I am lucky in that people are very supportive of all my business ideas, all those business ideas into which I put so much of effort for them to come to nothing. But am I down-trodden? No I am not. I keep going and trying new things. My latest business concerns Chinese language learning for Africans.
This was inspired by my CNY trip to Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda during which I was asked constantly whether I could provide Chinese language training. So I thought, maybe there’s legs in this idea.
I am making a sample of my first (free) course, Introduction to Chinese. to this end I needed two native Chinese speakers for the audio. Lucy is an old colleague, with her own tutoring business and Tim is a new friend. Both were happy to come along to Shanghai International Studies University recording studio to do what I do a lot of…. ‘reading aloud’ into a microphone.
Audio recorded and the boring business of editing done, I turned my attention to video. For this, I have been lucky to get help from Le Pari from the Republic of Congo via Hangzhou. He is a native French speaker but also a fluent speaker of English and Chinese.
I set up a film studio in my lane house and made my own autocue system from mini whiteboards, and we shot the first 4 videos.
Technial specs; a MacBook Pro, an iPhone 6 (for the audio), an iPhone X (for the video), an iRig, and a 25rmb mini-microphone. As for software, I use Audacity for audio editing and FinalCut Pro for video editing.
The final piece of the jigsaw will arrive on Wednesday – the animated logo, from Nanjing. Then I can put it all together and have enough to show investors what I’m proposing.