Popup Chinese

Why is it that despite the enormous variety in our personal experiences, we all end up having exactly the same conversation with cab drivers? You know the drill. Where are you from? Are you used to eating Chinese food? Can you use chopsticks? Like Chinese water torture, the deadening repetition invites psychological defense mechanisms just to cope, like inventing new personal histories for each encounter.
But then, just when you're about to lose faith in humanity, you run into a cabbie who is interesting, quick on his feet, and brutally honest. Our Elementary lesson for today is about exactly this situation. Like a bracing dash of cold water, it refreshes and re-motivates. Give it a listen and see if it rings true for you too.

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Oh, have you heard the legend of the oPhone? It may seem naïve to raise our hopes again after the crushing disappointments that were the iFeng and Hi-Phone. Yet rumors from the interior are reaching us of a new mobile device that makes its Apple cousin seem almost diminutive by comparison. The words "hushed rapture" might best describe the attitude of our correspondents towards this device, which has a thirty hour battery, features too numerous to list and is rumored to verge on sentience itself.

Join us in this podcast as we share our thoughts on China's much vaunted shanzhai competition to the iPhone. Our vocabulary and dialogue in this lesson are both on the easy side for an Intermediate lesson, but we make up for that with a grammar point that is fiendishly difficult. It centers on the slight difference in meaning between two eerily similar sentences: 你看的是什么书 and 你看的书是什么. Both are grammatically correct, but they actually mean different things.

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Each year, the Nobel Prize committee surveys the world and selects the best-of-the-best for prestige and public honor. And while there's always been controversy over some of the selections, there has never been quite as much controversy as this year, when the awards were surprised by "an unprecedentedly strong show by those Chinese upstarts," as one anonymous critic so ingloriously put it. From our vantage point in Beijing, we feel the criticisms are totally unfounded. Jealous bastards.

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Today we're pleased to support all you parents out there with a lesson that will teach you how to crush the hopes and dreams of your offspring with two simple words. Whether your child's interests lie in backyard construction, the sporting life, or more prosaic things like a chance to leave their room and enjoy their sixth birthday, this is your chance to put that foot down and establish some parental authority. Enjoy!

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This lesson takes place in a doctor's office, and while we hope you won't have too many encounters with the Chinese medical system, it is one of the many places the words and phrases we teach in this podcast will come in useful. So if you're new to learning the Chinese language, put on your earphones and get listening. By the time this podcast is over, you'll know enough mandarin to ask how others are doing and be expert at pointing and complaining whenever someone else returns the courtesy.

Navigate the reincarnated Popup Chinese archives, including the original customized word-to-word transcripts for this and every other lesson as PDF files:

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There was a deep silence after the sirens stopped blaring, and then chaos broke out. As the crew scuttled to the cargo bay, each couldn't help but wonder what had brought them to this point. Stranded light years from human settlement with nothing but their wits and a thin hull separating them from the vacuum outside. And then a comforting thought. At least they had the captain: he would know what to do.

Think your Chinese is good? Join us in this Intermediate listening test as we push it to the limits. Listen to our short dialogue and then click through to our quiz page to test your comprehension. Who are the people in this scene? What exact problem do they have and how are they planning to solve it? If you can catch the answers by listening congratulations! If you have trouble, click through to our text section to consult our manually annotated transcript. Good luck!

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Notice that shark over there? That's right, our Elementary Chinese lesson for today is all about man-eating beasts of the deep. It is unapologetically inspired by Jaws III, and particularly that scene where the Great Whites start ramming the underwater observation tunnels at Seaworld to the shock and horror of the soon-to-be-eaten tourist hordes.
Despite the fact that its dialogue was written by an eight year old, our podcast for today offers more than weeks of unrelenting nightmares for the discriminating Chinese student. In it we showcase all the mandarin you'll ever need to bluff your way through the Orient as a marine biologist. In addition, we also teach a valuable Machiavellian lesson on how to bend others to your will and coerce colleagues into risking life and limb through the steady application of negative rhetorical questions. Enjoy!

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Johns Hopkins University recently published a study that followed ten thousand subjects over a ten year period, and closely monitored the eating habits of its participants. Among the results? The experiment showed conclusively that those who dispose of leftover Chinese take-out within the week have longer lifespans, whiter teeth and fuller hair. The remainder suffered from chronic headaches, extreme sensitivity to sunlight and a predisposition to Kenny G's "Going Home".
Even in the absence of rigorous scientific proof, at Popup Chinese we believe the anecdotal evidence is compelling enough. When you have a hankering for kung-pao chicken at four in the morning avoid the leftovers and order in fresh. Your body will thank you.

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Attention new recruits. After 84% of last year's class were caught crossing Customs and an additional 10% were found out while checking into their hotels, the Agency Directorate has ordered the commencement of emergency classes on basic spy decorum. Join us in this Elementary Chinese podcast as we cover the four elementary rules you need to know for how not to get caught.

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Our general standard for measuring podcast excellence is whether listening causes Gail to spit milk out her nose. By that standard we have a winner today. Which is good, because there's no easy way to describe what's in store for you otherwise. This lesson is a sequel to our previous podcast about a Gay Chinese Vampire. It continues our trend of producing the sorts of cutting-edge lessons you won't find in any traditional textbook.

Since this podcast builds on the vocabulary we introduced in part one, if you haven't already checked out our preceding podcast you may want to take a listen to get up to speed. Otherwise, tune in as we charge headfirst into another messy romance replete with underwear models, strained friendships, and lots and lots of blood.

Navigate the reincarnated Popup Chinese archives, including the original customized word-to-word transcripts for this and every other lesson as PDF files:

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