A Serial Problem

The first murder had seemed accidental, and would have been officially registered a suicide if not for the near imperceptible signs of break-and-enter the forensics team had found at the scene of the crime. And even then the investigation would likely have ended up as boxes of dusty papers orphaned in the police warehouse if not for the astonishing series of events which followed, events which had the local authorities floundering in denial even as the situation escalated dramatically.

Learning Chinese? At the Intermediate level, our Chinese podcasts feature fast, real-life Chinese dialogues spoken at native pace and filled with emotionally rich and complex sentences. If you're just getting started these are probably above your level, but if you're working towards fluency and are looking to get past your textbook, they're the type of materials we think you need. So take a listen and let us know what you think.

The Sleeping Beauty

"The princess goes to sleep and wakes up again," Gail told us, making the fairy tale sound about as pedestrian as Echo's nightly routine. When pressed about this, our faithful podcaster paused, and then added mention of glass slippers and singing furniture, with the caveat that these were not "central to the plot" and may have been "made up by Disney".

Regardless of how well you remember the classics yourself, once you're in China you're in uncharted waters. Which is why we've taken a few liberties ourselves this lesson. So join us for an enjoyable look at what happens when you mix a traditional Western fairy tale with the process-oriented crime-solving prowess of your local Beijing police bureau. We hope our love for the boys in blue shines through in this dialogue filled with danger, intrigue, and the requisite quota of social harmony.

Strange and Unusual Erhuaization

It's one of the most common misconceptions even advanced students have about Chinese: the belief that erhuaization is non-standard and that anyone who says 这儿 (zhèr) instead of 这 (zhè) is somehow speaking the "Beijing dialect". While this opinion rarely survives a run-in with the actual Beijing dialect, it's understandably persistent among people who have not traveled broadly in China. And it's hardly their fault: there are a ton of native speakers who don't know the difference either.

So while we usually put our focus on standard mandarin in our Chinese podcasts, in today's Chinese lesson we take a step back and showcase some examples of more unorthodox erhuaization. These are all commonly used variants you'll start hearing once you're aware of them. And while you might not want to use them yourselves each day, they're good to know - excellent little language bombs you can drop the next time you're at a state banquet and someone asks you how your Chinese is coming along.

A National Crisis

Zhongnanhai's natural beauty was little comfort to Luo Heping, a mid-level cadre whose thoughts for the past month had involved only the disaster playing out before him in slow motion. For despite the ambitious projections in the latest Five Year Plan, all evidence suggested provincial statistics were over-inflated and actual production was stagnant. Which made it likely that soon... very soon... China would hit a breaking point that might threaten the very existence of the state.

Learning Chinese? If you're able to follow most conversations, but still get lost on occasion watching television and listening to the radio then our intermediate podcasts are right for you. At this difficulty level we focus on broadening vocabulary and mastering more advanced grammar structures you won't hear every day. Students looking for easier lessons are encouraged to check out our archives of beginner and elementary Chinese lessons.

Lead Poisoning

Remember that time your assistant plagiarized his report straight off the Internet and then stared at you uncomprehendingly when told this was unprofessional? Then there are the people who interrupt private conversations between you and your friends to ask them if you can understand Chinese (since it sounds like they're speaking to you in Chinese). Or consider the cab drivers we've had who have gotten lost while trying to find Tiananmen Square. Or pretty much the entire population of Shanghai....

After a certain amount of time in China, you'll get inured to people behaving illogically. But if you find yourself wondering whether you're going crazy in the meantime, we're here to report that your sanity is probably still intact. Chances are you're just coming into contact with the consequences of widespread environmental problems. And beyond the language mentioned in this podcast, our best advice for dealing with it is to keep your guard up and don't live on the ground floor....

Buried in the Garden

Before we get to our Chinese lesson for today, let us admit that it differs from its predecessors in one important way. Put simply, in response to the rising cost of bread and air in Beijing, our engineering team has been forced to make minor changes to our recording format which lower expenses while increasing staff efficiency. These changes are subtle and should not be noticeable to most listeners.

With that out of the way, what can be said about this lesson that the word "masterpiece" fails to cover? In addition to a native-level dialogue filled with suspense, this podcast contains exactly the sort of advanced language point that will have native Chinese speakers scrambling over themselves in praise of your eloquence. So listen up for a podcast drenched with sex, murder and one of the only Chinese adverbs you can use to start a sentence....

