Popup Chinese
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An Evening with Bill Bishop
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...
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Chinese Parenting
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?"
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Humor in China
Feel that your jokes have been falling flat lately? Enough that you've even started wondering whether China is a grand experiment in irony and deadpan humor? This week on Sinica, hosts Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn are delighted to invite guests David Moser and Jesse Appell on our show for a discussion on the differences between Chinese and American senses of humor, asking why these two cultures feel so different and where - if anywhere - they meet?If you're a longtime Sinica listener,...
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Communist beards we know and love
After succumbing last episode to Brendan's wide-ranging knowledge of everything save contemporary pop music, Echo has switched sides this week to serve as Chinese quizmaster in a show that pits podcaster Sylvia against voice-legend Andy in a China-vs-China battle of the wits. And with a Chinese Mobile recharge card hanging in the balance, and SMS messages just waiting to be sent, the stakes could not be higher for our contestants.Learning Chinese? Our quiz show is intended for people who...
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Sex in China
This week on Sinica, we deliver a salacious podcast that covers everything you always wanted to know about Sex in China, but have been afraid to ask. And with a discussion that stretches from Daoist sex manuals and imperial sex customs to getting jiggy during the Cultural Revolution and even matters like homosexuality in contemporary China, this is a podcast you don't want to miss... unless talking about sex makes you uncomfortable in which case you might actually want to skip it.For the...
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The Chinese Tutor
Sean couldn't mask his dismay at the literal exactitude with which his Chinese lecturer approached her teaching duties. Even after months of parroting back her sentences like a trained parrot, he still struggled with spontaneous communication. It struck him as absurd that anyone expect a student to reach fluency this way, but that was why he'd finally taken the plunge and hired a local tutor. Even if his new teacher wasn't professionally trained, at least his time with her would afford the...
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Healthcare in China
The state of healthcare in China is in many ways better than it was in the era of the barefoot doctors, with average life expectancy in the country now trailing the United States by only three years and morbidity rates far lower too. But while even the most cutting-edge medical services are available in first-tier cities for a price, China's transition to a market economy has left many in the lurch, with out-of-pocket healthcare costs soaring even as the government rolls out more...
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Memories of School Days
Our Popup crew had dinner at a Sichuan restaurant last week, and for whatever reason the conversation quickly turned to traumatic childhood experiences. And it turns out that while attending school in any country can give kids a rough time, if you attended school in China in the 1980s and 1990s you had to add teacher-management and bribery strategies into your list of daily problems, as Echo and Sylvia discuss in today's show.Curious what it was like attending primary school in China in the...
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Do Not Marry Before Age Thirty
This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy are delighted to be joined by Joy Chen, former deputy mayor of Los Angeles, and now high-profile author of the book Do Not Marry Before Age 30, a look at the state of gender issues in China that's finding traction among a generation of women facing frustrations with their careers, marriages and life prospects in general. Join us as we look into the state of things for women in China.Like Sinica? If you'd like to subscribe via iTunes, just open the...
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The Gossip Mongers
Our new Ayi is great, except for her propensity to gossip. We'll tell her things like what we had for breakfast or how much sleep we got the night before, and the next thing you know she's shared that on Weibo and Facebook and then we're getting inbound telephone calls from strangers in Henan with occasionally useful but somewhat overfamiliar advice. Truth be told, we're not sure exactly how to deal with it, since she does a really good job otherwise.Learning Chinese? In this lesson, we...
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Richard III
People often ask us how we get such great voice acting, as if there were a secret we could simply put into words. Whereas the truth is that acting is a form of Zen, and it takes years to develop a sensitivity to the art. For us a key part was spending our formative years at the Central Academy of Drama. And as much as it pains us to admit now that we are trained thespians, we'd never even heard of the Bard before attending that venerable institute. In those days, as our teachers would often...
