Daily life of Chinese family is TV hit in Africa

If you meet someone from Africa and want to break the ice, try talking about Doudou and Her Mothers-in-law.

President Xi Jinping tried this during his official visit to Tanzania last month. "Doudou and Her Mothers-in-law helps the Tanzanian audience learn about the joys and sorrows of an ordinary Chinese family," Xi said in a lecture. The audience burst into thunderous applause before he finished.

The Chinese TV series now has become a hot topic throughout Africa. After its success in Tanzania in 2011, it was broadcast in other countries like Kenya, Uganda and so on where it proved successful as well. While exporting Chinese TV series has seen few breakthroughs in recent years, the success of Doudou and Her Mothers-in-law serves as a fine example.

Dramatic success

First screened in 2010, Doudou and Her Mothers-in-law is a 36-episode TV drama about the domestic life of two ordinary Chinese families. As the name implies, it mainly describes the relationship between daughters-in-law and their mothers-in-law. It is set in contemporary China and reveals how young people born in the 1980s understand marriage.

Before its success in Africa, the TV drama had won several domestic awards for its vivid representation of daily family life full of trivial problems and pleasures. It was chosen by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) as an excellent drama to export mainly because it reflects contemporary life in China and Chinese culture.

Since November 2011, when it began to air in Tanzania, Doudou has aroused a passion for "Chinese daughters-in-law" in the country. Mao Doudou played by Hai Qing, and Yu Wei played by Huang Haibo are the two leading roles in the drama. They now represent young Chinese people to the Tanzanian audience. 

Joe Lugalabamu, vice director of Tanzania State TV, reportedly said that through the drama, many Tanzanians realize what life is like for Chinese people today. Lugalabamu said the audience kept calling and sending messages to him to say how much they liked the show. Some complained that the drama was broadcast during the evening rush hour, which usually made office workers miss it.

Following the high ratings of its broadcast and rebroadcast in Tanzania, Kenya also introduced Doudou last November. As a matter of fact, the dubbing actors for the three leading roles are from Kenya. They told media that they found the life and relationships of Chinese families resonant well with them.

Mark Kapchanga, who lives in Nairobi, told the Global Times that the drama's popularity "is growing in Kenya everyday, especially among the middle-class who are about to get married or have just gotten married." He wrote in an e-mail, "It is informative, depicting the challenges inherent in Chinese marriages."

Meanwhile, other African countries such as Uganda and Comoros are also broadcasting the drama, all with positive feedback.

Common language

Doudou establishes a milestone in the overseas market for Chinese TV dramas by making a good beginning in Africa because Southeast Asia and Chinese communities across the globe are usually the main consumer of Chinese TV series.

People cannot help asking why Doudou could be a success in Africa, which is so different from China culturally. "Even though China and Tanzania have gaps in culture, they have much in common in the relationships and confrontations between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. So it can strike a chord among the Tanzania audience," Lugalabamu once told the media.

Kapchanga told the Global Times that the show gives a true reflection in an evermore capitalistic Kenya that wealth is not everything in life. "More importantly, it depicts the real and universal challenges marriages undergo here in Kenya and Africa in general, where relatives (not just the nuclear family members) tend to act as intruders."

In traditional African families, men are still the core of the family with wives clinging to them. But today, more and more women in Africa have begun to pursue independence and freedom, and they want to play a more important role in the family. This generational difference tends to initiate confrontations between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law.

"The situation is more complicated for Muslim families where a man can have several wives," said Liu Dong, the cultural secretary at the Chinese embassy in Tanzania who helped introduce the drama.

Besides the sympathy about family life, many locals also find practical significance in the drama. As reported, some Kenyan audiences find it helpful when communicating with Chinese. According to Kapchanga, people in Kenya generally watch Chinese dramas because they want to be informed, get to know more about China and the culture of its people. 

'Enter' the market

Liu said Doudou succeeds in Africa mainly because the theme is right. "Family ethics are the eternal subject that all can understand easily and find resonant." But it wouldn't be so popular if the drama had used subtitles instead of Swahili dubbing.

It is the first Chinese TV drama to be dubbed into Swahili, which shows great respect to the local audience, Liu said. Swahili is the official language in Tanzania and about one tenth of all the population in Africa use Swahili, which accounts for about 100 million people. The wide coverage of Swahili motivated Liu to suggest dubbing the drama.

According to Liu, 10 years ago, Journey to the West (1986) was introduced but the drama was a failure as it only had English subtitles.

"TV sets just got widespread in Tanzania and the screens in most families are rather small. The Chinese lines would be very long translated into Swahili subtitles," Liu said.

Besides, even if English is used in Tanzania, the local audience has more passion for programs in Swahili. So Liu insisted on dubbing Doudou in Swahili while communicating with relevant parties from both countries.

Drawing experience from Doudou, China Radio International, who dubbed Doudou, established a "dubbing center for TV dramas" to dub Chinese TV dramas into rare foreign languages. Next, it will dub in Swahili Jin Tailang's Happy Life, another TV drama about a Chinese family.

The statistics from SARFT show that the output of TV dramas reached about 15,000 episodes every year, making China arguably a big producer, but their success abroad is rare.

Yu Qianxin with TVB in Hong Kong said it's more urgent for Chinese programs to "enter" the market. "More and more (programs) are going global, which is actually very easy. 'Entering' the market means allowing foreign audiences to accept and like (you)," he once told Dongfang Daily.

Liu agreed: while the success of Doudou lets the industry see more hope and arouses a wave of dubbing TV dramas, he suggested, to really get in, the project should proceed based on local customs and acceptability. "We should listen to their opinion and show sufficient respect to the local audience," he said.