System: You are a JSON assistant. You only reply in valid JSON and never in normal text. Give me a score for the difficulty of a video information provided below. I expect a single "result" property with a float from 0 to 1 in it.
Here are ranges for the difficulty score:
0.0 - Absolute Beginner: The content uses very simple vocabulary and basic phrases, with clear visuals and context. Ideal for someone who knows no target language at all.
0.25 - Beginner: Simple sentences and common vocabulary. The video may include some visual aids and context to help understanding.
0.5 - Intermediate: More complex sentences and a broader vocabulary. Some idiomatic expressions may be used, requiring a bit more background knowledge.
0.6 - Upper Intermediate: The content includes industry-specific vocabulary and concepts. Viewers should have a good grasp of the target language to fully understand.
0.8 - Advanced: The video uses advanced vocabulary and complex sentence structures. It may include nuanced discussions that require a strong command of the language.
1 - Very Advanced: The content is aimed at fluent speakers, with specialized terminology and concepts that may not be familiar to all native speakers.
Assistant: Title: Living in China and learning Chinese - 🤣 Diane's funny stories - INTERMEDIATE English conversation
Caption: Listen to English with an American accent... my friend Diane tells us :

- a funny story about living in China in the 1990s
- how China has changed
- about learning Mandarin Chinese.

Another opportunity for you to practise listening to American English in an intermediate English conversation.

Diane spent about four years in China where she studied and worked in the early 2000s.  She teaches Mandarin Chinese and will soon complete her PhD in Language Education at the University of Iowa, in the US Midwest.

** Diane's YouTube Channel for learning Mandarin Chinese **
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFtCASxFEa9ym88EUrWZxFQ


00:00  Introduction
01:14  Where Diane is from and what she does
02:53  Rachel in China in 1991
04:02  How Diane became interested in China and learning Chinese
05:21  How Beijing Airport has changed
06:06  Living in Kunming, South-West China, and learning Mandarin Chinese
08:04  Cultural differences between th USA and China - a funny story
13:46  How rural China influenced Diane's life today
14:27  Cultural differences - an experience in Thailand (Rachel)
16:13  Other changes in China - transport
18:38  Why it's useful to learn a little Chinese



** QUESTION : Have you lived in another country? **



// WHAT to WATCH NEXT //


My trip to Asia :   https://youtu.be/HJG_aDLISFk

People, places and travel playlist :  https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0J8XtnnCuEP9-woyyqJpvclKGX4Z9bEn

Intermediate English playlist :  https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0J8XtnnCuEM4gxcAlfDfYQqGO1jwt7_l


My FREE Miniguide (North American / British Vocabulary) :  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VGwk...