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Gady Epstein on The Internet
The Internet was expected to help democratize China, but has instead enabled the authoritarian state to get a firmer grip. So begins The Economist's special fourteen page report on the state of the Internet in China, a survey that paints the country's online communities as canaries in gilded cages of sorts, and touches on everything from what censorship tells us about who really wields power in China, to more broader patterns of innovation and investment in China's high-tech industry.Given...
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Welcome to the Quiz Show
This is the pilot episode of a new concept show we're developing for upper-intermediate students: a quiz game featuring mostly Chinese questions with just enough bilingual discussion thrown in to keep things intelligible. We had a good time producing this, and if you're stretching past the intermediate level we think you'll like it too -- our topics range from ancient Rome to 19th century English literature and there is plenty of useful vocab here you won't find elsewhere, if only because...
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The Transgressions of Apple Computer
While foreign media coverage these last two weeks has focused on environmental disasters, over-fishing and emerging forms of the avian flu, the Chinese state media has turned its gaze towards the transgressions of Apple Computer, which found itself excoriated by CCTV on World Consumer Rights Day for its warranty policy and for using refurbished parts in mainland phone repairs.Considering the enthusiasm of the Chinese market for Apple products, the state media-led hullabaloo has raised...
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To Catch a Thief
When Detective Smith started his slow climb up the professional ladder, his unorthodox crime-fighting techniques and obsession with furniture made him a laughingstock to the local criminal underclass, as well as many of his more conventional colleagues. Yet his persistent and creative efforts to clean up the city would eventually earn him the grudging admiration of even his most vocal foe, and lead to a sea change in policing techniques nationwide.Learning Chinese? This is among the more...
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Xi Jinping goes to Russia
Xi Jinping's trip to Moscow earlier this week, his first journey abroad as China's new head of state, has raised interesting questions about China's ambitions in Asia, and coupled with Washington's "pivot to Asia" is resurrecting the spectre of a strategic standoff between southern and northern Asia around the world's two leading superpowers. How realistic is this vision? In today's show, we try our best to find out....Joining Kaiser Kuo for this discussion are two longstanding followers of...
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Leaving Beijing
If this show is a bit introspective, that's because the "at what cost" question has been a recurring theme of late in our conversations with colleagues and friends. For some the decision to move on is about money and lifestyle, while for others it is just time to do something different. What do we think about this? What do you think about this? If you understand native-level Chinese and are looking for listening practice, why not join us for this advanced show and let us know your thoughts...
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Unsavory Elements and Earnshaw Press
No, this week's Sinica isn't an attack on Element Fresh. Rather, it's a discussion hosted by Kaiser Kuo about the new book Unsavory Elements, an anthology of stories and essays about the experiences of expats in China. And joining us for this discussion is none other than Tom Carter, editor of the book, along with Shanghai-based publisher Graham Earnshaw of Earnshaw Press. You can either listen to the show using our online player, or download it as a standalone mp3 file.As a quick note...
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Brownie Cake
Factional alliances had been coalescing for months, for as the availability of work narrowed, it was obvious to all that sacrifices would simply have to be made. And so it was that Popup Towers became a place of whispers and sideways glances among the voice acting team, as a hundred secret alliances blossomed and then withered overnight. And then there was the baking....Learning Chinese? At the Intermediate level we try to present genuine Chinese dialogues prepared and presented without...
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A Discussion with Geremie R. Barm
On March 8th, Kaiser Kuo hosted a conversation at Capital M in Beijing with Geremie R. Barm, the well-known Sinologist and now director of the Australian Centre for China in the World, as part of the Capital Literary Festival. This week on Sinica, we are pleased to present a live recording of this show for anyone who may have missed it. As a live show, the quality is not quite the same as in a closed studio, but this is an intellectually rewarding discussion and we hope you enjoy it.As...
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Under Pressure
It's been an adjustment having a new roommate here at Popup Towers. We chat a bit at breakfast and dinner, but he mostly keeps to himself, working and studying in his room rather than the common areas. But it isn't like he's a social recluse or anything. Far from it. He has plans to go far, as we know all too well.