The Inferno

In no time the interlopers had progressed to the center of the industrial plant. They moved in silence with the precision of a military crew, but as the swirling oil eddied around them, it became clear that the original plan had gone awry. Had they turned a wrong corner, or was their entire adventure an unexpected trap? Whatever the explanation, there was little time to lose....

Our intermediate Chinese lesson for today is a short listening test with ten devilishly difficult questions. If you fancy you've excellent Chinese take a listen and see how you do on our accompanying quiz. It is harder than you think!

Dinner with the Party

"There's something about your familiarity with Marxism that's uncontrollably sexy," she groaned. "The principle that the revolution is led by the vanguard is more Leninist than Marxist," we replied. It may well have been Trotsky, but who was going to drag up such internecine issues when things were going so well? "And the Three Represents," she countered, "do you think it reconciles revolutionary socialism with market-led economic development...."

We haven't done a lesson on obscure Chinese political phrases yet, mostly because they can be a bit hard to drop into conversation. But while you can live without this stuff most of the time, every now and then you'll have dinner with someone important and being familiar with Chinese political rhetoric becomes surprisingly useful. So join Brendan and Gail for a quick Chinese podcast that covers some of the more common terms getting bandied about these days, including the revolutionary contributions of current Fearless Leader Hu.

Pirate Zombie Bank Teller

Let us skip the tale of Pirate Jack's flight from the gallows, noting only that the implausibility of his escape continues to fuel speculation that the world's most feared brigand did indeed die on the hangman's noose that day. And yet how to explain what happened years later: the discovery of the world's most fearsome pirate and scourge of the China seas employed as a common bank teller in the backwaters of the Caribbean....

Learning Chinese? We're willing to admit that our Chinese lessons are sometimes a bit unorthodox. But if you've been plugging away at Chinese for a while, we think you'll find our lack of please-sit-down-and-have-another-cup-of-tea a breath of fresh air. So join us for the greatest pirate story ever told, and write us with suggestions for what comes next at ideas@popupchinese.com.

Harry Potter #8

Our Chinese lesson for today dredges up memories of that time we bought a copy of The Matrix Reloaded from a DVD vendor on the streets of Beijing. "This is absolutely the real thing," he swore up and down, "it came straight from Shenzhen yesterday...." And so we bought it and soon found ourselves watching a handicam-rip of Johnny Mnemonic with a near-incomprehensible Chinese dub. The scene with the talking dolphin was particularly humiliating for all involved.

And while there is unlikely to be another movie as bad as Johnny Mnemonic in the near future, China is in Harry Potter mode again and expectations are high for the final film. Operating under the principle that anything goes in this country, in this podcast we talk a bit about the piracy industry in China, review some Chinese DVD-related vocabulary and share a quick language tip on coded signals you really need to back away from the merchandise.

The Criminal Mastermind

The plan had been executed with military precision. It had taken a mere ten seconds from the first volley of gunfire until the point when the bank customers were under control, huddled on the floor in shock with their hands held over their heads. Another two minutes and the bank vaults were swept clean and the masked men out the door, the entire robbery finished minutes before the police were even aware of it.

Future X-Cops

When the definitive history of Hong Kong science fiction is finally compiled, we believe there will be one man whose films will soar above those of his contemporaries like a robotic policeman on a computer-generated hoverbike. We speak of course of the incomparable Andy Lau, whose masterpiece "Future X-Cops" is hands down the best Hong Kong science fiction film we have seen in the last few months, if not the last year.

While we know that some of you old-timers at Popup Chinese might be dubious about this claim, to you skeptics we have two simple requests: first, prepare for this podcast by getting some popcorn and plunking down to watch the movie trailer we've linked to above; second, keep an open mind throughout this podcast as Echo talks about how delightful Andy Lau made her last birthday and in which a few other points of interest are made for the sake of including some educational content.

The Disease Podcast

We were brainstorming for a catchy title. "Why not call it the disease podcast," Echo suggested walking in the room. And as much of a downer as her suggestion was, it made sense, and brought up an interesting question we are now exploring: just how morbid can we make our Chinese lessons? Is there a limit before we sink into absurdity.