// LEARNING TIPS //

https://youtu.be/y98R-QV5mN4
- listen and watch all the video
(try to understand with the images, gestures and context - adjust the speed if necessary)
- listen again with the subtitles if necessary
- if you want to, write new words (not more than 10)
- listen again with NO SUBTITLES – you should understand more
++++ move on to another video
Description: Happy New Year again!
Happy New Chinese New Year,
because today is the start&nbsp;
of the year of the tiger!
So it's not my year,
and it's not my daughter's year...
...because we are roosters.
And it's not my husband's year either...
...because he is a dragon...
...but he doesn't usually breathe fire!
To celebrate the Chinese new year,
I recorded a conversation&nbsp;
for you with my friend Diane,
and she tells us all about living in China,
about how China has changed since the 1990s,
and about learning Mandarin Chinese.
Hello Diane.
Hi.
Now Diane is from the American Midwest,
but I can never remember&nbsp;
if she's from Iowa or Ohio.
Diane where are you from?
I'm originally from Ohio.
You know, I did also live in Illinois,
another part of the Midwest,
but I now live in Iowa.
In between there, I lived&nbsp;
in Colorado and in China.
Now that's the reason I wanted&nbsp;
you to chat to us today.
I met Diane...
...because Diane is actually a Mandarin teacher...
...and when my daughter and I were in Agen,
as you have heard about now,
and a few years back, a few years ago,
we actually did Chinese for fun.
Well, I call it Chinese...
...but I think I'm supposed to say Mandarin!
Or Mandarin Chinese,
because Chinese has so many&nbsp;
different possible dialects.
Mandarin is just maybe the most prevalent one,
and it's the one that the government&nbsp;
of China established as standard,
so it's taught in schools,
and it's used on TV,
and so it's, it's kind of...
...we call it a "lingua franca",
which you know, people use it more,
but people in different regions&nbsp;
of China speak different dialects,
along with maybe speaking Mandarin,
so it's a good one to know if you want to be&nbsp;
able to talk with people from anywhere in China.
Before I forget, Diane even has a YouTube&nbsp;
channel now to help teachers of Chinese,
and people who are learning Chinese,
so I'll put a link in the description.
But now what I really wanted&nbsp;
to talk to you about was China,
and how it's changed,
because I went to China, Diane,&nbsp;
but it was a long time ago.
It was in 1991 I think,
and I remember... I remember&nbsp;
Beijing, which is the capital,&nbsp;&nbsp;
with very wide roads, but not a lot of cars.
I remember lanes and lanes and lanes,
lines and lines and lines of bicycles.
Yeah that's old China.
Old China.
That’s not what you see now.
And I did talk about visiting the Great&nbsp;
Wall as well, which is behind you now.
And I actually slept on the Great Wall.
Did you know that?
Oh, I think I do remember... that's cool.
There are some specialized tours,
you can hike the Great Wall,
like into the countryside around it,
but there are also very big tourist sites&nbsp;
with thousands of people crowded there,
so you can do both.
You can do a very polished tour, or you can&nbsp;
do something more adventuresome like you did.
Okay so tell us Diane,
how did you get interested in Chinese?
How did you learn Chinese?
Have you lived in China?
Yes, yeah... so I'm.. I was, we've said,
I was from Ohio.
At the time... I graduated&nbsp;
from high school in 1991,
and at that time, I would say,
it was still very unusual for people&nbsp;
from Ohio to travel to Asia at all.
But I had been in Thailand when I was 16,
and so, and I had friends whose families&nbsp;
had emigrated to the US from Asia,
from India and from Taiwan,
and so I had always been kind of&nbsp;
interested in Asian countries,
and eventually became&nbsp;
interested in China and Chinese.
I had a good friend from Japan for a while,
so a lot of East and Southeast&nbsp;
Asia formed part of my childhood,
even though it wasn't real close contact,
I was interested and curious and open to learning.
So I loved being in Thailand.
I was there for a summer,
and after I came back,
I thought well, how do I keep up some kind&nbsp;
of connection to that part of the world?
And eventually, in college&nbsp;
I studied Mandarin Chinese,
and then eventually moved there,
travelled for a couple of&nbsp;
summers in the late 1990s.
Interesting like you said 1991,
Beijing's airport in 1991 (and again in 1997),
was small very… like what I would&nbsp;
expect maybe from the 1950s in the US,
like a, not a very polished&nbsp;
or modern looking place.
When I went back in 1999, two years later,
the difference was unbelievable.