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Mo Yan and the Nobel Prize
When Chinese author Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize for literature last year, many critics were fast to pounce on his selection, accusing the committee of making a political choice that glossed over what many consider to be pervasive self-censorship in the writer's prose. But how much of this is true? In today's episode of Sinica, we take a closer look at Mo Yan and his work, including an exclusive audio excerpt from his most recent work in English translation.Joining Kaiser today for this...
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Beijing Air Pollution
Our advanced podcast for today is a show Echo and Sylvia recorded about the air pollution in Beijing. What's it like living in a city where you can't breathe? How do Chinese people cope and what are people doing to solve the problem or deal with it? If you're an advanced Chinese student looking for some upper-level language practice, join us for today's show and let us know what you think in the comments section below.
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The Glory of Imperial Russia
It had been a winter of great discord, with even Russia's wealthiest cities stalked by a sweeping tide of violent bolshevism. And yet how far the Tsar's summer home seemed from all this blood, as the rich strolled on the warm grass oblivious to the death fast approaching. And even now was their blindness anything but the arrogance of the Imperial throne, and characteristic of this age of contradictions?Learning Chinese? Our lesson for today is inspired by several of the Russian television...
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A Bad China Day
Sometimes life in China doesn't make much sense. Which is why we'd like to introduce your head to this concrete wall now while everyone is still being sociable. We think you should get to know each other, and learn a bit about your hobbies and special interests, because you'll be running into each other fairly often now that you're in town. And can you use chopsticks? Yeah? Just checking.
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Death, Fraud and Corporate Skullduggery
This week on Sinica we talk shop about Caterpillar's discovery of massive accounting fraud and subsequent $580 million write-down from a Chinese company the American equipment manufacturer acquired. We also look at the mysterious death of an American engineer in Singapore, ruled a suicide but believed by the late engineer's parents to be a cover-up involving, perhaps, controversial Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei. Joining host Kaiser Kuo to look behind the news at these stories are...
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We can remember it for you wholesale
We've been trying to keep our feature film project under wraps and don't want to do the whole Kickstarter thing, but if anyone knows the Spielberg brothers tell them to answer our emails, because we only need a bit of cash to start shooting at this point and the story basically sells itself. I mean... if someone else made this movie, we would probably see it a couple of times in the theater at least. Multiply that by the number of people in China and you'll have a sense of what this can...
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What's in the Box
David Mill's eyes settled on the blood-stained box lying before him. It was the same box that Somerset had carried over moments earlier... or would have carried over were he actually in this scene and not taking the day off from work. Somewhere in his subconscious, David realized that this meant the script made no sense. Without his partner, he must have gone over and picked up the box himself. But why would he carry it all the way back to Joe Doe before opening it, and what kind of sane...
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Revenge of the Call-in Show
Curious what happened to Sinica last week? Well... as it turns out our call-in show from two weeks ago wasn't exactly pleased with how quickly we managed to replace it, and took out its anger on the laptop we use to record new shows, smashing the hard drive into such a state of disrepair that it required immediate attention from the geniuses at our local Apple Store, who - we feel compelled to point out - were not in fact genius enough to save the actual data.Nonetheless, in the spirit of...
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The Iron Chicken
Iron Chicken knows which way the winds are blowing. It knows how much that shirt sells for at the Chegongzhuang Discount Market, and it isn't afraid of telling you straight out. So don't try to pull one over the Iron Chicken. It will not pity you. It will stick fast to its ideals of fairness, justice and affordable cotton casual-wear. And if you still insist on your ridiculous markup, it will walk away. Because the Iron Chicken does not need you. It does not need anyone.Learning Chinese?...
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Red Harvest
In a mining town steeped in vice, an ambitious newspaper editor is shot dead on the street, and almost everyone in the community seems to have an interest in his death, even his colleagues and his ice-cold wife. In this passage from the Chinese translation of Dashiell Hammett's seminal Red Harvest, Hammett's hard-boiled detective confronts the grieving father of the murdered man... entirely in mandarin.Trying to get past competence towards real fluency? One of the things we recommend to more...
