Popup Chinese

On our advanced show this week, Echo and Sylvia go head-to-head on the topic of modern dating, with a conversation specifically about 非诚勿扰, the most popular dating show on Chinese television. Sylvia isn't a big fan of the show, but Echo wishes she could take part. If you're looking for native-level conversation to practice your listening skills, join us for this show and learn why.

Bill Bishop swears by part of it. Jeremy Goldkorn swears regularly at it. Chances are you've got strong opinions on Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) yourself, which is why we're delighted to be joined by James Palmer this week, author of The Death of Mao, and the mind behind two phenomenal China pieces in Aeon Magazine, one on the 1980s generation, and the most recent on the fate of TCM in modern China. Enjoy Sinica? Please remember that in addition to listening online or downloading this show as a standalone MP3 file, you can also subscribe to Sinica through iTunes using our free podcast feed. Just head to the iTunes store and search for Sinica and you'll be steps away from downloading our entire archive of audio shows for free.

In our fourth episode of Quiz Night, Tony from New Zealand matches matches his wits against Will from Australia in a battle that covers everything from T.S. Eliot's favorite detective novel, to horrific industrial accidents in Russia. Also up for your enjoyment? David repeatedly mispronounces the word "nuclear" and we learn the best place in Beijing for volleying ammunition into the Forbidden City. Learning Chinese? Our quiz show is geared for anyone with good listening comprehension also looking for a fun way to expand their vocabulary. This show is a bit heavy on English and we're likely to push back towards a more Chinese-intensive show in future episodes, but even so there is still a decent amount of upper-level mandarin here. So join us for a fun romp through history, pop culture and modern China, and let us know what you think.

Knowing he might never see her again, Nevis had stood in the snow outside her window all night. And now he stood, hands trembling slightly in the morning breeze, fingers wrapped tightly around a thin grip of steel, prepared to face the worst if so he must. And it would be worth it. It would be worth all of it. Learning Chinese? We have an interesting sentence in our dialogue for today, because it is completely time-agnostic. Put it into the past, and it doesn't change. Use it to refer to ongoing conditions, and it doesn't change. And stick it into the future? Yup - no change at all. So join us in out studio today as we take a look at this great sentence pattern and teach you how to use it like a native.

In a summer when many reporters and their families are departing Beijing (including many people who have appeared on this podcast), perhaps the biggest loss to the foreign correspondents' pool in the Chinese capital is the departure of Evan Osnos, who has been in China since 2005 and writing for the New Yorker since 2008. In today's show, Kaiser and Jeremy caught Evan before he leaves for Washington next month to talk about the big kerfuffle at NYU, how the Snowden affair may or may not affect Sino-American diplomacy, his forthcoming book, and about his time in China. We're sure that once you listen to this you'll understand why Evan will be so sorely missed. Like Sinica? Don't forget you can download this podcast as a standalone mp3 file. And if you'd like to download out entire archive in one go, just open up iTunes and subscribe to our custom Sinica feed at http://popupchinese.com/custom/feeds/sinica. And if you run into problems, we can be reached for support at service@popupchinese.com.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn are delighted to host Matthew Niederhauser. A photographer focusing on urban development in China, Matthew has been published in various journals including The New Yorker, National Geographic, The New York Times Magazine, Le Monde, and Time Magazine among others. As Jeremy describes it, his visuals of Beijing and other parts of modern China capture the feeling of a society that operates on a scale both "beautiful and horrifying" at the same time. Matthew is currently working on a project documenting China's megablock urban development project. But all of his work is stunning. So while you're listening to the show, be sure to click through the following links and check out his photos on China's counterfeit paradises as well as its visions of modernity. Quick Hint: if you want to see the photo exhibit be sure to scroll right on your monitor rather than scrolling down. And want more Sinica? As always, this show is available as a standalone mp3 file for those of you who'd like to download it instead of listening through our on-site flash player. And if you're looking to subscribe through iTunes, just visit the iTunes store, click on podcasts, and then do a search for Sinica. Once the proper page loads you'll be a click away from downloading everything automatically.

Even years after her sudden death from apoplexy, Robert's mother would haunt her son's dreams, her corpulent and open-palmed presence bellowing with outrage over his "filthy, filthy pants" and threatening to give the boy "a good scrubbing." As his court psychiatrist would later testify, this classic case of childhood trauma not only colored his relations with the opposite sex, but also affected his notions of acceptable personal hygiene. Interested in learning Chinese? Or perhaps you're not really interested in learning Chinese at all but are still curious how exactly to speak to household cleaning staff. You know, wanting to know enough Chinese so that you can walk that fine line between being the sort of permissive employer who attracts every layabout in the Middle Kingdom, and the sort of tyrant immortalized in the oral histories of Fujian and Anhui? Then this podcast is for you.