It was the most modern airport…
...and beautiful and tall and glass and fancy.
The changes are fast .
And so from (1991) 1997 to 1999 it changed.
Imagine how much more has changed since.
So I lived in China from 2001,&nbsp;
January 2001 through March 2004,
and I lived in the Southwest, so…
Kunming is the name of the city…
It has three to four million people, but many&nbsp;
people outside China have never heard of it.
And so Kunming is the place you&nbsp;
could look up if you're curious, so,
a really interesting part of China,
a lot of different ethnicities,
and a lot of different climates&nbsp;
and terrains in that part of China.
So it was ‘a mile high city’&nbsp;
is what we would call it…
...very high altitude there.
So it had a milder summer and a milder winter too,
because it was so far south.
So I think it was a fascinating place to be,
and I was there about... for&nbsp;
three and a half to four years.
Really? Yeah, yeah.
So along with learning&nbsp;
Mandarin there, I worked there,
I also learned some of the local dialect,
so I can say a little bit, but&nbsp;
I can understand a lot more,
which is very handy,
because most of the time people&nbsp;
spoke in the local dialect,
unless it was a formal setting.
Like we said, Mandarin is an official language,
but it's not necessarily what&nbsp;
people speak with their friends.
So I heard both all the time.
Actually many different dialects, and&nbsp;
local languages of different ethnic groups,
so China is not just one ethnicity,
and not just one language speaking,
there's a lot of variety.
So how did you find living in&nbsp;
China compared to living in the US?
It must have been very different.
Yeah I really enjoyed many&nbsp;
things about being in China,
and I lived in a big city,
and I lived in a small town,
and my first couple of years I learned a lot,
both of language and some of the cultural&nbsp;
expectations that were around me that...
you can't really study&nbsp;
those things well in a book,
you need to learn them through friendships,
and learning,, sometimes by the hard way.
I have a story about doing that.
Would you like me to tell you about it?
Yeah that could be quite fun.
Okay, so I was in China when I was in my late 20s,
and the expectations, I kind of,
kind of knew there was an expectation in China&nbsp;
at the time that people would get married,
and they expected it to be&nbsp;
a heterosexual marriage,
and they expected you would&nbsp;
have a child by about age 30,
and if you did not, they would&nbsp;
really be worried about you,
and maybe your parents or your&nbsp;
friends would try to set you up,
they’d try to set you up with someone you…
...they thought would be a&nbsp;
suitable partner for you.
And so it's kindly meant,
but sometimes there is this assumption going on,
so I kind of knew that.
But then one day, I had friends who…
...we all went out to dinner together.
They were either married,
or one was an older man in his 70s,
he wasn't interested,
and they were asking me, you know, well,
what kind of a man would you be interested in?
And I thought, well, you know,
“Okay, idle conversation, right?
Nobody's thinking anything deep about it,
they're just asking what kind of&nbsp;
person might you find interesting?”
And so I said a few things about, maybe you know…
And so I said a few things about, maybe you know…
...and then someone said, what…
...would you be willing to meet a Chinese man?
Or, they didn't say me,
they said, like, you know,&nbsp;
would you marry a Chinese man?
And so I'm thinking again,&nbsp;
“They're thinking hypothetically!”
And it's like, “Oh sure…”
...and the word that I used in Chinese,&nbsp;&nbsp;
was a word that I learned about later,&nbsp;
that had a different connotation.
I thought what I was saying was, “Yeah…
...I'd be open to considering&nbsp;
someone who's not white, like myself.
I would be open to considering&nbsp;
marrying a Chinese man, yeah.”
And, but the way that I learned&nbsp;
later, because of the story,
what I said was, “Yes, please&nbsp;
help make that possible for me”,
pretty much was was the meaning of what I said,
so if you know any Mandarin,
I said the word “愿意 yuànyì”, which&nbsp;
is much stronger than I realized.
I thought, I was thinking with my&nbsp;
English mind and translating it,
and it doesn't work so well doing that,
you have to learn the local way&nbsp;
of using those words in context,
and so what happened was, I&nbsp;
didn't realize that these friends,
they maybe even talked to each other,
“How can we help her meet someone?”
And that you know they, they cared about me,
and they liked me, and we were friends.
So the elderly man from that dinner&nbsp;
