曲艺电台 Podcast

Name of Podcast: 曲艺电台 (qǔ yì diàn tái)

What topics are covered: This podcast is a series about Chinese performing arts.  This channel is mainly about traditional folk art and collections and recommends excellent new pieces while at the same time aiming to provide a convenient approach of listening to people who are fond of folk art.

Why is it good to listen to?

This series helps people understand Chinese performing arts and learn some traditional and contemporary Chinese slang. It covers a lot of different topics ranging from traditional Chinese culture, jokes, and traditional life styles to relevent current issues. The language spoken in the series is funny, amusing and humorous. Due to the usage of slang as well as the performers speaking and imitating local Chinese dialects, Chinese learners might feel it hard to fully understand the podcast. Through listening to several episodes, many people will grow to like and enjoy the series.

To listen to the podcast, you can search 曲艺电台on iTunes.

How often are the podcasts updated? The podcasts are updated on a weekly-monthly basis.

Length of the podcasts:  The podcasts vary from 29 minutes to 80 minutes

Description of the podcast:

This folk art podcast channel broadcasts many famous masterpieces of outstanding folk art performers who are still active in the Chinese art arena. Some of the performances include cross talks(相声), storytelling, traditional operas, tongue twisters and music. Each episode focuses on one performance and the representative work of one folk art performer. Some performances will be divided into several podcast episodes because they are very long. This podcast is quite tricky to fully understand because there are lots of “in-jokes” and the performers purposefully speak quite quickly for the audience. It is different from many other podcasts in that the performer is performing to the live audience who can see them and not the podcasts listeners.

Summary:

This podcast is recommended if you want to know about Chinese art and Chinese performance. Due to the type of performance, this podcast would be good for upper intermediate-advanced learners.