
Learn Mandarin through popular Chinese folk songs, mastering vocabulary and lyric meanings, while repeating lines and singing with a professional artist to capture regional diversity from Jiangsu, Sichuan, and Taiwan.
Practice the 茉莉花 lyrics to build vocabulary, pronunciation, and sentence structure, with lyric comprehension and singing along to the love song.
Engage with the classic Chinese song 茉莉花 via a singing video in Chinese songs season 1, lesson 1.
Practice the lyrics of 月亮代表我的心 through text and reading-along exercises, focusing on pronunciation and vocabulary. Sing along and answer questions to deepen understanding of the song's meaning.
Watch the 月亮代表我的心 singing video to explore a basic Chinese song performance in Chinese songs season 1.
Practice the text of 阿里山的姑娘 through sentence-by-sentence listening and chant, highlighting Ali Shan's green mountains, blue streams, and the enduring bond of the girl and boy.
Experience a singing video of 阿里山的姑娘 from Chinese songs season 1, practicing the song through a guided performance in a show setting.
Practice the text of the Chinese song 甜蜜蜜, focusing on lyrics, pronunciation, and singing through repeated phrases and guided reading.
Watch a 甜蜜蜜 singing video that highlights the journey and how seeing what she does on her own journey shapes the performance.
Practice text-based reading and singing with the half moon motif, explore passion and rose symbolism, and engage with lyrics and questions to build language skills.
Explore expressive vocal performance in the Chinese songs season 1 singing video '5. 半个月亮爬上来', highlighting frequent crying cues, startling phrases, and emotional reactions that guide listener engagement.
Study the lyric '在水一方' from the poem about longing across the water, using green grass imagery, mist, and an inaccessible beloved.
Engage in text practice 2 for the song '在水一方', using listening, speaking, and answering questions to build pronunciation and comprehension in Chinese songs.
Watch a singing video of 在水一方 from Chinese songs season 1, and explore vocal delivery and performance aspects of the song.
Practice reading and pronouncing vocabulary from the middle column of 恰似你的温柔 lyrics, and analyze the song’s themes of tenderness and separation through guided questions.
watch the 恰似你的温柔 singing video from chinese songs season 1, featuring a garbled caption with notes on troubleshooting, watching, and top-down cues.
Practice the Kangding love song text with guided vocabulary, read after me, and sing along to explore folk Chinese pronunciation, tone, and cultural expression.
Explore the Kangding love song acting video in Chinese songs season 1, featuring an expressive performance and a Johnny Cash reference.
Practice 天涯歌女 text, build vocabulary from the middle column, and explore concepts of travel, seeking a soulmate, love, and same heart through tonal words and lyrics.
Explore a playful 天涯歌女 singing video filled with rhythmic vocal sound bites and a boogie vibe.
Practice the four seasons song text, read after me, listen and answer questions, exploring spring, summer, autumn, and winter imagery and related vocabulary.
Explore the 四季歌 singing video from Chinese songs season 1 and experience a Chinese song about the four seasons.
Hello, everyone, welcome to Chinese Songs Season 1: Learn Chinese through beautiful Chinese folk songs. As you all know, learning songs is a great means of learning language ever since our birth. The melodious rhythm, poetic and rhymed language, frequent use of refrains and repetition in songs are not only intoxicating to our mind and heart, but also make the lyrics highly memorable and make the learning experience close to our childhood learning experience of our mother tongues. This sequence of learning Mandarin Chinese through Chinese songs includes popular Chinese songs from different Ages, genres and geographical regions and therefore embody the cultural diversity and folk customs of the different races constituting Chinese culture. The first season of this sequence chose mostly popular folk songs, because folk songs have strong local-color music and tune, simple but beautiful language, and embody most the idiosyncrasies of each geographical region and racial or minority culture. Passing down from generation to generation, they have constituted the unforgettable fabric of the rich Chinese culture. All the ten songs chosen for this course are extremely popular Chinese folk songs passed down through generations and well-known to every household. Being able to sing them will allow you to be considered as an insider of Chinese culture when you go to China or communicate with Chinese people and therefore endear you to them. Among these 10 songs, "Jasmine flower" is from Jiang Su Province, the southern China, and embodies the feminine, soft beauty and oblique expression of love in the cultural ambience of southern China, "Kang Ding Love Song" is from Si Chuan province, with its bolder, opener expression of love, "Ali Shan's Girls" are from Taiwan, with its local mountain and water and native Taiwanese customs.
Each song is taught in two lectures, the first lecture will introduce you to the language of the lyrics, you will learn vocabularies and lyrics: I will explain to you the meaning of the lyrics, and lead you to read it twice, and ask you questions about them. Then I will sing to you the song, and lead you to sing twice after me sentence by sentence, before you will sing together with me. All these repetition will ensure you to sing the songs accurately and beautifully and understand the lyrics thoroughly. The second lecture is the singing video of a professionally trained singer, so you can sing together with her, with your by-then-already-memorized lyrics in your head.
You will see you can master a great range of Chinese language through these songs, from expression of emotion to description of Nature, appreciate the diverse beauty of the poetic and musical ambience of Chinese culture in different geographical regions, and these lyrics will be branded in your memory and delighted heart as almost your first language did.
Please do check out the last lecture with free youtube links of these songs sung by the most famous Chinese singers, and other related course information.