Complain as we might about life in China, the last thirty-four years or so haven't been all bad: we've seen three decades of roughly ten percent GDP growth, a whole lot of people eating a whole lot better than they did, and impressive progress improving life expectancy, infant mortality, literacy rates and more, not to mention a slew of prescient infrastructure investments in transportation and telecommunication networks. This week on Sinica, Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn are joined by Jeremiah Jenne, director of IES Beijing and popular blogger, for a look into what we love about China, and what the government is doing right. It was fun coming up with our own lists and comparing them, so we'd be curious what yours looks like too: please share in the comments section below. As always, this podcast is available as a standalone mp3 file if you'd like to download the show manually instead of listening through our on-site flash player. And for all of you to subscribe to Sinica through RSS, you can get your computer to automatically download all of our shows by visiting the iTunes store, clicking on podcasts, and then doing a search for... you guessed it... Sinica. And let us know if you have any questions or problems.

Nazi refreshments, racist stereotypes from the 1980s and boy bands that refuse to die. Such are just a few of the topics you can expect this week on our Popup Quiz Night, along with our usual round of China questions designed to make you absolutely insufferable to friends and family alike. Learning Chinese? Our Popup Chinese quiz show is intended for people who already have pretty good mandarin but are looking for a fun way to expand their vocabulary. It features nine questions split into three thematic categories, with Chinese-heavy questions and a vocabulary review tucked onto the end. We've tried to make this show more difficult than our last one, so let us know what you think, and good luck!

Nazi refreshments, racist stereotypes from the 1980s and boy bands that refuse to die. Such are just a few of the topics you can expect this week on our Popup Quiz Night, along with our usual round of China questions designed to make you absolutely insufferable to friends and family alike. Learning Chinese? Our Popup Chinese quiz show is intended for people who already have pretty good mandarin but are looking for a fun way to expand their vocabulary. It features nine questions split into three thematic categories, with Chinese-heavy questions and a vocabulary review tucked onto the end. We've tried to make this show more difficult than our last one, so let us know what you think, and good luck!

After a few weeks grousing about the state of Chinese humor, sex and Bill Bishop, we turn our gaze to the plight of the nation's children, and the stories of child abuse and maltreatment which have filled the mainland press for the last several weeks. And with the news today of child abuse protester Ye Haiyan's own detention and corporal punishment our core question could not be more timely: is there something about Chinese culture that has encouraged society to sweep this problem under the rug? With Kaiser Kuo in Italy this week, Jeremy Goldkorn is hosting this episode solo, joined by two excellent guests: the incomparable Tania Branigan who writes for The Guardian, and Leta Hong Fincher, an American academic with a research interest in women's issues in China. We're delighted to have both guests back on the show, and hope you enjoy our discussion. Have a love-hate relationship with us? If so, don't forget that you can subscribe to new episodes of Sinica automatically by RSS. If you use iTunes, just select "Subscribe to Podcast" from the "Advanced" file menu and provide the URL http://popupchinese.com/feeds/custom/sinica when prompted. Alternately, please feel welcome to download this show as a standalone mp3 file. And let us know what you think!

The largest investment for any family daring the Oregon Trail was the purchase of oxen. Bullets? Medicine? Clothing for the children? Safe passage across dangerous rivers? All of these were luxuries. Even children were a luxury, since in a worst case scenario your adults could survive on squirrel meat and repopulate once they reached the west coast. But if your oxen died? Then the grim ghosts of dysentery that stalked the trail would show no mercy. Learning Chinese? This week on Popup Chinese we boot up the Apple II and discover the surprising amount that Chinese people know about American history. And Super Mario and Contra and strange Chinese role-playing games involving mystical swords. Also, details on the not-so-legit Nintendo gaming systems that were all the rage in the days before the XBox.

Robert suspected his wife's strange preoccupation with Beijing Opera was beginning to affect their marriage. While he had always been aware of her fascination with Chinese culture, after she became involved in a local theatre troupe, June seemed much less willing to compromise on the small issues, or even consider things from his perspective. And then there were her midnight practice sessions, furtive telephone calls and paranoid protectiveness of personal toiletries. Learning Chinese? Our elementary lesson today is a bit trickier than most, but if you've been with us for a while we think you'll enjoy it, since it introduces a new sentence pattern we haven't run into yet, and that we're not aware of being covered in any textbook we've stumbled into to date. Despite the hour of pain that preceded the recording, we had a good time making this show and hope you enjoy it too.

This week Kaiser and Jeremy welcome back Bill Bishop, the force behind the invaluable Sinocism newsletter and the man Evan Osnos once referred to as "the China watcher's China watcher." Starting with a look at Bill's past and how he ended up in China, our discussion moves on to why he decided to start his esteemed newsletter before segueing into his take on the most important but overlooked China stories of the past month. Enjoy Sinica? Please remember that if you don't want to listen through our site, you are always welcome to download this show as a standalone mp3 file. If you want to subscribe to this and future shows by RSS to automate the downloading via iTunes, please remember that you can subscribe to our public feed at http://popupchinese.com/feeds/custom/sinica. Inquiries and suggestions for future show topics are also welcome by email at sinica@popupchinese.com.

It was another ideas meeting at Popup Towers, and the topic had turned to our advanced Chinese-only shows. "Why can't we have an upbeat podcast for a change," David had suggested. "I'm worried listeners are going to think we're chronically depressed between our discussion of pollution, academic bribery and corporal punishment." The room hung silent. "Couldn't we have a happy show about family and love or something like that?"