called me the next week maybe,
and he's talking about, you know,
he was a Chinese medical doctor,
he had this exposition he was going to go to,
was I interested in going,
and I had a lot of things going on,
and I felt a little uncomfortable,
and I didn't really want to go,
so I turned him down.
Well he called again…
...and there was some other event&nbsp;
like a couple of days later,
and I thought, why does he keep doing this?
And he fine.. he said... the line he said&nbsp;
(and I'm translating what he said like),
“But there are friends there&nbsp;
of your qualifications!”
And I realized, “He does not just&nbsp;
mean like, “Let's make some friends...
...they're trying to set me up with someone!”
And so I was kind of embarrassed,
and I really wasn't ready for that.
I mean, I was all thinking hypothetically maybe,
and someday it'll happen,
and they were thinking, “Let's help her out…
...let's get this going…
...at least he was…
and so I thought, you know, I wanted&nbsp;
to keep our relationship good,
and I had learned at least enough to not be&nbsp;
really culturally inappropriate in my reply.
I wanted to be kind to him, and soften my answer,
and so I thought on the spot, like…
...how can I turn this down gently?
So what I said was…
(I threw my parents under the bus….
...this is an American phrase&nbsp;&nbsp;
for blaming someone else for your own problem)
...so what I said was, “Oh, I'm afraid&nbsp;
my parents won't feel comfortable
if I'm seeing someone that they have not met.”
And my, you know, elderly friend&nbsp;
who was caught talking to me,
“Oh I’m, I'm so sorry,
I'm so sorry, I, I didn't have, you know,
I didn't mean to suggest any awkward meaning”
(kind of translating what he said again)
And so you know he didn't continue to call,
or try to invite me to events or anything,
but I realized... I thought&nbsp;
back about that dinner,
and like, but, but I just said I was, hmm,&nbsp;
maybe I need to check what that word means…
...and sure enough, you know…
oh boy, so I, you start to learn over time.
But I had a lot of really&nbsp;
wonderful experiences in China,
and it shapes who I am now.
One of the things I got to&nbsp;
do while I lived there was…
I mentioned I lived in a&nbsp;
big city, in a smaller town.
I also knew people in villages and farmers,
and there were so many things&nbsp;
that I liked about the very&nbsp;&nbsp;
‘connected to nature’ way that they had to live,
and I now have a big garden,
and a flock of chickens,
partly, maybe even majorly,
because of meeting those friends and seeing their&nbsp;
care-taking of their animals and their crops,
so I learned a lot!
It's um,
it's interesting, as like you say, as well to,
when you're travelling,
to know a little bit about&nbsp;
the difference in cultures
between your own country and another country as&nbsp;
well because sometimes you can make some mistakes.
Yeah, yeah.
I have a story in…
...you said you were in Thailand.
I actually worked in Thailand.
I was teaching English in a&nbsp;
primary school for a few months
while I was travelling,
and the Thai people have a lot of customs,
and you know,
when you're trying to make yourself understood&nbsp;
in your own language to other people,
you try and use signs,
and you do things,
and I was trying to explain&nbsp;
that something was very tall,
and so I stood on a pile of books!
Oh!
And books, I mean, books are sacred…
...but books in Thailand are sacred,
and the whole class… sorry?
...and the bottom of your class… bad...
The bottom of your feet in Thailand.
If you show the bottom of your feet,
it's like the middle finger (!) from the US…
...at least in the US, it's a strong negative.
Rude, right.
So stepping on something is a big deal, yeah!
So the poor little primary school&nbsp;
children looked at me in horror,
“What is the teacher doing standing on the books?”
How did you find out... just the&nbsp;
look on the faces of the children?
Yeah by the look on their faces.
I realized that I was doing&nbsp;
something they didn't appreciate,
so I just got down from the book.
and it looks very pathetic. Yeah, yeah.
So you mentioned seeing lots&nbsp;
and lots of bicycles in China.
I think a lot of people outside&nbsp;
China still have that impression,
you know, riding bicycles,
You do see a few,
and people still do that,
but I would say it's rare now,
and the problems of traffic&nbsp;
with cars has increased a lot,
to the point that the Chinese have implemented&nbsp;
some major public transportation changes.
So in 1991,
and again when I lived there in the early 2000s,
there were a lot of public buses&nbsp;
that went everywhere in the cities,
and I think that's still the case,