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The Call-in Show
So our show this week isn't technically a call-in show given the lack of phones in our studio, but it is as close as we can get it, so thanks to everyone who sent us a pre-recorded question. We had a lot more responses than we expected, and the result is today's weird and wonderful mix of commentary on everything from Beijing's inner-city gang problems to Jeremy's predictably lame go-to KTV song. So if you're a regular Sinica listener, don't miss our show this week as Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy...
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What's wrong, Lassie?
Timmy needed her! And just like that our faithful collie no longer felt the sting of the ice round her paws, or the frozen wind blowing through the woods. Instead, blood surged through her veins as instinct took command and she drove headlong back to the farmhouse in search of help, her small body throwing itself across the fields and over the old wooden fence in a single bound as she raced home for help.Learning Chinese? At the Absolute Beginner level at Popup Chinese, our focus is on...
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China's Urban Billion
Lurking silently behind practically every story on Chinese economic growth over the last thirty years has been the country's unprecedented shift from being an overwhelmingly rural society to what is now a largely urban one, with almost 700 million urban residents now outnumbering their rural counterparts.Joining Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn to talk about the biggest migration in human history is Tom Miller, analyst at GK Dragonomics and author of the newly-published China's Urban Billion....
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Impressions of America
With air pollution off the charts in Beijing, we turn our gaze outwards this week and invite Echo and Amber into our studio for an advanced show about their experiences living and traveling across the United States. Little did we know that we would not get a podcast about the majestic sweep of American wilderness, the dynamism of a working Republic, or even the great American foods like deep-dish pizza. Instead, they both went on about something completely different....Learning Chinese? At...
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The Southern Drama
Mere months after China's handling of the 18th Party Congress suggested the country would undergo a peaceful leadership transition, the issue of freedom of the press surged to attention this week after a censored editorial in the Southern Weekly (Nanfang Zhoumo) resulted in a vociferous protest from the newspaper's editorial staff, and an unexpected ripple of agreement across the country. As this situation continues to play out, we look this week at what brought on these protests, what is at...
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The Newsroom
While Bruce may simply have been standing in the right place at the right time, the mood in the newsroom was nonetheless elated, with even the interns well-aware that this unexpected scoop would catapult their local paper to national attention, and perhaps even net them a National Newspaper Award for excellence in photojournalism.Learning Chinese? At the intermediate level one of the things we try to highlight is entirely natural and improvisational Chinese as opposed to the sorts of heavily...
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Return of the China Blog
All of you Sinica old-timers might remember a show we ran two years ago on the death of the China blog, in which Jeremy, Kaiser and Will Moss mused about whether the combined forces of Twitter, Facebook and Bill Bishop would manage to drive a stake through the heart of independent China blogging. So how refreshing is it to find that despite the growth of these online collossi, we still find ourselves reading and recommending blog posts from China hands old and new. How has the China blog...
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On the Road
Memories of New York were fading rapidly as we pulled over to the first roadside station we had seen in hours, our gas tank hovering a touch above empty after what seemed to have been an interminable drive through the desert. It wasn't clear exactly where we had ended up, but the gas was cheaper than expected and the counter inside sold some of the best falafels we'd ever eaten....
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China versus the S.E.C.
An ongoing battle between the American Securities and Exchange Commission and China over whether Chinese accounting firms can release accounting information required by US law or whether these constitute "state secrets" is pushing China and the United States into conflict in global capital markets, threatening to force the US agency responsible for overseeing capital markets to effectively de-list all Chinese companies.Joining Jeremy Goldkorn to look at this issue, sparked by an SEC...
