巧虎小天地 (Smart TIger)

[trisha2766]

China Sprout is selling DVD's of this show now, but I'd like to find out more about it more I order any. I did google searches but couldn't find anything I could read about it. I found parts episodes on YouTube, but its a little hard to tell what a typical episode might be like since you can only see pieces here and there.

What I'd love to know is:

- where is it made? On YouTube some of the subtitles are in traditional Characters so I thought maybe it was made in Taiwan. It sounded like standard Mandarin though as far as I could tell.

- how long is each episode?

- some parts seem to be teaching English - I don't need that. Does anyone know how much of each episode that's spend on English?

- Any one know what age of kids it is targeted far?

Here's part of one episode here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7VZ3XljqNU

Thanks for any help!

[msittig]

My daughters like 巧虎. I don't particularly care for it but another family member bought it for us so we watch it from time to time.

It is originally from Japan, but was adapted for standard Mandarin speakers in Taiwan and has now been introduced to the mainland. There is a bit of English teaching, but it's at a very basic level; mostly introducing vocabulary words but still using them in Chinese sentences. The focus of the show is on building good habits: washing hands, brushing teeth, wiping and flushing after you use the toilet, eating all of your food, putting away toys; the kind of moralizing cartoon that seems to be in favor in China these days, which is probably why I don't care much for it. The format is a mix of live hosts and Qiaohu/Qiqi in costume acting out short skits and doing dances/songs, interspersed with animated cartoon segments. It's definitely targeted at young kids, preschool age and below, like my 2.5 and 4 year old daughters.

I can't comment on the exact format or timing because I can't bring myself to sit through more than about 2 minutes of the show. The kids love it though.