Fimbles in Mandarin Chinese!

Fimbles is a BBC show that has now arrived in China, so we are posting a clip to share it with everyone. The show is completely in Chinese, so it provides a nice Chinese immersion experience for children and it is enjoyable without understanding all the dialog. An excellent program for beginning learners as well as more intermediate and advanced students.





Buy Fimbles in Popping Panda's Online Shop

That "Thing" Over There...

A super useful word in Mandarin is dong xi (literally "east west"). It means "thing" or "stuff" as in "na ge dong xi" (that thing) or "zhe ge dong xi" (this thing).

东 = dong = east
西= xi = west

You can go to a store and point at something, saying "na ge dong xi..." and then the person behind the counter will usually respond by handing it to you and telling you the name of it. If you say something in Chinese, people will start talking to you and everything usually works out, but it helps to say something that they are used to hearing..."yeah, that thing over there, uh huh, right, that thing..." Somewhere in the mix, you will hear a noun that you studied before and everything will start rolling.

There is a great cartoon show in China called "kuai le dong xi" or "Happy Stuff" that gives a nice slice of ironic Beijing life and lots of use of the word "dong xi".

Dora the Explorer: Short Clip

Here is a clip from Dora...

Here's a clip from the Strawberry Shortcake DVD in Mandarin Chinese

Since everyone has been asking about Strawberry Shortcake, Dora, and Barbie, we are going to put a few short clips up so you can see what it looks like (of course, this clip is crunched on our computers, so it is not as nice as the original).

Strawberry Shortcake has bilingual options for voice and subtitles for English and Mandarin Chinese.




Buy the Strawberry Shortcake DVD at our store