Pirate pimsleurs. It will not teach you to write or read but it’s pretty descent at teaching you to speak and listen. I speak a dialect of Mandarin but cannot understand a lick of Mandarin. Pimsleurs got me listening and speaking Mandarin at around a children’s level in a couple months. I think writing and reading come easier once you can listen to it and speak it, at least it does for me. Make sure you’re in an area where you can actually speak out loud.
Hawaii (an outer island), from when the pandemic started to now bougie alt-right and lib mainlanders have been moving here en mass and gentrifying everything.There is a lot of brain drain as kids leave for college on the mainland then are unable to return because everything got so gentrified. It feels like the native Hawaiians are somewhat making a comeback culturally and economically, but all the big native Hawaiian institutions seem to bend the knee to their colonizers and be 100% lib aligned and pro imperialist. I used to hear more chatter about Hawaiian independence and anticolonialism, but those voices seem to be gone lately. My coworkers have been going further and further right and are now openly racist, homophobic, and transphobic. They used to be apathetic. It’s crazy since all of them are minorities and one is closeted.
I hope I don’t come off as stupid and naive, but I support the antiwork/workreform movements on Reddit. Yes, most of them are American redditor neoliberal reactionaries, however as a whole I think they have some small material effect on destabilizing the system. America is like a collapsing building with a few crumbly pillars holding the whole thing up and antiwork/workreform types are at least wacking at those pillars and I feel like a ton of them are voicing M and ML ideals without knowing it. I think a ton of them could eventually be brought to the left with some guidance.
If you like dramas I’d say ‘better days’ is good, it was pretty popular in China on release. I had to pirate it and download subs from some website but it’s doable.
2d animation: Link Click - I cannot recommend this enough. Its touching, it’s emotional, it has intrigue. It doesn’t fall into typical annoying anime tropes. There is a 2nd season but I haven’t watched it yet. This is a series but I feel like it’s episodic enough that you could kind of view them as short interconnected movies. They have complete story arcs in the episodes.
To be hero- I think this was made for Japan(?) I believe it’s a Chinese production but everyone speaks Japanese in it. It’s goofy and entertaining and touching. This is a series too buts it’s very short and the runtime of all the episodes combined is basically the same as a movie.
Legend of Hei is cute and has high paced action.
Big fish and Bagonia is beautiful like watching a painting. Some people love it but personally it put me to sleep. I still recommend it if you read the synopsis and it sounds like your cup of tea.
If you like 3d animated movies I’d suggest White Snake, I liked it far more than its sequel Green Snake. Green Snake is on Netflix but white snake I had to pirate. The movie does have strangely fast pacing but I love the story. Its action packed and has touching moments while looking beautiful.
I can loosely recommend that one nezha movie on Netflix that looks like some final fantasy thing, it was ok. I’m not really into super hero type stuff so portraying nezha that way felt kind of weird.
Jiang Jia I think was made by the same studio that made a different ne zha movie or maybe white snake? Not sure, but it’s competent. The thing is, they made it feel like an origin story for some future super hero team up thing similar to that ne zha recommendation above.
Sci-fi like others mentioned Three body problem is good but I think the books are much better paced. The show just drags on and on.