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A Visit from the Doctors
Earlier this month, in an effort to make our advanced shows more interactive, and ensure they address the needs of professional workers throughout the world, Popup Towers invited the staff of the Surgery Department at the China-Japan Friendship Hospital to our recording studios to participate in the making of a dialogue and podcast dedicated to members of their profession. This is a mistake we will not be making again....Over time, most intermediate students pick up on the basics of medical...
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China 3.0
Today on Sinica, join us for a discussion on economics, politics and geopolitics with Mark Leonard from the European Council on Foreign Relations. Our specific focus is China 3.0, the council's recent compendium of essays on contemporary Chinese approaches to policy issues from leading Chinese intellectuals and thinkers.What is China 3.0? The thinking behind this book is that China’s recent leadership transition in Beijing marks the country's shift into a third stage of its development...
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The Gods of Powerpoint
After watching his guest power-cycle the projector in baffled dismay for five straight minutes, Wang's internal struggle to maintain composure was fast approaching breaking point. Why did every fiscal quarter end like this? Flush with enthusiasm for whatever latest management theory was trending in California, headquarters would inevitably dispatch a fresh graduate with no actual experience in the industry to lecture his battle-scarred team about their own supply chain issues. And now...
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Time to leave China?
It wasn't very long ago that the Chinese blogosphere became engrossed with two near-simultaneous and very public posts by well-known expats marking their decisions to leave China for greener pastures. While grumbling about this country is nothing new, this event was notable for kicking off a flurry of media coverage internationally on the question of whether China is becoming hostile to foreigners, and when and to where disgruntled expats should hoof it.That is why this week on Sinica we are...
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Casanova's Roommate
For most of the evening, Jay had hovered on the cusp of sleep, kept awake by the muted sounds of bossa nova pouring from his flatmate's stereo, its dim beats peppered with the occasional rattling of pipes and a series of strange falsetto screams. And on the few occasions he managed to drift off, his mind was flooded with strange images of his thesis committee at a Cuban beach party, reading his thesis and laughing at it in a series of oddly-familiar falsetto screams.Our latest show is an...
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The Acrobats
Detective Wilders was coming face-to-face with a world few members of proper society even acknowledged: the underclass of the acrobatic arts. And yet perhaps underclass was not the proper word. For as not unlike members of a secret society, acrobats did not reject the tenets of civil society so much as simply live by a separate code. Theirs was a world not easily entered by outsiders, but one which once entered, must be entered completely.
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The State of the Navy
After two weeks focusing on developments at the 18th Party Congress, and with the next generation of China's leadership now public news for the world to digest, this week on Sinica we take a break from China's leadership transition and turn our attention to more long-term developments in Chinese foreign policy. And with this in mind, Kaiser Kuo is delighted to be joined by Taylor Fravel, Associate Professor of Political Science at MIT and expert on Chinese foreign policy and particularly its...
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Book Club
The heart of the operation was a claustrophobic room tucked away in the bowels of just another city bar. Once through the trap door into the basement, visitors were greeted by a tiny circle of chairs arranged haphazardly atop an unfinished concrete floor. It was not a place anyone would come for civil discussion. The air was fetid, and pools of water collected unevenly on the floor as water dripped down from the cooling pipes which snaked across the ceiling.Learning Chinese? Our lesson today...
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18th Party Roundup
This week on Sinica, our hosts Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn are joined by Gady Epstein from the Economist and we turn our attention to the 18th Party Congress which officially started in Beijing earlier this week. As China's capital descends into the pomp of another ten year leadership transition, we take an inside look at all the news and rumor fit for podcasting as history unfolds in real-time around us.Enjoy Sinica? If you want to keep up-to-date on everything happening with the show,...
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iPad Acquisition Techniques
Before you send us hate mail, be aware that we tried getting 9527 to slow down. "Whatdoyoumeanslowdown," she said in bewilderment, "Imalreadyspeakingslowly." And we sighed and told her maybe to try a bit harder, since even our microphone only caught about thirty percent of what she said and she looked at us like we were crazy and headed back into the studio clucking softly and proceeded to do another take on fast-forward.Learning Chinese? If you're at the elementary level, you shouldn't find...
