Summary: A night out in Beijing-whether it's an ordinary, relaxing evening or the high point of holiday festivities-is certain to involve a lot of conversation. This program helps beginning Chinese speakers with the right phrases and vocabulary for buying tickets, finding out what time an event starts, discussing favorite pastimes, and much more. Cultural topics include: the booming nightlife of the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2004
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Summary: China is vast, and so are its cities. What's more, Chinese roads, highways, and urban patterns are quickly evolving-so, now more than ever, the Western visitor must be able to ask for directions clearly and politely. Listening closely and effectively to the answers is just as important. This program presents vocabulary and phrasing that will help beginning Chinese speakers find out how to get...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2004
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Summary: Born into a prominent family in China, Soong Mei-ling was nonetheless thoroughly Western in thought and philosophy, having studied in America-one of the first Chinese women to do so. After marrying Chiang Kai-shek, the couple led a China embroiled in years of war and political intrigue. During World War II, she became the first Chinese national ever to address a joint session of the U.S....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: After the Chinese Nationalist Government fled to Taiwan, Soong Mei-ling remained in the public eye as the distant and mysterious "Madame Chiang." She continued the role she had played during her years in mainland China, remaining prominent in foreign affairs and devoted to her work with women and charitable causes. This program examines the second half of Madame Chiang's life: her...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Perennially popular in China, paper-cutting is treasured for its ability to transform ordinary paper into intricately patterned, brilliantly colored works of art. This program, filmed in Hubei Province, charts the evolution of Chinese paper-cutting from traditional cutouts representing luck and health to modern visual art as it illustrates the designing, cutting, and coloring processes. Tsuwoo...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: This program enters the world of Beijing opera through the traditional art of mask-making-and through the eyes of 76-year-old Xiang Qi Shang, a celebrated mask maker who has devoted his life to preserving a custom that may yet be lost in China's rush to modernization. Master Xiang demonstrates his remarkable brushwork as he comments on a range of topics, including the use of facial expression...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Did the Soviet Union collapse under external pressure or its own weight? What enabled free market forces to assert themselves in China? Is socialism dead, or has it simply evolved? This program addresses these and other questions, focusing on the political, cultural, and economic factors behind the fall of the iron curtain regimes. Outlining the Cultural Revolution and its consequences, the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: Part two of the series China: Through Mao's Eyes explores the formation of the People's Republic of China, its complicated relationship with the Soviet Union, and events that prefaced the Cultural Revolution. Footage documenting the turmoil of the Anti-Rightist movement, China's role in the Korean War, and the misnamed Great Leap Forward reveals Mao's uneven leadership as the young nation...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: This program offers an in-depth appraisal of how China's women's movement slowly gathered momentum under Mao Zedong's and Deng Xiao Ping's rule during the latter half of the 20th century. Outstanding footage from propaganda and documentary sources and compelling interviews with women who participated in the events of those decades reveal the hard-won gains through Communist legal and social...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: From World War II until Mao's death in 1976, the Chinese faced recurring hardships, the Cultural Revolution perhaps the most damaging to their traditional society. This program carefully traces the origins and implementation of Mao's agenda of social upheaval, bringing together documentary footage and firsthand accounts from those who experienced it. Among those interviewed is Song Yongyi, a...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Part four of the series China: Through Mao's Eyes details the watershed Nixon-Mao diplomacy, Mao's death and its aftermath, and the legacy of his rule and philosophy. Scenes showing an aged and infirm Mao meeting with foreign emissaries and CPC assemblies reveal his determination to shape policy and preserve his imposing image as long as possible. Today's citizens who look back nostalgically on...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: It's 221 BC, and the veil of history is lifted to reveal life in the Qin Dynasty, under China's first emperor, Shihuangdi. Noted historians, archaeologists, and other experts extrapolate from discoveries made in the ruler's tomb, as they examine the political, intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and religious structure of Chinese society of the first dynasty. Sophisticated computer animation...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: In addition to trade goods, religious beliefs also followed the ancient Silk Road into China. Today, a vibrant minority of more than 20 million Chinese Muslims of various ethnic groups live harmoniously among an overall population of more than a billion. This program traces the history of Islam in China while illustrating the Muslim way of life there, including prayer, religious education, and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: On October 1, 1949, the People's Republic of China came into being following the victory of Mao Tse-tung's forces over the Kuomintang, which fled to the island of Taiwan. Thus the Communists completed a revolution begun by the idealistic Sun Yat-sen in the early 1920s. This program documents how Sun's idealism came under Bolshevik guidance; the roles of the young Chiang Kai-shek and Mao; the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Part one of the series China: Through Mao's Eyes describes Mao Zedong's youth, his formative adulthood, and his consolidation of power. Archival photographs from Mao's childhood and education, film clips from his campaigns against foreign invaders and Chinese nationalists, and lavish, government-produced reconstructions of the Long March detail the drama of those decades. Film excerpts...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Part three of the series China: Through Mao's Eyes examines the origins of the Cultural Revolution, Mao's orchestration of it, the political and economic shockwaves it created, and its human cost. Rarely seen archival footage of young Red Guard operatives raiding and ransacking a home-combined with present-day interviews featuring former Red Guards and their victims-create an in-depth portrayal...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Although they may not look exactly like their counterparts in China, North America's Chinese Buddhist temples are closely linked to them through symbolism and traditions that go back more than 1,500 years. This video looks at structural symmetry, north/south building orientation, and interior layout; architectural elements like pagodas, columns, and courtyards; the lotus flower as a design...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: After illustrating how a combination of laws, customs, and Confucian philosophy had reduced Chinese women to chattels, this program examines in detail the turning points from the late-19th through mid-20th centuries that paved the way for a complete reversal in Chinese women's status. Remarkable vintage film and fascinating interviews with women whose lives have spanned the 20th century provide...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Within two years of the Cultural Revolution, armed factions battled each other in Mao's name. To avoid civil war, Mao essentially banished his zealots to the countryside. This program chronicles the Cultural Revolution, its disastrous aftermath, and the role of Mao's wife, Jiang Qing. Scholars, diplomats, and survivors discuss the forced labor camps known as "Schools of May 7th"; the attacks on...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: It took seven years for Wang Runqing to get his diploma from the Conservatory of the Beijing National Opera. Descended from a family of actors, he had no illusions about the hardships that awaited him. This program follows his rigorous training in a variety of the arts besides singing and acting. His story is all the more interesting because it took place while traditional opera-which had been...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: China is booming economically. U.S. companies, including Motorola and Boeing, are employing thousands in new factories. However, Western economic investment has not translated into a Chinese acceptance of Western ideas concerning human rights-as evident in the Tiananmen Square massacre. This program discusses the progress that is being made. We meet a radio talk-show host who invites callers to...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Every year this nation's economy struggles to absorb millions of the unemployed, while the rich move to gated communities with private schools and tennis courts. That might sound like America, but it isn't. This Wide Angle documentary studies the new China, once the home of Mao's rigidly imposed social equality-and today, a member of the World Trade Organization containing both staggeringly...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: From fledgling cottage industries to the Shanghai stock market, China represents a unique blend of communism and capitalism. This program studies that phenomenon by examining how the Chinese themselves are adapting to the quasi-free market system. Chinese economic modernization is studied at a shoe factory, where communist worker ideals and capitalist goals coexist. In the largest migration in...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Whether they were crafted to spread Mao's message of class struggle or spun from the fabric of everyday life, Chinese folk songs carry with them immense historical and cultural importance. This program examines a wide range of songs and melodies from the country's pre-Communist era to the Cultural Revolution, energized by a rich progression of archival footage, photographs, interviews, and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008