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@osaderio4 ай бұрын
I just became interested in dramas like "Story of Yanxi Palace", so I really liked this episode~! I wish you could talk more about such topics in the future, thank you for your hard work!
@MandarinCorner24 ай бұрын
*List of Topics Discussed:* 1.Why did China first castrate men and later, boys? 2.Why didn’t the emperors only use female attendants to attend to the concubines? 3.Why did emperors had a time limits when having sex with their concubines? 4.What kind of people would want to become eunuchs? 5.Could anyone who wanted to be a eunuch become one? 6.What was the process of castration like? 7.What was the mortality rate for castrated boys? 8.Why did the Qing Dynasty check eunuchs’ genital area every three years? 9.Why did eunuchs leak urine? 10.What did eunuchs do with their severed penises and scrotums? 11.Why did eunuchs visit brothels? 12.Why did eunuchs would have relationships with female attendants? 13.Did eunuchs have a sexual drive? 14.What happened to eunuchs after the fall of the Qing Dynasty? 15.Four famous eunuchs in Chinese history
@amalinaosman66474 ай бұрын
This is a very interesting topic and format! I managed to finish this video in one sitting. Keep up the good work!
@rodguttorm4 ай бұрын
Absolutely the best channel for learning Chinese! Topics are so interesting that they make me want to study more! Thank you!
@Jordan185614 ай бұрын
Does this brother have a channel where he talks about history? I would def subscribe!
@Jadita_byangels4 ай бұрын
Agree
@sean85164 ай бұрын
We love you Eileen! Keep it up!
@StratosFair4 ай бұрын
Thank you Eileen! That was a very cool introduction to ancient China history, a topic with which i wasn't familiar at all !
@alicjawisniewska81452 ай бұрын
Great story!!! So good to practice Chinese and so interesting. Thanks!
@revolversmoke4 ай бұрын
This was a informative session. As an overseas born Chinese it's good to learn about Chinese social history and practises. My legs crossed upon hearing the the process of castration and the conditions of guarantorship by other eunches. It is a interesting area I never thought about before.
@frankoliveira47484 ай бұрын
What a masterpiece of interview Eileen. It has give me e deep insight into the way of being a Eunuch during china dynasty. I hope you get your 1million viewers you truly deserve it. As for those who felt uncomfortable with this chinese podcast, try to see it in a different point of view. If you want to learn a new language first you have to understand its own culture. Xinku le.
@quaetaru4 ай бұрын
Just a small clarification on the cult of Cybele in ancient Rome: no Roman, not even a slave, could castrate himself in honour of the Goddess without penalty; in 101 BC, a slave who had done so was exiled. For sure, some fanatics would castrate themselves, but Rome's strictures against castration and citizen participation in Cybele's cult limited both the number and kind of her initiates. From the 160s AD, citizens who sought initiation to her mysteries could offer either of two forms of bloody animal sacrifice - and sometimes both - as lawful substitutes for self-castration.
@ReechiTheTree4 ай бұрын
Thank you for the interesting cultural discussion. Hopefully in a few months, I can come back to this and re-watch and understand more without the subtitles.
@Giovanni-Learning-and-Stuff4 ай бұрын
A fantastic video, thank you everyone! : )
@heemagauss86914 ай бұрын
Thanks for the effort and guests 提高了中文,也看了有营养的内容
@ArthurXandTheScars4 ай бұрын
谢谢, 完美的视频
@MandarinCorner24 ай бұрын
*TOO FAST?* Control the video's playback speed by speeding up or slowing down the video 5% at a time on desktop computers and laptops OR 25% at a time on smartphone! Access the playback speed controls as follows: *Desktop Computers and Laptops:* open the video, then go to the lower right of the video's screen and click on the settings icon (it looks like a GEAR). On the upper right of the options window that comes up, you will see the link "custom". Click on the "custom" link to control the video's playback speed by speeding up or slowing down the video 5% at a time. *Smartphones:* open the video and go to the upper right of the video's screen. You will see 3 dots. Click on them and you will see the link to open the "playback speed" controls. Click on this link and you will be able to control the video's playback speed by speeding up or slowing down the video 25% at a time. Note that viewing the video on desktop computer/laptops gives you greater control over the playback speed (5% vs 25% on smartphones).
Yes, I agree. I didn’t exactly expect this topic, nor is it the most appealing
@3st3st774 ай бұрын
@@NewYorker8312At least this video contains a lot of vocabulary that I won‘t have to look up anymore now.