but there are also, in the major cities,
there are public transportation by train like,
there's high-speed rail between cities too,
and then there's these kinds of maybe a subway&nbsp;
system, maybe, above ground train system&nbsp;&nbsp;
that connects the whole city much&nbsp;
faster and more quickly than a bus,
so it's off the main streets all together.
And I when I lived in China,
that was only being spoken about for Kunming,
and it was only started in&nbsp;
Shanghai and Beijing already.
But now each large major city in China&nbsp;
has a system of that type, I believe,
and if it's not yet built, it's underway.
So yeah, so there's a lot of new changes&nbsp;
I think, redesign of cities in China,
and management of transportation&nbsp;
and where people go and when,
and design of neighbourhoods,
and how tall the buildings are…
...amazing changes in 20 or 30 years!
And I feel that China is now on…
...in some ways it has the whole range,
from rural countryside,
where maybe people have a cell phone,
but may not have as much technological&nbsp;
integration in their life,
but so that's still present,
but all the way up to very very&nbsp;
high-tech well-functioning cities,
more than in the United States.
So I think of China as having the whole range,
but being more advanced in a&nbsp;
lot of ways, in daily life,
than the US, so.
What about travelling there?
I remember even though of course I was&nbsp;
travelling with English-speaking friends,
we didn't find a lot of English&nbsp;
speakers in China at the time,
and we had the Lonely Planet guide, you know,
we’d show the Chinese translation&nbsp;
of places we wanted to go etc.,
but we couldn't really communicate with anyone,
which was quite frustrating for me.
Yeah for sure.
I feel like in China, it&nbsp;
depends very much where you are,
and the age of the person you're speaking with.
So everyone in China in school&nbsp;
now takes English classes,
but as maybe some of your viewers know,
and as I experienced in my own language learning,
it depends how much your proficiency&nbsp;
has developed from those classes.
Sometimes classes focus more on on grammar study,
and analysing the language,
and that is hard for some people to turn into&nbsp;
the ability to communicate during a conversation.
So if you had that experience where&nbsp;
listening and understanding and speaking was&nbsp;&nbsp;
something you developed, great,&nbsp;
you'll be able to get by.
A lot of Chinese language learners&nbsp;
have that same limitation.
They may have studied English for several years,
They may have studied English for several years,
but might be better at reading English&nbsp;&nbsp;
than understanding someone&nbsp;
talking and responding in speech.
So it depends.
But there are many people who speak very&nbsp;
advanced English all across China now,
but my thinking is like this, like…
...even if there are a lot of&nbsp;
people who speak your language&nbsp;&nbsp;
in a location that you're travelling,
it's much better to learn as much as&nbsp;
you can of the language used locally,
partly out of respect,
partly to show that you are&nbsp;
caring about those people,
and you want to understand them.
You don't expect them to come to&nbsp;
you and understand you all the time.
For Americans I think that is really good advice.
We're not for being that way.
And so being more open and learning&nbsp;
from others is important, I think,
for someone who's white, and someone&nbsp;
who's an American especially,
to show that courtesy.
But it's also practical, because&nbsp;
there are words you need in that&nbsp;&nbsp;
local setting that you're never going&nbsp;
to learn in a class outside that region,
and so there are many things to get by&nbsp;
that you will learn because you're there,
and people use that vocabulary&nbsp;
and those words right then.
Food is maybe an obvious reason,
but also like how do people&nbsp;
really talk with their friends.
It's fun to get to know how people really speak
and be a participant.
I feel like without that language&nbsp;
learning it's like if there's…
...you imagine an ocean with a little drop of oil.
Like sure you know that that ocean is down there,
and maybe you can see what it's like a little,
but you're not participating in it&nbsp;
unless you really know the language well.
So that's my aim with Chinese.
Okay so Diane, it's been lovely chatting to you.
Thanks ever so much for your time.
Delighted to come and chat with you!
And so don't forget, if you want to&nbsp;
try learning a little bit of Chinese,
Diane has a YouTube channel which might help.
And so take care Diane,
and I'll speak to you some time soon.
Sounds great!
Assistant: