This morning the girls watched the new Nickelodeon animated series for preschoolers “Ni Hao, Kai-lan!“ The show’s stated goals are to have the interactivity of “Blue’s Clues” and the bilingualism of “Dora the Explorer.” They also want to emphasize the “Chinese value of being a good member of a group” and encouraged children to “take the perspective of others to maintain harmony in relationships with other people.”
Karen Chau is the creator of “Ni Hao, Kai-lan!,” and has based it on her memories of growing up in a bicultural household with two overachieving brothers, a doting immigrant grandfather and a father with one foot in the Old World and one in the New. Ms. Chau and her mother, Hai-lan (Helen), were outnumbered but unbowed, honoring some gender traditions that dated to Confucian times while questioning others. “Ni hao” means “Hi” in mandarin, and Kai-lan is the Chinese name Ms. Chau was given at birth, later Anglicized to Karen.
It was nice to have a language other than Spanish being taught through a main-stream cartoon. However, there wasn’t that much Mandarin being taught in the episode that I watched. We’ll have to see how future episodes go.
Another interesting thing from the show’s website was that typically, television portrays “excitement” as the good emotion to feel. In many Chinese communities, the good thing to feel is often “calmness and contentment.” “Feeling excited and feeling calm can both be happy feelings, but they differ in how aroused the body is.” I will say, there was significantly less shouting in this show than in Dora and Diego. It was nice.
Hopefully the series will be available on iTunes, otherwise Elizabeth and Anna (and eventually Nate) will have to say “Zai Jian, Kai-lan!” after we return to China.
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Another interesting thing;
Ms. Harrington, the show’s executive producer, said she “hoped the series would have a special resonance for the estimated 60,000 girls in the United States who have been adopted from Chinese orphanages.” And the 10-year-old girl Jade-Lianna Peters who is the voice of Kai-lan on the series was herself adopted from China.
Cool!