First episode 11 - 奋斗

[renzhe]

Definitely something where I can just watch and work on my listening. Something of this difficulty level that's not too annoying.

I liked 我们俩的婚姻, but that got depressing soon, with the gangsters coming in.

I'll probably rewatch episodes of this too, for practice. Now that I know the vocab and the story, it will make for good listening practice.

We've seen many shows, but none of them are really screaming "watch me, I'm awesome". Something like the mobile phone, or the Jin Yong ones, or empty mirror.

[muyongshi]

灵珊's Father or 陆涛's father?

灵珊's Father

[cshlin]

just signed up to express my 感谢 for all the work into the vocab lists. when i first started learning chinese, i couldn't follow a single word in this series, but with the help of this thread, i think i'll be able to slowly pick up the more complicated exchanges now. i can't thank you enough

C

[roddy]

Excellent - please do keep dropping in to let us know how you're getting on, and ask any questions you have.

[zhen_shuai]

Transcribed and translated the lyrics for the theme song:

有你在的冬天总下雪

我不知道冷

就算在寒冷

春来了 花开了 你走了

我留在这里

哪里也不去

可是我爱你

想和你能永远

永远在一起

你在地球的另一面

我怎么告诉你

Try to forget you [试图忘记你]

I don't like [尽管不喜欢]

But I will try [但我愿意尝试]

深呼吸 空气里

有我们爱情的味道

可你闻不到

可你闻不到

The winter you were here it was always snowing

I'd never known cold

And so it seemed bitter cold

Spring arrived Flowers blossomed You departed

I stayed here

Going nowhere

But I love you

And want to be with you always

Always together

With you on the other side of the world

How can I tell you this?

Try to forget you

Even though I don't want to

But I'm willing to try

Breath deep

In the air

The aroma of our love

But you smell it not

But you smell it not

Not sure if I translated 我不知道冷/就算在寒冷 accurately, but that's the feeling I get from it.

fendou_theme.mp3

[rob07]

Wow, look at all those pictures and links I put in my first post! I've certainly been working hard thanks Renzhe.

Can't remember if it has been discussed on here already, but I heard a while ago that Xia Lin is married to Xiang Nan in real life. That just seems wrong to me.

[renzhe]

Can't remember if it has been discussed on here already, but I heard a while ago that Xia Lin is married to Xiang Nan in real life. That just seems wrong to me.

Hahaha, that's exactly the same thing I thought when I found out

[muyongshi]

Odd indeed

[zhen_shuai]

Just finished watching the last episode！

My least favorite character by far was 向南, and my second least favorite character was 杨晓云. I thought they spent way too much time focusing on their relationship, which was one of the least interesting ones in the whole show. Well, at first it was kind of interesting, but then it just dragged on and on.

华子 was my favorite character, and I actually liked 露露 at first. If they had spent more time on these two characters the whole wedding thing wouldn't have seemed so forced...

陆涛's development from uber-materialistic and sucess-driven to 无所谓 was cool. On the other hand, for most of the show he had so much money, there wasn't much to compel him either way. He's never really put in a situation of financial distress because everyone is always looking out for him. The only thing he is deprived of is 夏林, but then 米莱 is there to comfort him.

I would have preferred something a little more realistic, like the first episode. As I think somebody else mentioned it would have been a lot more interesting if 徐志森 was only sort of rich.

Compared to most Chinese tv that I've seen, though, this was pretty watchable. On to 《魔幻手机》！

EDIT： Just found this http://ent.vv8.com/news/info/mx/mxbg/2008/04/15/26492.html She's 9 years older than him!

[renzhe]

Congratulations!

On to 《魔幻手机》！

It won't be more realistic than this one, I have to warn you!

Good choice, though.

[blaketx]

As a learning tool, this is probably the best resource out there. I urge everyone learning Chinese to watch this one all the way through. There are even vocabulary lists to help you along. There is so much dialogue, it is extremely modern, everyday speech, and it covers basically every topic imaginable, from business to family to relationships to weddings to funerals to music to design etc. etc. When starting to watch this, I could barely follow along, and just about manage to get the main idea. Towards the end, I could follow without subtitles and understand almost everything in it. Great listening drill, and a watchable series with pretty people too.