@antonimaciag12594 ай бұрын
This is very interesting, but if you're at a level where you can understand 80-90% of it, which is when learning a language through podcasts starts making any sense, then you don't even need podcasts with subtitles because you can just go and listen to any materials for native speakers. So it's pretty useless for language learning overall. I really appreciate Eileen's work put into this channel but it would be more helpful if it were considerably easier. And it would be getting more views :) I also suggest uploading it without English subtitles, because if they are there, the brain takes the path of least resistance and reads English, ignoring the Chinese, so again, you're not learning anything.
@MandarinCorner24 ай бұрын
You miss the point of our content. It is not really meant for advanced students. It is primarily meant for intermediate students that *want to become advanced* , hence the need for providing English translations and pinyin. Also, we have a small portion of our audience that is not really interested in learning Chinese but just follow our channel to learn about contemporary Chinese culture. Besides, the fact that our channel, has grown to over 212K subscribers might mean that a lot of students *DO find our content useful for language learning* . Also, why do we need to consider making our content easier? KZbin already have hundreds of channels offering easier Chinese content. If people find our content difficult, then they should be following these other channels. Finally, we *DO* offer our content without English translations on our website (for free). *We mention this in the majority of videos we have put out* . You can find these videos here: mandarincorner.org/videos-by-student-level-and-subjects/#ingles_no_ingles
@antonimaciag12594 ай бұрын
@@MandarinCorner2 Thank you for your response and the link to English-free content, I've been skipping the introduction so I didn't notice that. I don't think I'm missing the point. What I'm saying is exactly that the videos are not useful for intermediate students, because there is no comprehensible input, so an intermediate student either hardly understands anything (and then they're also not learning anything, and watching is strenuous), or they understand only thanks to the English subtitles (in which case they're also not improving their Chinese). As an intermediate student myself I struggle to find useful content for Chinese learning. All the other channels I have been able to find only have videos for beginners. On the other hand your videos are hard enough to only be understandable for people who pretty much already speak the language fluently. There is a need for interesting videos with actual comprehensible input for intermediate students, which your channel could fulfill if it was recalibrated for easier content. View counts on your videos show that most of your subscribers don't even watch them regularly. I do think you'd be getting more views if the content was comprehensible for intermediate students. Which you deserve! Because it's clear that you're putting a lot of effort into this channel :)
@MandarinCorner24 ай бұрын
@antonimaciag1259 We feel we already have a quite a lot of content that is suitable for comprehensible input such videos in the following playlists: *Walkaround, Expressing Opinions in Chinese, Random Topics, Literal Translations, Stories in Slow Chinese* and so on. Maybe you should be considering videos in those playlists instead of videos in our Audio Podcast and In-Depth Interview playlists. Videos in these last two playlist are *totally unscripted and reflects natural conversations that Chinese might have with each other,* so you might find them a bit difficult if you *only* looking for comprehensible input content.
@traceya5732 ай бұрын
@@antonimaciag1259thanks for talking about this. It's a struggle to find compelling comprehensible input in Mandarin. Ive often wishrd to find more CI on Mandarin Corner since they do such a good job covering diverse and interesting topics. Its so good though that i just keep watching for interest. There is a subreddit called dreaminglanguages which has some resources for Mandarin CI where you might find some good resources. I hope to one day to be intermediate level and then able to use these podcasts for learning more easily. But I'm hooked anyway!
@traceya5732 ай бұрын
@@MandarinCorner2Thank you for your hard work Eileen!🎉
@powercomm4 ай бұрын
I like these kinds of topics. How many more besides the practice of castration and the binding feet of women? I was born in Vietnam and both my grandmothers who came from China had binding feet. They were probably the last batch of people who practiced the binding feet.
@PeteR-gn5ep4 ай бұрын
In order to improve my Chinese listening skills, there is now tons of material on every level on KZbin. In your opinion, is it more efficient to listen to ten different videos and only understand 10% to 50% for each different video, or, listening 10 times listening to the same video in order to get 99% to of the content?
@MandarinCorner24 ай бұрын
Listen to the same material as many times as you can before moving on.
@PeteR-gn5ep4 ай бұрын
@@MandarinCorner2 thanks a lot! Is this how you improved your English 听力?
@NewYorker83124 ай бұрын
The key to learning any language is the first focus on understanding. However, in order to understand, you have to have comprehensible input.
@Jadita_byangels4 ай бұрын
用了两天听完博客! 为什么呢?原因是古代的可怕信息太多了,我需要几点小时冷静下来😂
@ManaMana-le7id4 ай бұрын
The thumbnail 😂
@mohsinjaved13584 ай бұрын
对中国太监的历史有那么详细和迷人的描述了。好动人。
@davidarnaud4 ай бұрын
It is so much better when you interview non native speakers. They use much easier language to understand. Please do more of those.
@NewYorker83124 ай бұрын
Yes, agreed. The last video with the black man from America was much easier to understand.