Zhima Jie

Did You Know?

• From 2014 through 2019, characters from Sesame Street and Zhima Jie guest-starred on Bai Nian La, broadcast every Chinese New Year.
• The 1998 production was funded in part by the Merck Foundation.

History

Before the Chinese version of Sesame Street was created, the show's twelfth season had already been translated into Mandarin in 1981 and broadcast on CCTV. A group of eighteen specialists in early childhood education from China, led by Xie Xide, helped guide the early planning. In 1996, producers from Shanghai Television visited New York to collaborate with Sesame Workshop. Kevin Clash was in charge of finding and training the puppeteers. Unlike many other international versions, Zhima Jie kept Big Bird as a character, renamed Da Niao, because he was already well-known in China. Caroll Spinney, the original performer, had the final decision on who would portray the bird. General Electric provided funding from 1998 to 2001. A revival was attempted for 2004 but did not succeed. The show came back in December 2010 under the title Zhima Jie: Da Niao Kan Shijie, airing on CCTV Children's Channel, Guangdong Jiajia, and Toonmax. Like the 1998 version, the 2010 edition filmed new material in Shanghai. The program taught basic literacy, math, and art appreciation, with partial support from the Merck Foundation.

Characters

Xiao Mei Zi (Little Plum) is a red Elmo-like monster who is 3 years old and enjoys reading books and listening to stories; she was the equivalent of Elmo in the series. Elmo himself was introduced for the 2010 series. Hu Hu Zhu (Puffing Pig) is a furry blue pig similar to Cookie Monster who loves arts, especially opera. Da Niao, the Chinese version of Big Bird, lives at a park in a nest and enjoys eating bird seed cookies; he was played by Zhu Ming and dubbed by LaLa Ma. Sources often say he is an identical cousin of the American Big Bird, but this relationship is not mentioned in the 2010 version. Other characters include Tiger Lily, a tiger cub; and Old Lady Wang, owner of a noodle shop and practitioner of tai chi.

Messaging

Like other international co-productions, Zhima Jie covered four broad curriculum categories: Child's World, Family and Society, Symbolic Representation, and Cognitive Organization. It added a fifth category of Aesthetics and Arts, which included Chinese calligraphy, experiencing nature, dance, and music composition. The 1998 production had compassion as a primary theme for the first season and included segments showing cultural diversity within China and reminding children that failure is okay. It also had thirty-second bumpers teaching specific scientific concepts, such as relative buoyancy. The 2010 production focused on science education and emergency preparedness, with episodes starting with a character posing a question, followed by explanation using examples or videos, and ending with children performing related activities.