This strong recommendation from RenZhe has convinced me to slog through this show. I'm hoping that it can help my listening skills as much as it has helped his.

I'd like to work my way slowly and thoroughly through this show episode by episode, and I'd like to have each episode's transcript to help me along. Does anybody have or know where to find complete transcripts for the show? If not, I'll be typing all of them, which I can post on here whenever I'm done. Since I'll be starting school again soon, the last episode might be a long way away, but I'll get there, slowly but surely.

[renzhe]

I've moved a number of posts about transcribing and making subtitles into a new thread.

So people new to the thread don't get lost in all the marginally on-topic posts. The coordination of the transcript activity is great, and can continue over there. I'll add the links to the finished transcripts to the first post of this thread and attach them as they become available.

The good news is that a number of transcripts has become available, due to an effort by several posters, so this show is even more appealing for language learners now -- you can use all your online/popup/software dictionaries to help you along. Check the first post for updates.

[renzhe]

Here's the complete transcript for the 3rd episode. Attached it to the first post.

[dongxi]

For the streaming option, I fount a better version of the first episode on tudou here.

The image quality (including the subtitles) are much clearer and the audio is similar.

There also seems to be a HD channel for the show here but when you pause (to read the subtitles), the screen goes black and an ad comes on. Anyways, the quality is not noticeably better than the first link.

[Guest realmayo]

Just finished this last night, I started over a year ago and watched the occasional episode every so often, but a couple of weeks ago I realised my Chinese had improved enough that it wasn't a big strain following what was going on ... so I finished the last several episodes all together.

I'm very glad I watched it， thanks again to those who recommended it. It dragged a bit for me in the middle but I thought that the various plot twists and so on towards the end made for a very enjoyable TV series, I liked how almost everyone (everyone apart from 陆涛's biological dad? hmm, also 夏林 too I guess. maybe lots of people in fact) 'moved on' or developed or changed or, basically, became more at ease with themselves by the end. Of course there was plenty of daft stuff in there too.

Next up 《蜗居》.

[doraemon]

I keep getting this drama confused with 《我的青春谁做主》. But anyway, I watched this drama a long time ago but I don't think I liked it that much. Like zhen_shuai said, I also didn't like the heavy focus on the relationship between 向南 and 杨晓云, it just seemed to meander on and on and made the plot quite boring. I thought 米莱 was probably the best character in the drama, she has incredible acting skills.

Speaking of 向南 being married to 夏琳 in real life, apparently she's several older than him. But not that it's such a big deal anyway... <_<

[Quakebum]

Shows pretty easy to follow and story line isn't that bad. Now I'm addicted.

[kongli]

I know this thread is quite old but.....

Was anyone else annoyed at how they treated the deaf brother of lulu? They treated him like he was mentally handicapped and just taught him how to smile. That really pissed me off, why don't you teach him some sign language so he can actually express himself, instead of just infatalizing him with "笑一个“。

As for the rest of the show, which I watched in its entirety, I would say it has some interesting moments but the writers didn't properly develop the story. It seemed to me that certain things that were somewhat well developed were given a lot less attention and instead other somewhat random story lines were thrown in. I also felt that a lot the story wasn't that well thought out, at many points it just seemed like the writers said to themselves "shit, what should happen now?" and then just made something out of thin air without honoring the characters.

Also, on a language note, more than once I had some Chinese friends look at segments of dialogue I had trouble understanding but they also could not make sense of certain parts. Anyone know why this may be? All in All, it is still pretty good for language learning and easy enough to follow. I think the best thing it gave me was a lot of slang that I had no idea even existed in Chinese.

[gato]

Probably because they used Beijing slangs that people from outside of Beijing don't understand. If you have some examples, we could give it a shot.

[kongli]

I can only remember one such part (forgot the others), I will get around to finding it sometime. But I think it had more to do with the logic of the dialogue rather than a slang issue.