Popup Chinese

If you're living or dating in China, it's impossible not to notice the enormous pressure Chinese society places on young people to get married as quickly as the laws of physics permit. Casual dating is somewhat of a foreign concept, so much so that women past the age of twenty-five often bemoan their spinster-like condition. And for men, the situation is equally bad, as the pressure to attract a wife creates attendant pressures to purchase a home, car and other material products which are effectively unaffordable for many workers. Learning Chinese? In this advanced and all-native Chinese podcast, Echo, Gao and Qin take to our studio to talk about their own experiences with marriage and their attempts to deal with the pressure. As we find out, one of the three is actually planning to get married quite soon, which provides more grist for the gossip mill. There is a lot of advanced vocabulary in this show, so if your Chinese is good enough to follow natural-speed conversation, join us and find out which of the three is staring down the marriage aisle.

Archers, tiger hunters and horse-riders from beyond the Great Wall, the Manchu people made their first mark on history as founders of the Northern Jin Dynasty (1115-1234) before consolidating their influence in 1644 when their militaristic society swept south from Manchuria to drive the Ming Dynasty from power, establishing the Qing Empire and an astonishing three century period of rule over what would become the multicultural, pan-Asian state we know as China today. Curious what happened to the Manchu? Or how to spot and chit-chat with banner-bearers lurking in your midst? In today's Sinica podcast, Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn take a break from current affairs to take a look at China's Manchu legacy, as evident everywhere from the streets of Beijing to high Chinese fashion. So join us this week as we talk about what happened to the Manchu. Joining us for this discussion is Jeremiah Jenne, Qing historian, popular blogger and Associate Director for Chinese Studies at the IES Abroad program in Beijing. Enjoy Sinica? Did you know it is possible to subscribe to this show via iTunes, in which case your computer will download new episodes of the show as they become available. To do this just select "Subscribe to Podcast" from the Advanced podcast menu and provide the URL http://popupchinese.com/feeds/custom/sinica when prompted. And if you have any questions or suggestions for future topics or guests, feel free to leave a comment or email Kaiser anytime at sinica@popupchinese.com. You can also download this show anytime as a standalone mp3 file.

While the financial meltdown ravaged Squire and Huddington's continental operations, the transnational's activities in Hong Kong remained surprisingly resilient to slumping European demand. Western analysts attributed the growth to continued demand-pull in Asia and management's hands-off attitude to letting its Hong Kong subsidiary refocus on the Asian market, and there may even be some truth to that.... Learning Chinese? Our show today is about lies, gossip and rumors. If you're a Chinese learner at the intermediate level or above and feel comfortable listening to a show that is half in Chinese and half in English, join us for a bilingual discussion of the Chinese rumor mill. We'll cover some practical vocabulary for spreading malicious gossip yourselves, and take a quick look at some of the more outlandish rumors that have circulated on the Chinese Internet in recent years.

Thirty years later the entire class would laugh about it over drinks, or most of them would anyway. For his part, Zhang Hua would simply get a far-away look in his eye whenever his mind travelled back to those five days he had spent huddled for shelter in a moss-covered hollow after his teacher and classmates had driven back to the city oblivious to the significance of the empty seat in the back of the bus. Learning Chinese? By now you've learned that Chinese people like to answer questions by repeating the verb used to ask them in either the affirmative or negative form. But did you know there are some situations in which this rule isn't quite so reliable? This podcast covers one of these cases, in which the common verb 是 is - much like Zhang Hua in our dialogue - strangely absent from its usual place.

