In China, your TV will be mostly limited to Chinese TV shows, if you don’t live in a big expat residential compound that has some international channels available. But living in China doesn't means you have to stop watching your favorite TV series.
We list some options for watching American TV shows and some other foreign TV while in Beijing China:
Do you pay attention to the Chinese people on the subway watching TV or videos by smartphone or pad? Just like them, you can access many foreign programs on Chinese websites or through Chinese apps.
Here we list the high rating Chinese video APPs and sort them by Iphone, Ipad, Android Phone and Android Pad.
Please click to expand the sliders to find download links.
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If you don't want to be bothered by Chinese charactors and trapped by any Chinese navigation bars, then you can try the following old fation ways.
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Foreign communities and families in Beijing can install satellite TV to access English TV channels like : HBO HD , HBO Family , HBO Signature , HBO Hits , Fox , Fox News , Fox Sports , Fox Crime , Fox Family Movies , FX , Fashion TV , CNN HD , BBC , SKY News , Star Movies , Star World , Discovery , NGC , History Channel , Crime and Investigation.
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If you are patient enough to wait for the season to be over, you can buy the whole season on DVD. You can find Hot Movie and TV series DVD seller at local bazaa, the quality of DVD are various from each sellers. A good store in Beijing with an amazing selection of TV series is located in the Sanlitun area at Yashow market, on the outer side of the building facing the Taikoo Li mall (Sanlitun Village). This store also has good quality movie DVDs.
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If you can't wait to and would like to see the latest US or other foreign TV series or programs, then you can try VPN.
You can watch American TV series online with Hulu or Netflix or directly on the websites of some TV stations. But you will need a VPN connection for that because those services are limited to people (or servers) located in your home county.
This sounds like a good option, right? Well, having a good VPN service like StrongVPN is definitely useful and, I would say, essential as foreigner in China. But don’t forget, China has notoriously slow internet connections for non-Chinese websites. Video streaming is often slow, stops for buffering or reverts to audio only because of the slow connection. Therefore, streaming TV via VPN may not result in the best experience.
If you don't want to busy with installations and settings, you can watch movies or English TV series directly on Chinese websites by browser.
24 Hours (24小时) 2 Broke Girls （破产姐妹） 666 Park Avenue (鬼楼契约) Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.（神盾局特工） American Horror Story (美国恐怖故事) Arrow (绿箭侠) Beauty and the Beast (新侠胆雄狮) Ben and Kate (老妈和奶爸) Body of Proof (逝者之证) Breaking Bad (绝命毒师) Castle （灵书妙探） Criminal Minds (犯罪心理) Dexter (嗜血法医) Elementary (基本演绎法) Emily Owens M.D. (医缘) Fear Itself (恐怖之源) Friends (老友记) Gossip Girl (绯闻女孩) Grey's Anatomy (实习医生格蕾) Homeland (国土安全) Last Resort (终极审判) Lost (迷失) Mad Men (广告狂人） Missing (疑踪) Modern Family （摩登家庭） Nikita (尼基塔) Once Upon A Time （童话镇） Perception (罪案第六感) Person of Interest (疑犯追踪) Pretty Little Liars (美少女的谎言，Season 3) Raising Hope (家有喜旺) Revenge （复仇） Revolution （灭世） Scandal (丑闻) Strike Back (反击) Supernatural （邪恶力量, Season 8） The Big Bang Theory (生活大爆炸） The Good Wife (傲骨贤妻) The Listener （读心人） The Neighbors （外星邻居） The Prisoner (囚徒) The Vampire Diaries (吸血鬼日记) Touch （触摸未来） Weeds (单身毒妈) Zorro (佐罗2)
The Chinese sites have a great variety of US and other foreign TV series, often even all prior seasons.
I usually go through the app, which accesses the Chinese website. The apps have little pictographs for movies, TV, etc. Within that section you can define further by using the filters by year and by country, e.g. 美国 for the US. You can also search for a specific show using the search bar with the little magnifying glass icon. (Although some shows don’t show up in the search, even though they are available. Must be a transcription error.)
From my perspective, the best apps/websites for TV are PPTV and Sohu TV (see Resources for links and more info). Another popular one is Youku, which I don’t use personally but some friends do. They are entirely in Chinese but are not hard to navigate. When using the website in Google Chrome, you can use the Google Translate function, a very useful feature for many Chinese internet sites.
Shows are usually available the day after they originally aired and remain available throughout the entire season, so you can always go back. All shows have Chinese and often also English subtitles. Best of all, there are no commercial breaks.
Not all websites/apps have the same shows so you may need more than one app. I personally like Sohu TV best because the search function seems to work better and it keeps track at which episode you left off. I read somewhere that Sohu has an agreement with CWTV in the US and airs many of their shows.
Or just enjoy a Chinese TV show
As you are learning Mandarin, watching a Chinese TV show can actually be fun, or at least a good way to improve your listening skills. The Chinese websites/apps I mentioned above have an amazing variety of local TV shows. They usually also have subtitles in Chinese characters, which adds to the learning. You may have to listen into a couple different shows to find one where the main actors speak somewhat clearly and not too fast, and the Chinese subtitles are written big enough. The good thing is that you can rewind and listen over and over again, or stop to look up characters to help with understanding.