Cartoons in Chinese

[trisha2766]

Hello! I will be in China soon and want to buy some cartoons and other children's shows in Mandarin to help develop my listening skills. Does anyone know if the following are available and could be found at the Wangfujing bookstore?

1)Dora - you can buy both Dora and Elmo in the US in Chinese, but they are kind of expensive.

2)Elmo's World/Sesame Street

3)Power Puff Girls - I bought some womens shorts a while back that had the Power Puff Girls on them with their names written in Chinese. Made me wonder if they made a Chinese soundtrack version.

4)I am also interested in recommendations for a good version of Monkey King that isn't terribly expensive.

5)Xi Yang Yang - I believe there was a movie, but was there a TV series too? Do they sell them as whole seasons, like they do here? Or individual episodes?

And how do you say 'cartoon'? I've had people give me different translations. Is there a distinction between children's cartoon's and animation more targeted toward teens or adults?

[deathtrap]

Yes, the PowerPuff Girls were brought to China in 2003 and officially dubbed for CCTV. You can find episodes on Youku if you search for "Power puff girls" or "飞天小女警"

[roddy]

While you're at the Wangfujing bookstore, there's a CD / DVD store in the basement of the shopping mall just down the street - can never remember the name, it's the one the subway connects to. You can see the store from the street, called FAB. May also be worth a look, and you'll be passing it anyway.

To find what's available in China, have a look at the likes of Amazon.cn and Dangdang. Eg, here's the Amazon.cn search result for 喜羊羊, so you can see what is produced here. What will actually be in any given store is a different matter, but you can note down names and publishers and hopefully have a better chance of finding what you want. Even searching in English can work.

[small tree]

《喜洋洋和灰太狼》strongly recommended

[xiaocai]

Shouldn't it be 喜羊羊?

Cartoons are generally referred as 动画片 Dong4hua4pian4 in Mandarin. All major bookstores will have a dedicated area for cartoons and related stuff. As for what you can get from Wangfujing bookstore, you have to go there to check out in person. But even the particular series is not available at the time you go, they may order it in for you through their extensive supply network. Apparently they also have a website, but whether it will work as well as Amazon is hard to say since I have never used it before.

[langxia]

The 喜羊羊series has up to now around 500 episodes, that should keep you busy for sometime There are also books, I found some with pinyin in it and started with those as they are really easy and you should be able to read them after a very short time of studying chinese.

[zhouhaochen]

喜羊羊 is the one to go for, you can find books, TV cartoons (yes, they sell them in huge boxes, loads of them) and whatever else you want. Its like the Micky Mouse of China.

My favourite fact is that the bad 灰太狼 actually is a nice guy, he only tries to get the sheep for his wife. If he was single, they probably would be the best of friends.

I have seen quite a few real life couples here that reminded me of that series......

[Chinadoog]

wow power puff girls in chinese.. this is awesome

[daofeishi]

The first cartoon I read in Chinese was 《三毛流浪记》. It's about an orphaned child living on the streets of old Shanghai and his adventures. I found it very readable, although I thought some parts of the plot were 'forced' and unrealistic.

They have it in both printed form and as a TV series if you're interested.

[Chinadoog]

What are some good Chinese cartoons other than 喜洋洋？

[Chinadoog]

dragonball Z in chinese... epic

http://www.letv.com/ptv/vplay/951861.html

[Gleaves]

This is also a good thread on Chinese cartoons/cartoons in Chinese. I've generally enjoyed dubs of American/Japanese shows more than Chinese ones (although 喜洋洋 is funny).

[Chinadoog]

Thanks Gleaves... watching Miyazaki's stuff (and other Japanese anime) in Chinese is another great idea. It seems like a lot of Japanese anime is relatively popular in China, so it's easy to find 国语 versions online.

[xiaoxiaocao]

It is probably not for everyone (a little crude) but I remember really enjoying 蜡笔小新 làbǐ xiǎoxīn back in the day. Xunlei, Youku etc all have episodes online.

[trisha2766]

We left for China a couple days after I started this thread and I didn't see that there were more replies after we left until tonight.

We didn't end up having much time to shop at WangFuJing, which really disappointed me. It was really crowded and chaotic too, maybe because it was a Saturday or maybe its that way all the time. I heard after we got back that there was a nice bookstore near where we stayed in zhengzhou, its a shame I didn't know about that before time.

I ended up buying quite a few Elmo's World from China Sprout, which costs way more than it probably should have. I did get a 2 dvd set of Dora that has 52 episodes on it, I don't remember what it cost but probably much, much less than I could have gotten it here.

And I got some 2010 episodes of XiYangYang, but wish I could have found some earlier ones. And 2 movies. China Sprout is selling them now though too.

Didn't have a chance to look for Power Puff Girls.

Our 2 year loves them all, along with the Spongebob dvd's I order through Elina a long time ago.

Now I just need to improve my listening skills enough to fully understand what I'm watching!

Sadly, since we didn't have much time for shopping at bookstores, I didn't get the books I was looking for when I was there either. I was especially hoping to buy lots of board books and other simple children's books. So I've had to buy them here, which costs quite a bit more, and there's less to choose from. I think I have a pretty decent selection, for now at least.