The Dumpling Sisters

[LittleDumpling]

Hi everyone!

My name is Julie, and my sister Amy and I have recently started up a YouTube channel and a website called 'The Dumpling Sisters'.

Although we were raised in New Zealand, Chinese food and culture has always been a massive part of our family's life. We thought it'd be a fun project to start sharing what we personally know and love about food, especially of the Chinese variety!

It'd be awesome if you guys could have a look and let us know what you think. Please also feel free to chip in with ideas for other adventures and recipes that you'd like to see in the future!

Cheers for your time and we hope you enjoy

[PhreakOut]

hm... looks nice, any good vegetarian dishes?

[LittleDumpling]

Heya! Thanks again for the YT sub! As per my reply on YT, we will definitely try to get more vege dishes up soon! FYI, I (Julie) was just in Lisbon with the rest of the family a few days ago We loved it there, hands down the best place that we've visited on this trip! x

[PhreakOut]

Nice to know that always love to see foreign people spending money (and thus investing) in my country, and expecially in my city, as gor veggie dishes, ill keep my eyes open for it.

BTW, anyone can tell me how to say vegetarian in chinese??

[imron]

BTW, anyone can tell me how to say vegetarian in chinese??

No. Or at least probably not in any way that will reliably get you meat-free food without also requiring longer explanations, because Vegetarianism as a concept isn't widely understood by many people in mainland China.

In the meantime, you might find this thread useful.

[LittleDumpling]

Hey all!

Since we last posted to introduce ourselves, we've entered a video recipe competition run by Jamie Oliver and Uncle Ben's rice.

We found out today that we've made it through to the final 5 (ahh!)

We'd love it if you guys checked it out here:

And if you enjoy it, please vote for us!

Cheers for your time!!

[Kobo-Daishi]

That's great!

I'll be sure to vote for you guys.

Kobo.

[Kobo-Daishi]

I've been following the competition intensely.

The race is quite heated with the Dumplings currently in second place.

The other contestants are a little 10 yr old American girl, a French guy, an Argentinian woman (the current leader), and a German guy.

Kobo.

Edit: Clarify that Latin American woman is Argentinian. And that the kid is American.

[abcdefg]

Probably a minority opinion, but...

Of course the Dumpling Sisters are cute and I enjoy the way they bounce around batting their eyelashes, coyly mixing dimples and boob shots. But it has precious little to do with cooking. Not my cup of tea.

This silly contest is all about being fetching and attractive in a saccharine "show-business personality" kind of way.

I much prefer the crusty old Cantonese Chef we saw not long ago. He just cooks well without trying to charm us to death. http://www.chinese-f...tonese-cooking/

[Kobo-Daishi]

Of course the Dumpling Sisters are cute and I enjoy the way they bounce around batting their eyelashes, coyly mixing dimples and boob shots.

Kobo is a "du shu ren", he is not easily distracted by such trivialities as cute, batting eyelashes, dimples or boobs.

He's more interested in that the Dumplings are grad students at Oxbridge.

Kobo.

[LittleDumpling]

Hi Kobo and abcdefg (and anyone else out there!),

Thanks for your replies.

abcdefg, we appreciate your comments. We know we bounce around but that's just our personalities. We also really love to laugh and basically not take ourselves too seriously - doing the videos is a way for us to share our love of food and have fun at the same time. In terms of having nothing to do with cooking... well, all we can say is that we think we do demonstrate good technique, and that we made a delicious recipe with the hope that viewers would give it a go themselves. But alas we know we won't be everyone's cup of tea, and so with that we say thanks very much for your feedback

Kobo - thanks for your support!! The competition is fierce indeed, but also very exciting! We are really pleased that you enjoyed our video. We also had a quick peek at your blog and it looks intense!!

[abcdefg]

Sorry ladies, that came across as harsh. I'm sometimes kind of a grump. I can tell you like cooking. I do too, though I can't present it with as much panache.

I hope you win the contest and I'll vote for you.

---------------------

Edit: Did it. Just went back to the video of the chicken breast fried rice lettuce wrap and voted it up.

Edited September 16, 2013 at 12:22 AM by abcdefg

[Kobo-Daishi]

Kobo - thanks for your support!!

Glad to be of help.

Kobo.

[Kobo-Daishi]

It was more of a horse race yesterday, but, now it seems that the Argentinian woman has broken out from the pack and is leading by a wide margin.

I wonder how she does it. I mean publicize her entry.

Her entry has gotten the most views, the most likes and the least dislikes.

I went to her channel (as well as the ones of the other entrants) and don't see anything special about it. She's only got the one video. The entry from the contest. And she's got very few subscribers.