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Without a Clue
Our somewhat confused efforts to introduce the American board game Clue to our Chinese friends has resulted in a number of Friday pickup games near Sanlitun. But even after several months, the concept of the game seems strangely difficult for some people to grasp. And we sympathize, because knowing who killed whom with what hardly addresses the much more important why.Learning mandarin? At our intermediate level, we don't shy away from giving you native-speed, colloquial Chinese dialogues....
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Buying Earphones
Learning Chinese? Our mandarin lesson for today features a short but simple dialogue covering the way real Chinese shoppers ask for prices and comparison shop. This is something that might come in handy the next time you're walking down the street and see imitation Apple products available for one-tenth of their normal retail price.
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Party Congress Preview
With less than two weeks to go before the 18th Party Congress, speculation on China's upcoming leadership transition could not be more intense here in Beijing, where insiders are trading lists of potential Politburo Standing Committee members which disagree not only on who will be elevated to the highest ranks of China's leadership, but even how many members will be on the PBSC.How are things going to play out in the during the Party Congress and in the coming transition? Joining Kaiser Kuo...
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The Voice of China
American Idol premiered in the United States in 2005, and China has had a metric ton of song-related reality television shows since then. So what exactly is it that has turned The Voice of China into a nationwide craze? Since its premiere in July on Zhejiang Television, the show has become probably the most talked-about television series in the entire mainland, with a band of fanatical followers including some of us here at Popup Towers.Learning Chinese? If your Chinese is already at a...
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From the Ruins of Empire
Today on Sinica, Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn host a discussion with Pankaj Mishra on his book From the Ruins of Empire, a history of Asia's intellectual response to Western imperialism in the late 19th and early 20th century. Also joining us for this wide-ranging discussion is Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Chinese historian, frequently published columnist, and editor most recently of Chinese Characters, a collection of essays on Chinese individuals by many well-known China watchers.Links to...
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The CCTV Minority Show
Nathan struggled to make sense of the mugshots. The young banker could remember countless details about the previous evening: the costumes, the songs, even the taste of exotic milk-based dishes. But how could he ever pull the criminals out of a line-up? Almost everything about the evening had been designed to draw attention away from their individual appearances.Learning Chinese? This is one of our easier lessons at the Intermediate level, since we go light on difficult vocabulary, but if...
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Mother's Secret Past
All through their autumn romance, Susan had seemed so eager that Michael meet her parents, and the two of them had planned a joint trip home at Thanksgiving just for this purpose. Yet now that the date was upon them, her enthusiasm had changed into an almost brooding depression, forcing Michael to wonder what could possibly have gone wrong. Had something in their relationship changed? Was she upset at him? Or had her parents heard something about him and disapproved of them being...
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No Ancient Wisdom, No Followers
As China continues to subsidize inefficient state enterprises on a massive scale, an increasing number of critics - domestic and foreign - are questioning whether current policies mark a rejection or corruption of the vision championed by reformers like Zhu Rongji in the 1990s. Their complaints paint a stark picture of crony-capitalism ossifying to the point where entrenched incumbents become a threat to the future of a prosperous market-oriented China. Are they true?Joining Jeremy...
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Gangnam Style
Rich Koreans, carnivorous teddy bears and Nazis. Lest anyone think we are oblivious to pop culture, today we are pleased to present an Elementary Chinese lesson on the latest Internet sensation sweeping across China. Considering the continued availability of Titanic gear in shops nationwide, we expect to continue hearing about this for at least the next decade, so it doesn't hurt to bone up on it.
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An Evening of Romance and Laughter
June's colleagues had been so eager to set her up with Peter that she had resisted for over a month, coming up first with this excuse and then that one before finally succumbing to at least one date. But now that the two of them were alone together, she wondered why had she waited? He was handsome, and funny and charming. Even the waiters, ever sensitive to the delicacy of unfolding love, had slowly cleared the rest of the guests indoors, leaving the two of them alone on the candlelit...
