2022 at 3:14 PM, abcdefg said:

Does it ring a bell?

Is it Octonauts (海底小纵队)?! I didn't expect anyone to like that, thought it'll be too childish for most people. If you like sort of thing, you should try 喜羊羊与灰太狼.

For anyone that's reading this, donghua isn't just cartoons for children. There's also donghua for adults (similar to Japanese anime is for adults). For anyone who's interested, try 刺客伍六七 (Scissor Seven) on Netflix, it's weird and super funny...and definitely very adult (lots of adult jokes!), not suitable for children!

 

[abcdefg]

Yes, that was it! It surprised me too. I wasn't expecting to be drawn in by it and like it, but I did, perhaps in a weak moment. It was not sophisticated, but I found it was still intelligent and the silliness didn't make me impatient. Thank you for the recommendation of those others. I will check them out, since I have a Netflix subscription. 

[alantin]

Today I began reading one out of curiosity and ended up spending the whole afternoon on it! Easy to follow the story and lots of good everyday vocabulary, so I can definitely see manhua as a great resource to brush up on your 口语.

 

It also seems to make for a good alternative when feeling too tired to pick up a book, because the stories come in "bite-size" chunks instead of 10 000+ characters long chapters.

 

Now I can actually also see why my wife is so addicted to Manga. I can definitely see how you can get hooked on this stuff, but I've just never really picked up something like this before myself! ?

[MoonIvy]

@alantinI should get you to try a webnovel then! For day to day language 撒野 by 巫哲 is the best, use this link: https://www.shubaow.net/141_141065/ you might have seen me rave a bit about this one before. Usually chapters in webnovels are under 3.5k characters, but 巫哲 likes to write really long chapters, so they're 6k each. Still much shorter than many published books where the chapter lengths are sometimes 15k-25k each. 

[alantin]

@MoonIvy, thank you for the recommendation, but I'm not that into romantic novels and especially "boys love"...

By the way, it seems to me that there are disproportionately lot of that genre on the site (in the case of webnovels at least a third (I actually counted! lol))...

Is this representative of the actual proportion of it in the Chinese media in general, or is this a reflection of the site authors' personal preferences?

In general I personally would like to see more non-romance, non-highschool, non-ancient-palace-politics-and-scheming, and non-deities-and-martial-arts-wizards content, but that seems to be the vast majority of the stuff I encounter out there. I have complained about this on the forums before too. ?

 

What is your take on this?

 

I like the tags, but filtering based on them doesn't seem to work. I tried with Firefox and Chrome on macos but I can't find a way to select tags to filter with. The button, which I expect should give me a list of tags to select, doesn't do anything when I click it.

[MoonIvy]

On 4/23/2022 at 9:00 PM, alantin said:

Is this representative of the actual proportion of it in the Chinese media in general, or is this a reflection of the site authors' personal preferences?

Personal preference is the biggest player here. One of the editors has a few suspense/crime novels on his list that he's going through. Sadly, romance is also one of the easiest genres and shortest too, so we recieve a lot of recommendations and suggestions for those. Some books in certain genres are tends to be so much longer, and it takes a long time to read them.

Maybe you can try 开端 (pretty mild sci-fi, about two people that gets stuck in a loop and they need to solve the bus explosion mystery) or 坏小孩. 末日乐园 is pretty good but it's still on-going, and it's really really really long.

About the filters, I noticed after I told you that it doesn't work for viewers anymore, might be a bug from Notion as it worked previously.

[MoonIvy]

Actually @alantin the best thing you can probably do now is download 微信读书 and check the published book section 精品小说 section to see if there's something there for you. Or just give it a go at one of these genres that you don't normally read, you never know...different language, different culture, different take...you might love it!

[alantin]

@MoonIvy, do you have plans to add lists of Chinese news agencies, (online TV like the CCTV channels and news websites?)
Especially the regional news around China would be interesting!

 

[alantin]

On 4/23/2022 at 11:33 PM, MoonIvy said:

Or just give it a go at one of these genres that you don't normally read

 

Actually the transmigration and rebirth looks interesting.
Also ghost stories from different cultures are really interesting. I watched 彼岸之嫁 some time ago and it gave a really interesting take on the other side and rebirth. Along the same lines 天巡者 also really interesting.

Though I think both of these were Taiwanese or Malaysian...


开端 sounds a bit like the Groundhog day. I really liked that movie. The same kind of loop has been explored countless times, but I find time travel always equally interesting! The Japanese 僕だけがいない街 was an interesting story of a guy who goes back to his child self in the 80's to resolve a series of unsolved murders to change the future. I think it is already in at least a manga, anime and a tv show with actors. I wonder if some Chinese company will adapt the story too at some point.

[MoonIvy]

@alantin regarding news, not at the moment, we can look into it for the future. 

 

Yeah I've seen 彼岸之家, it's Malaysian I believe. 

 

From your description, I think you'll like novels in the 无限流 genre. In short, it's the characters in an infinite loop. 末日乐园 is a sci-fi infinite loop, with a doomsday backdrop. The loop isn't the same day happening over and over again, it's a different type of loop. I highly recommend the audiobook on 微信读书, it's so amazing! It's also non-romance. I think I've also raved about this one before.

 

At the moment, I only know of 和宿敌结婚当天重生了 that is a travel back in time to change the future, but sadly it's a boy love romance, it's heavy romance too as he was given a second chance to change the relationship with his lover.

[MoonIvy]

@alantin I know you said no historical drama, no romance, but trust me! Watch this! The romance is only like 5% it's hardly anything. 赘婿 https://www.iq.com/play/1c6abwc1b99?&lang=zh_cn&sh_pltf=4 it's also on Viki.com, might be free there but not sure. You'll need to check. There is a version for free on YouTube, but for some reason loads of scenes are cut in that version

 

It's also adapted from a transmigration webnovel of the same name 赘婿.

 

edit: I found a different version on YouTube, this one looks like the full version https://youtu.be/gyoX9NJE0Mw