French, German and USA study abroad students become Chinese viral video sensations!

by Ruth Sylte on Tuesday, 4 January 2011 · 1 comment

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for the latest information from GoAbroad!

Imagine five foreign students - two from the USA, two from Germany and one from France -- becoming viral video sensations in their host country. It has happened in China! Awesome!

Feichang Fresh is made up of five foreign students studying in China. Two students from the United States of America, Patrick Dittmer from the University of Iowa and Cameron Junion from Iowa State University, went to China with The Education Abroad Network (TEAN) to study at Beijing's University of International Business and Economics (UIBE). The three other students -- Arseny Knaifel and Jaques Wecke from Germany and Milo Sivert from France -- are exchange students at UIBE.

They've released their videos on two video channels: YouKu in China and YouTube outside of China. The first song they released -- which we'll feature on this Saturday's JourneySongs -- is about how much they love Beijing. The video we're featuring here today, is about meeting a girl. The original Chinese version has approximately 15o,000 views as of today.

Junion shared this about their video project:

We write and make these videos for mainly Chinese people and other foreigners who are interested in China. The lyrics are written with them in mind, not our English audience. As far as a literal translation goes, it is quite hard to produce, some lyrics just don't translate well. We tried our hardest in the first video and you can find the translated lyrics on the Youtube video.

We decided not to translate our second video as a way to preserve it. It is just easier to tell the lyrics as a story. It is about a guy who sees a girl in a coffee shop and works up the courage to talk to her despite being nervous. All he can think about is her beauty. She gives him her phone number and leaves. As the days pass, all he can think about is her, but can't find the courage to call her. He goes to the same coffee shop and runs into her and a relationship begins.

The Feichang Fresh project started as way to promote cultural exchange in the form of showing foreign exchange students that they can be creative in China. We started by writing Chinese songs and making music videos to go along with, but we are not limiting ourselves to just this. We are open to all different types of creative activity by foreign exchange students as long as they include and preserve the Chinese culture and lifestyle. We would love to do anything we can to help promote any others' projects as long as we agree with them. We find that writing songs and making videos is a great way to have others be interested in the Chinese language and culture. It is also a great way to show the Chinese population that we are interested in their culture and language.

==========
The Education Abroad Network program at UBIE provides a Beijing-based orientation program, off-campus pre-arranged housing with other TEAN students and a local roommate, optional internship, included excursion to Inner Mongolia, as well as in-country support staff available 24/7. At UIBE, the students can select from a range of courses in English and take 20 hours of Chinese language classes each week.

TEAN has study abroad programs in Australia, Cambodia, China, Laos, New Zealand, Thailand and Vietnam as well as multiple country programs.