Learn Chinese for Kids

好聽啟蒙故事 CD Review


Title: 好聽啟蒙故事 (hao3 ting qi3 meng2 gu4 shi4)/The Best of Enlightenment Stories

Producer: 台欣 (Tai Shin)

Level: Non-Fiction, Fiction, Fairy Tales,

Summary: 10 CD collection of bedtime stories; CDs 1-5 are fairytales, fables, and stories; CD 6 is biographies of famous composers; CD 7 is samples of the famous composers; CD 8 is stories of famous and great people (eg: Archimedes, Michaelangelo, DaVinci, Washington); CDs 9-10 are about constellations and random music (so I guess Greek/Roman myths).

Sample Pictures:


Rating: 4/5 stars

5 Minute Review: All my children love this CD set. The production value is great and fun to listen to. My only complaint is that for the first 5 CDs, the sound is off because they play songs within the stories but the songs are much louder than the narration so it’s really hard to hear in the car. However, this is a small problem.

The CDs on composers is nice because the background music is from the composer and it’s fun for me to try and figure out the composer based on the music alone and their translation of their name.

CD 7 just has a few words explaining the piece background and then plays classical music for each composer in CD 6.

CDs 9-10 could have been condensed into one CD. There is no reason why there needs to be bad instrumental music between each constellation story. 

Incidentally, the CDs on composers, famous people, and constellations were a bit over my head. I got the gist, but the vocabulary and topics were definitely not on the same level as the story books. (My kids also didn’t find them very interesting.)

My main beef with this series is not with the CDs/productions themselves – but rather the actual fairy tales themselves. So I often have to stop the CD and tell the kids that it’s stupid for a princess to give her kingdom to a random dude who kisses her and frees her from some stupid spell.

Or that it’s dumb to plant a tree that grows silver leaves and golden apples but to leave all that to marry the first knight to show up instead of selling the silver leaves and golden apples to live by herself.

My children’s favorite story, though, is 胡扯國的故事 (hu2 che3 guo2 de5 gu4 shi4)/The Ridiculous Country’s Stories. It’s two minutes long and all it is are examples of ridiculous statements (eg: three mice chased down a cat and scared it). For some reason, Gamera (5) and Glow Worm (3) find it hilarious and demand to hear it on repeat.

I don’t understand.

Either way, I am very satisfied with the CD set. We listen to them in the car and I will have us listen to each CD a few times so they get used to the story and recognize them and hear the vocabulary before I swap them out for other CDs.

Even my Chinese has improved!

Highly recommend.

Author

Virginia Duan is the entertainment editor for "Mochi Magazine," a freelance writer, and an Asian American author who writes stories full of rage and grief with biting humor and glimpses of grace. She spends most of her days plotting her next book or article, shuttling her children about, participating in more group chats than humanly possible, and daydreaming about BTS a totally normal amount.

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