Fruit Ice Cream

Okay, we're guilty...
We let Hui-Hui watch TV.
As former Waldorf parents we are all too well informed regarding the evils of television and the threat it poses to the developing minds of young children.
But he likes it.
We limit it mostly to a bit of PBS children's programming and a few DVDs like "Big Bird in China". Well, there's been a few holiday specials too, he really seemed to enjoy "It's A Wonderful Life" and "The Christmas Story". We're hoping this doesn't leave him with much more permanent damage than what Tina and I sustained as kids.

But now we've found a program which we are trying to expose him to as much as possible: "Fruit Ice Cream"
We stumbled across this program on the local World Television Channel our cable provider carries. We look at this channel occasionally, and wonder if the program on at the time is in Mandarin, or Cantonese, or Korean? I wish I could tell, but I can't. So one morning a few weeks ago I was home with the flu. I was laying on the couch with a low-grade fever feeling miserable. So I'm flipping through the channels and there was this asian children's program on. Tina and I both keyed in on it and wondered aloud, "Is this Mandarin?" Then one of the little puppet characters came on screen appearing upset, and the Grandma character said to it "Mei guanxi" - "It's Okay" in Mandarin, one of the few Mandarin phrases we recognize!

I looked up the cable channel's website, (KBCB TV) and found their programming guide which confirmed the program is in Mandarin. There was some writing in Chinese, but it didn't say the name of the program in English, just "Mandarin Children's Program". I was really curious to learn more about the program but couldn't find anything on the web. So I emailed the Chinese writing to our friend Meimei who translated it for us. It's called "Fruit Ice Cream". With this knowledge I began Googling more aggressively and I finally found some good links.

The program fascinated me as it had a number of unusual qualities, the first being that the grandmotherly hostess is obviously a man. And while there are slick Sesame Street-like puppets, the pacing of the show is much more like Mister Roger's Neighborhood.

It turns out the program is an extremely popular one which is produced by Taiwan Public Television. It's been on the air for 6 years and there are over 800 episodes filmed so far. There is an interesting article about the show you can read by CLICKING HERE. The article mentions that the Grandmother character was partially inspired by Robin William's Mrs. Doubtfire, which is exactly who we thought of when we first saw her.
You can see the English webpage about the show on the Taiwan Public Television website by CLICKING HERE. This page has a short video clip of the show you can watch in Windows Media Player format. The episodes we are seeing air here at home are apparently older ones, and aren't quite as flashy as the one in the video clip online, and we don't get any English subtitles, but we are all enjoying them.

We feel it is very important to try and maintain Kai's Mandarin as best as possible. We feel this is one of the strongest ways we can preserve his cultural identity and provide him with a valuable tool and skill when he is older.