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Culture shock is a term that is easily available out there. Well, it basically refers to the feeling a traveler gets when s/he visits another place or country and finds that local customs are quite different from his or her area of origin. Culture shock comes in a number of stages depending on how long a visitor decides to live in a foreign country. Most foreign visitors to China admit experiencing at least some form of culture shock. As far as I know, the best way to enjoy your travel abroad is to have a certain amount of tolerance stored somewhere in your mind prior to arriving in a foreign country. With tolerance and keeping an open mind, your experience abroad will end up being more fun and a great learning process.Most foreign visitors, especially visitors from western cultures, will be greeted by several dissimilarities in culture from day one of arriving China. Even more so if they are not visiting those highly developed and westernized cities like Shanghai, Shenzhen and the Hong Kong semi-autonomous region. On this site we have provided you with basic cultural tips and life in China, to make your experience a rich and rewarding one when you visit the country, or are in the midst of Chinese. Business travelers will find this especially useful as cross-cultural communication plays an important role, more than ever in the global world of business and travel. As you probably know, China is fast replacing the west as the most popular travel and business destination of the 21st century. In 2005 China was the world's 4th place, most traveled, with over 56 million visitors. There has been a geometric increase in the number of students, businessmen, job seekers and tourists heading towards China. With the upcoming Beijing Olympic games in 2008, the number of visitors is expected to quadruple before and after the games.
Watching Chinese televisions can be a great way to learn Chinese as well as retain the Chinese that you've already learned. From the news to family sit-coms, Chinese channels can help people from novice to advanced level in developing greater proficiencies in reading, speaking, and listening.
Chinese TV Packages
JadeWorld (HK, China, Taiwan)
The JadeWorld packages offers programmings from Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan. Talk about cross strait connections! You get 3 Hong Kong channels that are geared toward Cantonese speakers in the United States. And if you are a Hong Kong movie buff, the third channel broadcasts HK films 24/7. The CCTV 4 and CCTV9, which speaks standard Mandarin, makes up the Mainlaind Chinese channels. CCTV4 comes with "快 乐 中 国", a Chinese program that is designed to instruct language learners, and CCTV9 showcases "Learning Chinese", which is another excellent show to help you with the speaking, listening, grammar, and other aspects of Chinese instructions. Both Shows air twice a day, every day from Monday-Friday or Saturday. And the taiwanese channel is TVB8, which airs popular Taiwanese music, variety shows, news, and others. Now that is what I call variety! You get Cantonese, Mandarin (mainland accent, taiwanese accent), simple characters (mainland), traditional characters (HK, Taiwan), and channels with their own unique style and genre. All this in a 5 channel package.
My Experience with JadeWorld
My family and I have been watching the JadeWorld channels for the last 7 years. When I want to go to Hong Kong from my living room, I click to channel 450 and 451. If I feel like challenging my listening skill, TVB8 is the channel that helps me decipher what the heck the Taiwanese are saying. Channel 454 is where I get the most out of all the channels, because it's all in standard Mandarin. I watch 455 whenever I get tired of listening to Chinese, but want to get my CCTV news in English. What about 453, the HK movie channel? I'm only interested in watching certain kinds of movies, and I've already seen most of the ones that interest me. 453 is to veg out on the re-runs.
Mandarin DirectII Service
It is exactly what the name implies. You get four mandarin channels, with each coming from Beijing, Shanghai, and Taiwan. You get all many sub-genre of programming from the Phoenix North American Chinese Channel, the Pheonix Info News, the MTV Chi Channel, and the CTI Zhong Tian channel. All Mandarin, all the time for less than $16 a month. Not a bad deal. And I'm particularly interested in what the MTV Chi Channel is like.
With a simple listen and speak communicative language approach you will learn and become confident with using simple basic survival Chinese. Download the mp3 files and take along with you. Listening repeatedly to these lessons on your ipods and multimedia players will help you learn seamlessly and effortlessly while you travel. The following are some of our survival Chinese lessons. Right click and take Save as target to download the file.
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