While the African community in Guangzhou has taken to the streets to protest the suspicious death of a foreign national in police custody, the Chinese Internet has proven equally volatile as gruesome photos of a late-stage abortion have circulated online to the shock and horror of many netizens. This week Sinica turns its attention to both events, but mostly the one child policy, as we discuss first the history of China's family-planning restrictions and then look at the political forces within China arrayed for and against the status quo. Trying to steer the discussion through these controversial waters is your host Kaiser Kuo, who is joined in our studio by Alexa Olesen, a long-time China watcher and journalist for the Associated Press who has written extensively on how China's family planning policies work at the local level. We're also delighted to be joined by Evan Osnos, staff writer for the New Yorker, who has written about the African community in Guangzhou. Conspicuously absent for the second week running is Sinica co-host Jeremy Goldkorn, who any minute now--and probably by the time you're reading this--will have become father to a baby girl named Viola! Like Sinica? If you'd like to subscribe to the show via iTunes and have your computer automatically download new shows as they become available, just click on "Subscribe to Podcast" from the Advanced file menu and provide the url http://popupchinese.com/feeds/custom/sinica when prompted. If you'd prefer, you can also download this show as a standalone mp3 file. Links to all of our previous shows are available on the podcast pages, which you can find in our Sinica archive.

We have had many dark moments at Popup Towers, but perhaps none darker than the summer of 2009 when Echo bought a cricket from a street peddler on Nanluoguxiang, and proudly placed "The Great General" by the window in his wicker cage. For the first few days as our guest settled into his new quarters, his timid nature made him an amiable office companion. This period of quietude was not to last, and while his death three months later was sad, it was not without its upside considering we run a recording facility. Learning Chinese? We've decided that this is a lesson perfect for Absolute Beginners to the Chinese language... or really Advanced students looking to brush up on their pronunciation of what we've decided is basically the hardest word in the entire Chinese language. If this is your first lesson you might be better off picking another one from our lesson archives, but if you're up for a challenge, take a listen and let us know what you think.

After months setting up shell companies everywhere from Hong Kong to the Cayman Islands, Xiao Li's plans would still hinge on his single exit interview at the Shenzhen border. The mid-level manager had amassed enough paperwork from contacts outside the country to make his trip seem innocuous to superiors at the Foreign Ministry, but there was always the potential for things to get ugly at the border crossing....

The murder had happened around noon, when Winter Reynolds III had met a thick length of steel piping in a restroom at the Federal Reserve. The bludgeoning to death of America's most reclusive financial magnate was heady stuff for a press starved of political gossip: given the number and influence of the tycoon's avowed public enemies, his killer could have been almost half of New York or Washington. And yet, Detective Stronach thought as he surveyed the crime scene, this mystery could be unraveled by the evidence in this room. For who could have wielded the weapon? Initial evidence pointed to the plumber who had been repairing the executive washroom upstairs. Who else could have had the opportunity to sneak the murder weapon into the building or the professional acumen to wield it with such destructive force. And yet something about this hypothesis was also unsettling to the detective. But why?

In the weeks after the interns discovered John's status as State bowling champion, his ranking was all the gossip in the office. For despite the fact that none of his coworkers had ever expressed the slightest interest in his sport, John now found he could hardly head to the watercooler without one of the marketing crew attempting to give him a high-five, or an engineer rushing out to ask for tips on ball-handling. He would have been sure the entire spectacle was some elaborate setup if it weren't for everyone's apparent sincerity about the whole escapade. Learning Chinese? One of the things we try to do at our higher levels here at Popup Chinese is step away from just reviewing the literal meanings of various words and focus more on the ways that native Chinese speakers communicate more subtle emotions. And that's exactly our focus in this lesson, which talks about a common way to express reluctance that we've yet to see covered in any other textbook. So you see, it's not that we need to teach this, but shouldn't someone...?

It's easy to get depressed about China's apparent drift toward amorality: the kind of pervasive screw-your-neighbor approach to getting ahead (or even just getting by) that seems increasingly common on the mainland. The news is full of horrific stories about apathy and callousness, punctuated by occasional stories of altruism, self-sacrifice, and personal heroism. Both types of stories seem to touch off real soul-searching, with public intellectuals, political leaders, and everyday people in pained discussion of the problem's roots and its possible remedies. How can China reverse the decline in civic consciousness? Does the answer lie in Confucianism? Buddhism? Christianity? Secular public school education? Good Samaritan laws? Joining Sinica hosts Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn this week for a look at this crucial issue for China are special guests David Moser, Director of the CET immersion program in Beijing and longstanding China watcher, and Didi Kirsten Tatlow from the International Herald Tribune, who joins us again after blowing us away last week in her first appearance in the All Sinica Federation of Women show. We lured Didi back to share even more insights on everything from holy fruit to schoolyard violence in China. Want a faster and better Sinica? To have new episodes download to your computer or cellphone automatically each week, just subscribe to Sinica via RSS. You can do this by opening iTunes and selecting the option "Subscribe to Podcast" from the Advanced menu and providing the URL http://popupchinese.com/feeds/custom/sinica when prompted. And if you'd prefer to download the show manually, feel free to grab it as a standalone mp3 file. And thanks for listening!

