How would you like to improve your Chinese listening and vocabulary by watching genuine Chinese language videos? There are so many great Chinese films, TV shows, documentaries, and video bloggers to choose from!
Regardless of your current skill level, it is always more fun to learn through content that actually aligns with your interests, rather than conversation that feels like it came from a textbook. If what you’re learning isn’t interesting or meaningful to you, it’ll be much harder for it to stick in your memory. For example, I’m an engineer; for this reason, engineering and tech related videos were what I was most interested in watching. Once you find Chinese language videos about the topics you already want to learn about, you can now just use the language as a means to learn about something that is meaningful to you. The more meaningful, the more easily you’ll acquire the language! Makes sense, right? So how can you go about finding what you really enjoy?
I know that when I first started learning Chinese, I found it very difficult to track down the Chinese shows that I really was interested in. I found in my own experience that finding YouTube channels which teach Chinese is a very simple task; just run a search for Chinese language in YouTube or on Google and you’ll find many channels available (JinbuPal being one of these). However, finding actual Chinese content proves to be a lot more difficult, especially if you’re picky enough to only watch what you’re interested in.
Having experienced this myself, I want to prevent you from having to go through the same challenges! I want to save you time and, most importantly, help you on the path to rapid success as best as I can! So that’s why I’ve compiled a huge list of Chinese content YouTube channels that I’ve found by personally mining through YouTube. I’ve even categorized all of these channels based on common topics and subtitle availability. This way, you can easily filter by category and find something you like right off the bat! It’s available right here for you and it’s absolutely free! All you have to do is join the JinbuPal email list by entering your email address in the popup on this link and you’ll have free access as long as you remain subscribed to the email list! It doesn’t get simpler than that!
The rest of this post is a walkthrough of how to use the library, so I’d encourage you to go ahead and visit the YouTube Library and enter your email address so you can get started and follow along.
Here’s what you’ll find in the AirTable spreadsheet inside the YouTube Library.
Each channel has the following details filled out:
- Channel Name
- Category
- Typical Subtitle Format
- Subtitle Style
- Topic
- Direct Channel Link
You’ll also find separate tabs for Movies and TV Shows, each of which have similar breakdowns of details, such as directors, awards, etc.
You can easily apply filters throughout the AirTable in the YouTube Library similarly to how you would do this in an Excel spreadsheet. If you need more information, check out the following images which show how to turn filters on and off as well as how to activate filters for specific columns. You’ll be able to sort and filter the listed channels based on topics you’re interested in to find content just for you.
Using filters:
Sorting:
Example After Filtering and Sorting:
Depending on your current skill level, you may want to filter the channels by subtitles. Digital (or “soft”) subtitles will be the easiest for you to make use of if you’re working a lot on your vocabulary and encountering new Chinese characters. These soft subtitles will be compatible with popup dictionaries, such as Zhongwen.
Lastly, if you haven’t already, I’d highly recommend you read through our posts on how to utilize YouTube as the ultimate language learning tool and ways to find Chinese content on YouTube. Trust me, you will not want to miss out on the information provided in those posts because they should really help you see how incredibly powerful YouTube can be for language learning.