Chinese farmer gone live!

October 31, 2018 Black Bamboo

The New Yorker recently had an article about a small farmer who put a visual taste of her live online daily. It is a fascinating look into contemporary Chinese life interacting and being changed by the internet. My how things have changed from LaoMa’s time in China! We can see things moving forward before our eyes!

The stream is also a good challenge for students to practice finding characters in a dictionary. We often talk about how you need both the character and the pinyin to find an English translation in a dictionary. This resource gives us a taste of the reverse. You are given the pinyin and an
English translation - providing you with the challenge of using those two to find the character!

Here’s a taste of the first bit of the article. Click on the picture or HERE to read the whole story.

Three years ago, Liu Mama was an unremarkable middle-aged farmer from the Dongbei region, in northeastern China. Then she started presenting her life on the social-media platform Kuaishou. Liu Mama’s son-in-law, who would later assume the role of her trusty cameraman, introduced her to the live-streaming craze, and they decided to try it out, for laughs. The first videos, each less than a minute long, show Liu, short and squat, black hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, dressed in a red mian ao (a cotton-padded jacket)—the archetype of the good farmer’s housewife—sitting at the kitchen table. She’s chewing on pork ribs and fish heads while composing crude rhymes about the glories of rural life. “Chowin’ on a pork bone / mouth covered in oil / Bringin’ me good luck / two years on,” she hollers between bites.