The strange thing is that she has links to all the other entrants' videos as well, except for one to The Dumpling Sisters'. She also has a link to her own video entry twice. And it seems she's posted comments at the other entrants' video entry page as well, saying nice things, except for The Dumplings. Strange indeed.

It seems that The French Guy and The Dumplings are the only ones who don't mention their being a finalist or even their having entered a contest on the main page of their YouTube channel.

I wondered why the Argentinian woman is so far out in front and did a Google search. Nothing remarkable there. She has a Facebook page and Twitter as do the Dumplings. She was writ up in Spanish sites about her making the finals of the contest, but, the Dumplings were wrote up in a New Zealand site.

So what's with the Argentinian woman's huge lead? In the Google images I see her doing catering, attending a professional cooking class(?) and wearing a Ramones t-shirt.

Does she post to Spanish forums? Is that the draw?

I'm perplexed.

It's just that I've read about SOE (search engine optimization) and am curious how people get their stuff out there. How Bieber, Gangnam, Michelle Phan, etc. became huge Tube celebs.

Kobo.

[Silent]

Does she post to Spanish forums? Is that the draw?

It probably helps but I'm not sure or it has a real advantage over English forums. The number of hits is not that huge that the size of the language area is that relevant. I think the deciding factor has more to do with activating (social) networks. You don't need to spread the word to many people, you need to spread it to people who care and are likely to spread it further. From that point of view I'ld say promoting the contest at a food forum might be more efficient then promoting it at a language learning site where a fair number of members may be unable to access youtube easily due to the great firewall.

[Kobo-Daishi]

It probably helps but I'm not sure or it has a real advantage over English forums. The number of hits is not that huge that the size of the language area is that relevant. I think the deciding factor has more to do with activating (social) networks. You don't need to spread the word to many people, you need to spread it to people who care and are likely to spread it further. From that point of view I'ld say promoting the contest at a food forum might be more efficient then promoting it at a language learning site where a fair number of members may be unable to access youtube easily due to the great firewall.

I guess posting at food forums would be a good idea.

I did see that the Argentinian woman had subscribed to a few food related YouTube channels in the weeks prior. But I don't see that as helping.

And when I did a Google search for her name, I didn't really see any food forums with her name.

What really surprised me is that according to one of the comments from a few days back, on a rival entrant's page, all the competitors were neck-and-neck at about 10,000 hits, save for the Dumplings who were ahead with 5,000 more than the rest. Or 1 1/2 times the views for the others.

Of course, these are views of the videos which don't count towards the competition.

The contest is based on the likes. The thing is that the Argentinian woman now has twice as many likes as does the Dumplings.

How did she get this huge bump in viewership in such a short time span?

There is still a week left in the contest and it's real easy to vote as long as you've an account with one of the Google services. YouTube, Gmail, Google+, etc. Just click on the thumbs up button.

It'll be interesting to see who wins.

I wonder if they have consolation prizes. A years worth of Uncle Ben's rice (they're the sponsors)?

Kobo.

[Guest realmayo]

Presumably, from the sponsors' point of view, they are hoping that the contestants are promoting themselves -- and the competition and the sponsors -- all over the internet.

[Kobo-Daishi]

Does she post to Spanish forums? Is that the draw?

I guess the Argentinian woman will end up the winner. Only a day or two (?) left in the voting and she's got more than twice the votes for the Dumplings.

It seems that almost all the votes for the Argentinian woman are from Spanish voters. At least that's the impression I get from the comments on her YouTube video. Nary an English comment to be found.

Wonder if they're all Argentinian. They sure know how to get out the vote.

It's a shame it comes down to ethnicity.

It reminds me of the controversy surrounding Yao Ming when he was voted into the NBA (National Basketball Association) All-Star Game.

A lot of mainland Chinese voters voted for him.

Of course, he ended up a credible player, but, Chinese votes skewed the voting sharply in his favor.

Kobo.

[abcdefg]

I am far from an expert on such things, but this comment on her YouTube video site suggests there's lots of Facebook campaigning involved:

Agus Benvenuto 2 days ago

Sigan a Feli en su Fan Page en Facebook "Felicitas Pizarro", y también en la Fan Page "Voten Por Felicitas Pizarro En You Tube". Muchas novedades de esta gran revelación de la cocina!!!

[Kobo-Daishi]

Agus Benvenuto 2 days ago

Sigan a Feli en su Fan Page en Facebook "Felicitas Pizarro", y también en la Fan Page "Voten Por Felicitas Pizarro En You Tube". Muchas novedades de esta gran revelación de la cocina!!!

I took 3 years of junior high and high school Spanish and all I could make out was Facebook, fan page, and You Tube.

Kobo.