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As she left the board meeting, Lili Wang furrowed her brow and cursed under her breath at Zhang Ping. He had advanced in the company at a meteoric pace since starting as an intern in her department, commandeering project after project to carve out a niche of his own and secure praise and promotion outside the normal career channels. And now even as he was ingratiating himself with her supervisors he was skipping meetings or arriving late, blowing off her assignments or altering them according to his own whim. Her patience had run its course.
And so with a ruthlessness that surprised even herself, Lili ordered her secretary to arrange for a meeting that afternoon. It would be their last. His last attempt to circumvent her with the budget office had made him a marked man. She would not tolerate his presence any longer.

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Outside her plane window, the Inner Mongolian grasslands stretched unending to the horizon. The stewardess rolled by with a drink, but Xiao Wei waved it off and continued to gaze at the northern Chinese landscape. Her company had sent her to investigate a drought-resistant agricultural experiment in one of the more parched areas of the country, mere miles from the Gobi desert. Now she was on her way back to Beijing.
The full trip had taken only a week, but Wei hadn't expected the travel to be so physically demanding. Nor had she imagined how she would miss Xiao Wang, her new puppy and destroyer of worlds. It had only been two months since she carried him out of the pound, but he had already become a big part of her life. And as much as she complained about his chaotic energy, she couldn't wait to get home and take him for a walk.

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You can stop holding it in now, because in this lesson we're going to teach you the magical phrase "where is the washroom". Combine this with general agitation and hopping from foot to foot for best effect. And when when it works you can get started learning directions the hard way.
For those of you who are new to Popup Chinese, we encourage you to approach our lessons as bite-sized units you can learn at the pace of one a day: listen to our podcast first and see if you can understand our simple dialogue. When you're done, fire up The Fix to test your memory and speaking skills. Pay special attention to the tones. And in a day or two, review the materials with our customizable PDFs and transcripts. And let us know if you have any questions - we're always here to answer them.

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Apple lifted the cake from its white cardboard box and placed it carefully in her fridge with a smile. It had taken her half the afternoon to get it - crossing Beijing twice in peak traffic, the last time cradling the box gingerly upright as she pushed her way through the churning crowds. But the rich chocolate smell filling the room made it all worthwhile. When her boyfriend came home that evening they would celebrate in style.
Closing the fridge door, Apple decided to freshen up and take a nap before her boyfriend arrived home. She had barely taken two steps towards the washroom when a familiar chime caught her ears, causing her heart to skip a beat - could he have taken the afternoon off to come home early? Her heart in her throat, Apple bounced over to the door and opened it to find 9527 kicking the snow off her boots....

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Trust us on this: nothing will kill that prospective career in Chinese finance faster than an inability to count to ten. Gesticulation just isn't what it used to be, and given that mandarin is a language where the numbers for four and ten are almost as easy to mix up as the Beijing Olympic Mascots, we think you've got a recipe for disaster on your hands if you don't have a solid grasp of the fundamentals.
So in this lesson we cover the absolute basics of numbers: how to pronounce them, what tones to use and how to string single digits together to make bigger numbers that sound more impressive. This isn't groundbreaking stuff unless you don't already know it, in which case it is groundbreaking stuff. So listen in and let's put this counting thing behind us.

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Stop rolling those eyeballs! We know you already speak Chinese. And we know that those of you living here have probably fielded this question a few hundred times by now. You may even have started answering back in classical couplets, because nothing establishes street smarts like tossing out a Tang Dynasty smack-down on your way for Korean food in Wangjing.
But while Beijing's Korean district may be a great place for soju and kimchi, the Wangjing district is an urban lobster trap: easy to enter, impossible to leave. Which poses a double challenge for non-Korean visitors: not only do you have to ask for directions frequently, but you've also got to figure out if you're speaking to someone who even speaks Chinese.
In this podcast, we cover the basics of figuring this last bit out. The material is pretty basic, but there are some complexities here which elevate it above true beginner stuff. And even if you're an old hand in China we think you'll find something of value: our secrets on how to use this sort of innocuous chit-chat to break the ice with the man or woman of your dreams.

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Barely a minute into your performance evaluation your boss loses his composure completely. Between his hoarse sobs you hear again how much the company is honored to have you - a genuine hero - in its ranks. "The board is so pleased that it's decided to double your salary, and also your vacation time." A thick brown envelope stuffed with cash suddenly materializes on the desk before you. "We also took up a collection for your orphanage work...."
We can always dream about getting this kind of review. In the meantime, check out this Intermediate listening test find out what happens when things go the other way. Listen to our podcast once and then click over to the quiz section to see how much you understand. Our popup-annotated copy of the entire transcript is available on the text page if you have any questions. Good luck!

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Things that melt in this heat include chocolate, small children and your will-to-live. That's why you've collapsed on a sofa at one of the small bars that crowd the waterways behind Jingshan Park. You've just decided you like this neighborhood when your waitress appears wearing an outfit made entirely of plastic. "What would you like," she asks with a genuine smile.
"Whatever you're selling," is the correct answer, but you don't say that because you're not at the Elementary level yet and haven't mastered the art of casual chit-chat. Thankfully, as a faithful listener of our Absolute Beginner lessons here at Popup Chinese, you know enough Chinese to rummage through your vocabulary in search for the measure word for bottle and the noun for beer. These you string together: one + bottle + beer. Instant Chinese sentence.
You actually want about ten bottles of beer. But why rush it. Just keep ordering them one by one. And keep smiling too. You'll be at the Elementary level soon enough, which is when these conversations get a lot more complex and interesting too. So get studying and don't look back.

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"When we were kids we didn't have any of these fancy electronic games, or the Internet," Echo grumbles, setting off aftershocks of agreement from Apple and Baifan. "And then there are the body piercings and PSPs." Handheld Japanese gaming devices, once a sign of social progress, now portend spiraling moral decay. Gyres are widening, and things are falling apart. Except in the market for high-end cellphones.
While the 70s generation bashes the 80s generation for being impractical dreamers in print magazines nationwide, our studio cohort carries on the proud tradition of inter-generational strife by slagging their own followers. To hear them tell it, the future is shiftless, pampered, and consists almost-entirely of the unemployed offspring of wealthy Party cadres. We're not sure how accurate this is as a description of modern youth, but it's worth a listen if only for all the Chinese you'll ever need to know the next time you're throwing your boot at one of those upstart ingrates and yelling at them to get off your lawn.

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We know you're serious about a career in China, so let us share a professional secret: fight to pay for the bill. Like going over the top in World War I, the struggle to pay for lunch is a doomed but valorous effort that commands respect and gives you face. So pull out your wallet, shake off the objections of your colleagues and try to flag down that waiter.
This being easier said than done, in this podcast we give you a leg-up by teaching the two magic words you'll need to dazzle the waiter into taking money from your outstretched palm. Combined with the physical act of thrusting funds into his or her hands, this is a surprisingly effective method of resolving the who-gets-to-pay dispute. But sometimes your business partner might be physically restraining you, so it's still critical to get the verbal part down.

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