Broadway Musicals in Chinese

Brendan tells the tale of seeing Rent a few years ago when the Tony award-winning musical passed through Beijing. As he recounts it, the cast threw their heart into the production before a respectful but increasingly baffled Chinese audience. While the music was well-received, the problem essentially boiled down to one of translation: under orders to excise any moral degeneracy from the show, the translators had cut any reference to drug use, homosexuality and AIDS from the accompanying subtitles.

Considering the political hurdles to bringing rock opera to China, consider this latest project of ours less Chinese lesson and more labor of love and cultural education project. This isn't exactly a podcast, and nor is it a listening test, although we've added our regular popup transcript and vocabulary list. But it's a good way to start the week, and if you've seen anything by Andrew Lloyd Weber, we think you'll like it.