iQIYI’s “The Bad Kids” Gets Subtitles in Eight Languages

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Since completing its 12 episode run back in June, iQIYI’s breakout hit, The Bad Kids has dominated media columns from domestic publications like Global Times all the way through to international outlets such as The Guardian. It’s been lauded as a milestone in Chinese television, representing a new era of high production values, taut storytelling, and themes that are largely ignored by China’s social discourse.

For anyone unfamiliar with the show, it tells the story of three kids who unwittingly film a man killing his parents-in-law on camera, and who subsequently extort that man for reasons we won’t get into here. Suffice it to say that the extortion plunges our three protagonists deeper into a world of deceit and moral contortion.

What would you put…

Unfortunately, when the show first aired it didn’t have any English subtitles. What’s more, Guangdong Provinces’ Zhanjiang city, where the story takes place (and which saw a 261% increase in tourism after the show aired), has a dialect so different from Beijing that some expats I spoke to who have studied Mandarin and lived in the capital for more than 20 years struggled to make sense of everything being said. And so it came as something of a disappointment to hear such good things about this new cultural phenomenon, and quite literally be unable to find out what all the hype was about.

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…in a letter to a killer?

That is, until now! For the last two months, I would intermittently browse the web, hoping that someone uploaded The Bad Kids with English subtitles, and last week I finally turned up two sites that had the show in my language. Huzzah! As it happens, however, in the course of writing this article I came to realize that iQIYI itself has subtitled the show into eight different languages including English, Spanish, Arabic, Vietnamese, and Korean. If you’re anything like me and my expat friends, however, then you too did not know that the show is available in English. So, you’re welcome. And if you did already know, well, you’re a better investigative journalist than me, and my hat goes off to you.

Either way, at least we all get to revel in the suspense and psychologically piercing noir that is The Bad Kids. Now, who wants to go for a hike?

To watch all 12 subtitled episodes of The Bad Kids on iQIYI for free, scan the QR code below.

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Images: iQIYI

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