That said, we do consider this a useful Chinese lesson. In addition to covering a ton of medical terminology that you'll probably end up using (but hopefully not having), today's podcast also covers three ways to say "from the looks of it", the last of which is virtually guaranteed to win you an international peace prize if you are caught using it within earshot of the Chinese government. So listen up and let us know what you think. We hope you like it.

Mountaineering

Although Captain Thrift's choice of ascents was unorthodox, there was no denying his skill nor the team's spectacular progress. Decisions that might have seemed rash to a more conservative climber paid off time and time again as his small team pulled itself up the sheer cliffs of Mount Rakaposhi in record time. And yet the frenzied pace of their assault was taking an unmistakable physical and mental toll on the team.

For who could keep up such a blistering pace? At twenty thousand feet, heavily reliant on oxygen tanks and with a near-vertical climb to the summit scheduled for the next morning, Julie and Chad were on the brink of physical collapse, wishing for nothing more than a quick meal and then plunge into the forgiving arms of sleep.

Unleashing the Cougar

The cougar (a.k.a. catamount, panther or mountain lion) is a large, solitary beast found throughout the Americas. Exhibiting the greatest range of any mammal in the Western Hemisphere, the cougar is fiercely independent and an unmatched predator, stalking smaller beasts for pleasure as much as for food.

In our Chinese lesson for today, Echo and Brendan take to the studio with a mission: preventing you from sounding like a confused and distracted high-schooler the next time you want to give someone a compliment. So join us as we cover a number of intermediate adjectives you can call on whenever you want to sound particularly complimentary, or are just tired of calling everything and everyone "good-looking".

Raising a Pirate Crew

Raising a pirate crew in China is harder than you think. Despite the allure of life on the high seas, many Chinese workers now forgo seafaring opportunities that fail to provide unemployment insurance and other social benefits. While many adventurers have thus drifted into more clerical work, there remains a group of the chronically underemployed that are still willing to work long hours for low pay and zero benefits. In our Intermediate Chinese lesson for today, we share tips on how to motivate these souls for a life of adventure. Also... the future aspect.

The Spanish Main

Jack tilted his face upwards to savor the warm rays of the setting sun. For the past year, the most dreaded pirate in all of the Caribbean had struggled to find his way back to this desolate place, a small island reef hidden deep in the Spanish Main. A year had passed since Jack had been forced to bury his plunder here after a pitched sea battle with the Spanish Navy that had decimated his crew and forced him to flee for safety in his fastest corsair.

And his return had been far from easy. Jack had spent months trapped in the summer doldrums, and then months more cut by frigid winter gales as coal supplies fell low and murmurs of mutiny spread through his crew. And yet here he stood at last - vindicated - with only a few feet of sand between him and the greatest cache of pirate gold that ever was and evermore will be.

Upholding Community Standards

At Popup Chinese, we're keenly aware of our responsibility for upholding community standards. And we're animal lovers too. Which is why if you're an intermediate student learning Chinese you can't go wrong by listening to this podcast. In it, we cover some essential vocabulary for extracting things from your pets, along with a more advanced adverb that you can use to add a sense of righteousness to the entire endeavor.

I Wasn't Kidding

Please do not make any assumptions about my attire. I was not invited to China because of my sense of humor. Nor has my general gravitas in any way hindered my selection as model worker by the Furong district government. While it is true that I will tell the odd joke on occasion, such as that ringer about the penguin and the lame anthropod I recounted at the national textile exhibition last year, in general I am not considered a funny man. So it would be best if you take my remarks more seriously next time.

Good Cop, Good Cop

The suspect smirked, John noted, and the old cop bit down hard to suppress the bile rising in his throat. Ever since the precinct had banned his more forceful interrogation techniques, it had been getting progressively harder for him to put scum like this behind bars. Bring them in for questioning and they'd just sit sullenly waiting for their lawyers to spring them out. On most days he kept his anger in check, but there was something about this guy's grin that pushed John to the edge.

Think you're a tough guy? In this Intermediate Chinese podcast, join us as we cover all the Chinese vocabulary and mannerisms you'll need to viciously interrogate friends, partners and relatives. Career opportunities await in law enforcement, racketeering and the mob, so get listening and let us know if you have any questions or comments.