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Comment by kilroy_jones | Hacker News Reader

As a bit of an introvert I learned to read and type Mandarin before speaking. Just didn't talk to people, but absorbed what I saw in the cities I lived in. Reading menus led to signs led to comics led to books. In fact, my reading is still better than my speaking or listening skills.

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Have you found much rewarding Chinese content? In terms of tv shows they don’t bother translating for the west and books/literature?

I feel like there are so many great books in English where it probably wouldn’t provide much value to fully commit. But I’m a big fan of China and Chinese. I even watched a stupid Chinese soap opera about rural people moving to Shanghai and was totally fascinated by the lifestyle and growth of the city. But only a few episodes were translated. It was called something like Narrows or living in small quarters.

There are some alright dramas that come out of Taiwan.

Yeah from there and Hong Kong there's a lot of more western friendly content (see: translated). But I'm interested in mainland Chinese content that day-to-day people watch there. Like I want to know what their very of "Friends" or even serious stuff like "The Wire" would look like, even if the industry hasn't yet fully matured creatively.

Most of the most popular Chinese sitcoms I've read about seem to be a strange bunch as an outsider. Very much about boy-meeting girl following standard Chinese traditional get a job -> married + boy supporting girl and families. Which I find interesting from a cultural perspective of a maturing middle class economy. That plus a hundred awful period pieces about ancient China, which seems like 50% of their output, especially movie-wise - an easy way to ignore the tough realities of modern China.

But I don't know Chinese and only have a superficial grasp of what they are really like. So I've been interested in learning mandarin.

Exactly. Hence the suggestion. Just watch the Taiwanese stuff.

I've found close to nothing culturally worthwhile from the mainland.

Edit: actually, now that I think about it... I could never find anything when I was outside the mainland but I went there for a 3 month business trip one time and I signed up to various local services (Spotify / Netflix equivalents) and there f;r the first time I felt I had access to a decent amount of content I enjoyed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_to_Survive is a good movie

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