Chinese radio stations

[abcdefg]

I'm back in the US now and missing the "immersion" of the last half year in China. One of the ways I'm coping is to listen to Chinese radio while studying or doing other things on the computer. Have found a couple FM stations that come in very clear from Kunming (my China home base.)

I use http://www.radiotime.com No doubt there are other equally good internet radio tools. (I don't work for them and this isn't an ad.)

I particularly like the easy mix of talk and music available on http://radiotime.com...tionId=104281 Obviously listening tastes will vary and I primarily use this as "background" to whatever else I'm doing, intermittently turning it up and focusing on it when I want to "take a break."

Other Yunnan stations are available at this next link. Many more from all over China are listed on other pages. Some come in more clearly than others. Other stations even have those fine radio dramas in which pronunciation is so clear and the delivery is so full of emphasis. It's a genre that has virtually died in America.

http://radiotime.com...708/Yunnan.aspx

I'm hoping that radio will help me maintain at least some "real world" listening skills without requiring the same commitment of attention as TV. If not, it's still a pleasant diversion.

[Meng Lelan]

Other stations even have those fine radio dramas in which pronunciation is so clear and the delivery is so full of emphasis. It's a genre that has virtually died in America.

That's about right. My next door neighbor just moved away and gave me her 1930s radio that we're restoring. She told me in the 1940s and 1950s they would gather around to "watch the radio". That's the verb they used.

[abcdefg]

My favorites (of the Chinese radio dramas) are the low budget ones in which one reader plays multiple roles and also does some simple sound effects.

[aristotle1990]

The links came out wrong.

EDIT:

They're here and here, respectively.

Are there any hit music stations here, Taiwanese or Chinese?

[tooironic]

My antivirus (Avast) thinks Radiotime.com is malware.

[Outofin]

I did a little search and found this: http://www.gbtai.com/

I guess there should be many similar services. My cellphone has a program that recieves several hundreds of Chinese radio stations.

[fanglu]

There are various radio apps for iphone (I have TuneIn Radio) which get thousands of radio stations from around the world. I find the Chinese ones to be a bit hit and miss in terms of signal quality, but you can usually find a decent quality one without too much trouble. Taiwan stations stations are generally better.

[abcdefg]

The links came out wrong.

EDIT:

They're here and here, respectively.

Are there any hit music stations here, Taiwanese or Chinese?

Thanks for fixing the links, @Aristotle. Quite a few are listed as playing "top 40's songs."

My antivirus (Avast) thinks Radiotime.com is malware.

@tooironic: My Norton and Kaspersky don't have a problem with it.

[tooironic]

I use Avast.

[deathtrap]

Silly question, but will the Chinese mainland radio stations broadcast entirely in Mandarin or will different regions use the local dialect?

[abcdefg]

Silly question, but will the Chinese mainland radio stations broadcast entirely in Mandarin or will different regions use the local dialect?

Most seem to use Mandarin. Some of the Beijing and Shanghai stations even use English. I didn't try to find any stations using Cantonese or Hakka, though I'd imagine they exist. The ones I tried from Yunnan used Mandarin with an occasional "regionalism" or local deviation from "standard" pronunciation.

I only have tried a dozen or so out of hundreds that are available. Why don't you listen to a few yourself and see what you discover. Let us know what you find.

[deathtrap]

I've been listening to some Beijing stations but I'm just a beginner at Mandarin so I can't understand anything. I'm just listening for ear training, and ear training to something that wasn't mandarin would be counter productive so that's why I asked.

[abcdefg]

I've been listening to some Beijing stations but I'm just a beginner at Mandarin so I can't understand anything. I'm just listening for ear training, and ear training to something that wasn't mandarin would be counter productive so that's why I asked.

I understand your situation. That's OK. Don't be overly concerned about accent and dialect. Just keep listening.

[JessieJessie]

Strongly recommend CRI easyFM. 91.5 in Beijing, or online,wwww.crieasyfm.com.

[M.E.Townsend]

What do EasyFM mainly talk about?

[laoyuer]

Try this web, http://www.mmmppp333.com (this is not an ad).

All pieces here are either famous novels, histories and documentaries in Chinese. Of course, your Chinese needs to be on a certain level to fully understand them. But I found them very interesting.

[xiaocai]

Silly question, but will the Chinese mainland radio stations broadcast entirely in Mandarin or will different regions use the local dialect?

I know that there are Tibetan channels in Sichuan. I don't think there is dedicated dialect channel in Chengdu but some programs are broadcast in almost 100% Chengduhua.

香港电台 is not bad as well. It has Cantonese, English and Mandarin channels and you can just take your pick whenever you want.

Oh, they are talking about communism right now(2010/10/02 20:14) on channel 1, sounds interesting!

[smiss]

Maybe some people around here use Mac or Linux or want to play Chinese radio with their stand-alone webradio (like me) and always need a direct address to the stream. I wanted to listen to some Beijing stations but could not get around some crappy "only Internet Explorer interface" for some time.

On http://radiotime.com you can list different radio stations for different cities in China at http://radiotime.com/region/c_100322/China.aspx

If you open the station you want to listen to, you can use your browser's "show source code" function to see the URL to the WMV stream. I can recommend Beijings Story Radio with short stories in very clearly spoken Chinese. You can find that one at http://radiotime.com/station/s_103949/Beijing_Radio_-_Stories_603.aspx

Click on "Listen" and in the following window look at the website's source code. The bottom part of the source code says:

"Streams": [

{

"StreamId":1016817,

"Url":"http://stream.radiotime.com/listen.stream?streamId=1016817&rti=dihyG20zPVYQSRovGxYHQFR3VkoXHBc5WwMGRk5XJg4XFEx6MlNfDFQEJS8QRlNlXQdMX1FARD1CSwQhHh0BRVBBXHRqGAVGBEYGUVtUZwA%3d%7e%7e%7e",'>http://stream.radiotime.com/listen.stream?streamId=1016817&rti=dihyG20zPVYQSRovGxYHQFR3VkoXHBc5WwMGRk5XJg4XFEx6MlNfDFQEJS8QRlNlXQdMX1FARD1CSwQhHh0BRVBBXHRqGAVGBEYGUVtUZwA%3d%7e%7e%7e",

"Reliability":84,

"Bandwidth":64,

"MediaType":"Windows",

"Type":"Live"

}

The URL http://stream.radiotime.com/listen.stream?streamId=1016817&rti=dihyG20zPVYQSRovGxYHQFR3VkoXHBc5WwMGRk5XJg4XFEx6MlNfDFQEJS8QRlNlXQdMX1FARD1CSwQhHh0BRVBBXHRqGAVGBEYGUVtUZwA%3d%7e%7e%7e is the URL for this station. You can add that to your radio or VLC player or whatever you want to use.

It is similar to all the other stations.

[grahamH]

I also use TuneIn Radio on my iPad. I haven't trawled through all the available stations, I normally listen to Beijing News Radio. The quality is good, and as you'd imagine it's dialogue heavy. They also have call in's so you get normal people talking as well as the presenters.

And while we're all doing it, I'm not affiliated with the above radio station or app ;)

[eya323]

Does anyone listen to BBC China?

I try to listen each day and have for the past year. I used to listen just to get a better feel for tones. Now I can differentiate between words and (sometimes) understand the context of what is being discussed.