HI EVERYONE!

I am in a search for Chinese (Mandarin) Podcasts, and/or video interview shows
from Mainland China, as I am trying to adjust to their accent, speech ect.

I currently study Mandarin and have a low advanced level in the language.
About 90% of the content I listen to is from Taiwan. As well as all other
learning materials.

I particularly like 沈春華 Life Show because it uses an interview format which
I feel gives you more bang for your time. (As they are constantly talking) Not
like movies, dramas, ect. that have lots of parts with have no dialogue. Furthermore
this show doesn't have a tremendous amount of background sound effects like
Asian variety shows typically do.

So anyone who lives China, studies chinese, or is Chinese and knows where I can find
good political, historical, news podcasts, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you everyone and thanks Lingq!

Here is a collection by a person from the Mainland who lives in Vancouver, one of two. It is humour and on politics. He can make more of these if there is interest. Let me know what you think.

http://www.lingq.com/learn/zh/store/68855/

cntv news is great, they have a dozen or so 1-5 minute news clips with full transcripts every day.

eg for today
http://cctv.cntv.cn/lm/xinwenlianbo/20120211.shtml

Just click on the calendar to get any other day.

The news readers have very standard accents.

Carlos, you're right. The background music in Chinese shows is just terrible. I didn't know they do that in other Asian countries as well. Iaing is right, there is a wealth of CCTV material with either separate transcript or Chinese subtitles. I don't know how suited Xinwen lianbo is because they have a more formal language there. Furthermore it is the main propaganda outlet of the communist party and their nonsense is sometimes a bit hard to bear.

If you go to this site (http://news.cntv.cn/newwwww/01/05/ditu/index.shtml), you find a great selection of Chinese CCTV programs. My favourites are:

今日观察: discussion on economics, channel 2, full transcript
环球视线: political discussions, channel 1, full transcript
新闻1+1: domestic politics, channel 1, full transcript
对话: economics, channel 2, with subtitles
文明之旅: cultural program, channel 4 (subtitles in Chinese and English)


All of them have no background music noise and you have transcript either separately or as subtitles. You might also want to check out the Chinese version of Deutsche Welle, they have great podcasts with full transcripts.

Thank your very much for presenting to me 文明之旅. It is very interesting.

Sorry, these are not really Mainland Chinese Podcasts, but as Mr. Friedmann mentioned the Chinese version of Deutsche Welle on the previous post, I will present you Chinese versions of several radio stations.

I sometimes check up the following podcasts, which are not easy for me, but challenging and interesting.

Radio Japan (Chinese) (including full transcript)
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/chinese/top/inde...

VOA(Chinese) (including full transcript)
http://www.voanews.com/chinese/news/

RFI(Chinese) (You can find similar articles in French as well as in English)
http://www.chinese.rfi.fr/

Thank you Steve, dilemme, Friedemann, and iaing.

I like VOA because I was able to find hour long podcasts about international news
and other subjects. Perhaps the others ones have podcasts of this length,
just haven't found them yet. All of the links provided are excellent.

If anyone knows any good tv interview shows in Mainland China, that would also be appreciated.

I feel listening comprehension is the hardest part of Chinese. So this year to get to an high advanced level
I want to blast myself with audio and read difficult material, to increase my vocab. As we know, these two go hand in hand
in the process of reaching your desired results.

Thanks everyone!

The ones that I mentioned are free discussions and so it is almost as a one on one interview. On channel one of CCTV (check out my link above) there is also a true interview show called 面对面 but I am not sure about transcripts.

You're right about listening comprehension, a huge challenge in Chinese.

Friedemann, how do you access the transcripts for those shows you mentioned and the Deutsche Welle podcasts? I can't seem to find them on either the Chinese or the English pages. Is there really a text version of those entire 20 minute shows on 新闻1+1 for example?

Chris,

新闻 1+1，When you click on an episode, the transcript should be right below. Sometimes it takes a day or two after the initial broadcast on CCTV for the transcript to be uploaded but normally it is there. For example this episode: http://news.cntv.cn/china/20120629/100264.shtml

For Deutsche Welle, the transcripts are not available as one document but all audio is basically from the articles they have on their website. If you open the articles, you'll find that for many of them there is an audio link inside the text.

Found them, thanks. This is really a tremendous resource to have.