60th Anniversary Celebration and Parade - watch live online now . . .

[Meng Lelan]

Probably a dumb question in a dumb location here, if it needs to be moved then move it...

Slow Chinese podcast mentioned that this is going to be the 60th anniversary of China and every ten years they have military parades in Beijing and lots of festivities.

Question - will this be live and delayed broadcast on CCTV 9? Is there some way I can watch on the computer online? Live or delayed broadcasts would be okay with me. Hopefully for free. I have Dish Network here but don't subscribe to Chinese tv channels because I never watch tv and movies except for kungfu flicks. Really the Dish network is for my mother who comes here twice a year to watch CNN all the time, blah to CNN.

[Xiwang]

CCTV-9 will be having a special broadcast for the National Day celebrations starting on October 1 at 8 am Beijing time (i.e., September 30 at 7 pm Texas time). The special broadcast is supposed to last about 14 hours. You can check the CCTV-9 website for more details when it gets closer to the date.

You can watch on-line at http://english.cctv.com/live/. However, you may want to try this web connection in advance because I have sometimes had trouble watching it on my computer.

[Meng Lelan]

Oh wow. It does play nicely on my computer.

So now for my next question: how to watch National Day celebrations like on that CCTV-9 website - but with Chinese captions? Doesn't matter if the audio is in Chinese or English although Chinese audio would be nicer. But I want to be able to read the captions in Chinese so that I can understand the broadcast.

[roddy]

CCTV-9 is the English channel, hence the lack of Chinese. If you look at the other channels - CCTV-1 and CCTV-4 are probably the best bet - you might find Chinese commentary and captions. Not 100% sure there'll be captions though.

[Meng Lelan]

That's right, CCTV-9 is the English channel but I don't know if they ever put in Chinese captions where there's English audio? Or is it 100% English - all English audio, all English captions? What do they do when they interview a Chinese speaking person - do they caption in English or in Chinese or dub in English audio?

I'm looking into CCTV新闻 right now. Maybe the better option for me? It seems to have captions, but not for what the news announcer is saying word for word. I don't know if CCTV新闻 would have anything special for 国庆节. Anyway I like how it's all news.

[roddy]

I suspect the entire Chinese broadcasting network, TV, radio and online, will all be broadcasting the exact same program on October 1. Personally I wouldn't bother trying to figure anything out now, as it's quite possible there'll be different urls and servers up on the actual day - unless of course you just generally want to watch Chinese TV.

Quite possibly there'll be a live watching topic on here, as there was at Spring Festival - if there is that might be a good place to look for the best links to use.

[Meng Lelan]

Oh, now I remember that live watching topic, that was a fun (?) one. And wasn't there one time when a live watching topic was planned on some Tibet thingie, or something like that, I can't remember now, but that sort of imploded for various reasons.

If there's going to be a live watching topic on any tv channel about 国庆节, I'd like to get into that thread, captions or no captions. Maybe it'll help me figure out what they are saying on the audio when there's no captions. It will have to be online because my mother is going to be here that weekend, watching her beloved CNN on my regular TV which collects dust in between her visits.

[Xiwang]

So now for my next question: how to watch National Day celebrations like on that CCTV-9 website - but with Chinese captions? Doesn't matter if the audio is in Chinese or English although Chinese audio would be nicer. But I want to be able to read the captions in Chinese so that I can understand the broadcast.

On CCTV-9, whenever someone is speaking in Chinese, the voice is either dubbed or there are English captions. Sometimes even an English speaker might be dubbed because the original video came from a Chinese news program where the speaker had been dubbed into Chinese.

On the Chinese channels, drama shows and other prerecorded programs are often captioned with Chinese characters at the bottom of the screen. Because of the live nature of the news programs, they are not captioned. If the National Day parade commentary is captioned with no delay, that would mean the color commentary was prewritten. That would be just too weird.

[Meng Lelan]

On the Chinese channels, drama shows and other prerecorded programs are often captioned with Chinese characters at the bottom of the screen. Because of the live nature of the news programs, they are not captioned. If the National Day parade commentary is captioned with no delay, that would mean the color commentary was prewritten. That would be just too weird.

Ok, so that answers my question. I was hoping that maybe if this National Day thing would be pre recorded and later played with captions, that would help me lots. I guess all this will be live with no captions. Maybe I'll just see if there will be a live watching thread then.

[Xiwang]

Here's a page (and useful links) with an updated schedule for the October 1 parade:

http://www.echinacities.com/Special/china-national-day-events/

While CCTV-9 will begin live coverage at 8 a.m., the actual parade stuff won't be starting until about 10 a.m. Beijing time.

I've already set up my portable hard drive digital recorder!

[roddy]

CCTV is now dedicated its entire website to this, it seems. I've got CCTV-1 streaming nicely, although it does't seem to be the same as CCTV-1 on the telly. CCTV-9, which is your best bet for English, seems to be kicking off at 9.30, which is soon.

Anyone else watching?

[Guest realmayo]

Turned on the telly. So this is another Zhang Yimou special, apparently. I wonder if he does the home movies for Hu, Wen, etc, weddings, christenings, study sessions, that kind of thing?

I want to watch this and enjoy it but I'm worried I there may be too many "contraditions" for me to stand and I'll end up grumbling at the TV set.

[roddy]

Jiang Zemin STILL gets second billing. They're all looking smart . . .

Come on, we want big military hardware!

[Guest realmayo]

Yes, nice to see Jiang as always.

I'm enjoying the variety of red ties on display from the guys up on the balcony. Only Hu gets to wear a Chinese suit though...

[gato]

How come Hu Jintao is the only one not wearing a suit and tie? He's wearing a 中山装 (Sun Yat-sen suit). What's the message here?

EDIT: Oh, it's because he's going to be heading the parade.

[roddy]

Jiang blatantly doesn't know the word to the anthem. If there's ever a war decided by accurate walking, China's going to win . . .

阅兵开始！

Edit: Have they grafted him onto a car!? This is mental.

[Guest realmayo]

Long pregnant pause ..

haha, those cars are funny. Segways would have been better tho.

[Guest realmayo]

maybe it's like transformers....

nice numberplate though, , 京V02009 ...

haha haha, this is amazing, Hu looks so funny on his car. I think it's because, he looks so calm and mild-mannered, like he's asking his wife to bring him a cup of tea ... but he's being whizzed past the cream of China's military instead!

[roddy]

This is incredible. If I was boss, the military would be marching past ME, not the other way round. That's just past Wangfujing now, free ad for Toshiba . . .

Up to Dongdan . . he'll be in Tongzhou soon . . .

[imron]

Meh, that site doesn't work for Macs