As Detective Stronach surveyed the ransacked vault, he felt time contract on itself, as if it were but yesterday he had first found work in the London shipyards, joining the local welding crew as its youngest and skinniest wharf rat. In those days he had learned the trades the hard way, clambering into tightest of crawlspaces and down the narrowest of industrial pipes to finish dangerous corner welds and affix steel plating to the hull. It had been difficult and claustrophobic work, but it had given him an education for life.

Han Lin grinned at his girlfriend as he gestured towards the office headquarters that rose above the small park where they were eating lunch. China Mobile was one of the more prestigious places for a new engineer to find employment, and Han couldn't help but want to show off his employee privileges. "I'll just send the file over the corporate network then," he smiled as he pocketed the USB drive, adding that "even something this big should only take a few minutes at most." Living in China? No matter what industry you're in, at some point you are going to find yourself in an office environment locked in mortal combat with office equipment. Fortunately, regardless of whether you need to scan documents, backup files to a USB drive or just transfer files across the network, in this lesson we cover the key vocabulary you need to get things done. So take a listen, let us know what you think in the discussion section below, and feel free to email us anytime at service@popupchinese.com.

Considering that this was the week Zhang Ziyi found her name dragged through the mud on the Bo Xilai scandal, there couldn't be a more topical subject for Sinica than the double standards that are often applied to women in China, and the way Chinese society is often structured to favor men in everything from higher education and home ownership to retirement and even expectations of marital fidelity. This week on Sinica, we're proud to have a special episode of the show discussing the state of gender equality in China. Stepping in as guest host is none other than MaryKay Magistad, correspondent in China for the Public Radio International/BBC program "The World." She is joined by sociologist Leta Hong Fincher, who's doing her PhD at Tsinghua University, Didi Kirsten Tatlow of the International Herald Tribune, and Cao Haili, managing editor of the upcoming Chinese language online version of the New York Times. Like Sinica? If you'd like to subscribe to the show automatically and have iTunes download new episodes as soon as they're released, just open iTunes and select "Subscribe to Podcast" from the "Advanced" file menu. Provide the URL http://popupchinese.com/feeds/custom/sinica when prompted. Or skip the hassle and download this show as a standalone mp3 file. Links to the other podcast downloads are all available on the individual show pages, which can be found in the Sinica archive.

After the construction of the new downtown expressway, drivers had raced through the streets of Beijing with an almost cavalier disregard for the laws of physics, for who among us would not feel exalted to speed from the outskirts of Shunyi to the downtown core in just ten minutes? And yet within a few years, even this technological marvel would prove no match for the ingrained habits of an entire generation of Beijing cab drivers.

The hardest thing about Andy's transition to university was adjusting to life with a roommate. Having become accustomed to studying through the night, sleeping in late and otherwise treating his living space as exclusive personal territory, sharing his day-to-day routine with someone was a new experience. And while it was nice to have company in some ways, it was an adjustment putting up with his roommate's eccentricities, and it seemed the semester would involve many lessons in not only applied maths but also in compromise. Learning Chinese? A lot of people trying to learn Chinese feel that they're missing out from not having a Chinese roommate, and lament all the time they spend in expat circles. Because of this, we're happy to announce a new program aiming to mimic the experience of studying at Tsinghua: for only $1000 a month Popup Chinese will send a Chinese person to live with you in your flat or apartment. No guarantees on hygiene or personal behavior, but it will probably work out. To take us up on this generous offer, just email Echo!