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Wang Xiaobo - A Special Pig
Wang Xiaobo is one of the most well-known contemporary Chinese authors. Born and raised in Beijing in the 1950s, Wang was sent down to the countryside as a "rusticated youth" in his late teens where he lived in both Yunnan and Shandong before returning to Beijing in the early 1970s. In the mid-1980s he spent time in the United States doing academic work before returning to Beijing where he gained recognition through the next decade in part for pieces like this one.Although Wang Xiaobo died...
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An evening at the Beijing Bookworm
On September 13, Sinica co-host Jeremy Goldkorn was delighted to chair a panel discussion at the Beijing Bookworm with authors Ian Johnson and Christina Larson, two well-known China journalists and now contributors to Chinese Characters, a collection of essays on individualism in modern China edited and published by Jeffrey Wasserstrom of the Asia Society and the University of California, Irvine.Our show today is a recording of that event, and while this is a bit more public than most of...
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A Sound of Thunder
As the time machine settled emerged from the plasma void, the world came back into focus through the tiny porthole. It was a jungle, and the jungle was high and broad and the entire world forever and forever. Sounds like music and sounds like flying tents filled the sky, and those were pterodactyls soaring with cavernous gray wings, gigantic bats of delirium and night fever. As the machine started its cooldown cycle, Eckles reached for his rifle and pursed his lips in satisfaction: after...
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Box on Head
You know the tin-foil hat wearing, conspiracy-paranoid crowd that started showing up almost overnight when X-Files became mainstream and that you'll still run into every now and again in the States, and especially if you live in San Francisco? Well... the good news is that China doesn't really have this kind of counterculture yet. The paranoid life is simpler here. More direct. And much less high-tech.Learning Chinese? The elementary level at Popup Chinese is where we get most of our...
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The Island Imbroglio
As Xi Jinping has stepped back into the public eye this week, the reappearance of China's heir apparent has been upstaged by large demonstrations across the country as tensions mount over territorial claims to the Diaoy (or Senkaku) Islands. As memories of earlier episodes of over-exuberant patriotism resurface, the events have the Sinica folks recalling with some nostalgia that the last time both Xi Jinping and a bunch of islands were in the news, the excitement was over Xi's vacation...
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Corn Batman
Bruce Wayne surveyed the hospital room where Gordon lay in babbling incoherence. The police commissioner had been delusional since being pulled from the Gotham sewers two days ago. And while the fallen officer could offer no words to explain his predicament, the keen eyes of his guest nonetheless understood. For lying on the table beside him were the remnants of a dinner too much for any man to bear: an untouched slab of beefsteak, a spoonful of mashed potatoes. And then the corn. Two pieces...
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Lost in the Desert
"There's no excuse to find oneself stuck in a desert these days," Philip muttered as he crested another dune. Between satellite positioning systems and cellular phones, it was practically impossible to get disconnected from society at all. So what were they doing trudging through what appeared to be the Sahara desert? The last few days may have been a bit muddled in his mind, but whatever the reason, Philip was pretty sure this was somehow James' fault. Whenever they got into a situation...
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Hollywood comes to China
When Xi Jinping headed to the United States earlier this year in what everyone assumed was a pre-coronation victory lap, one of the more surprising outcomes of his visit ended up being a stopover in Los Angeles, where China agreed to increase the number of Hollywood films released in mainland theaters each year and significantly hike the percentage of box office revenue allocated to overseas producers.With these pledges finally beginning to take effect, Jeremy Goldkorn hosts a special look...
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The Ayi Strikes Back
Let us break from the tradition of language instruction and instead offer some practical home-cleaning tips for making the best of your time in China. First, we recommend buying separate mops for the washroom and the rest of your home. Having a third mop dedicated for kitchen use is advisable but not necessary. And don't forget to keep your cleaning rags out of the kitchen, and take care lest they get tossed into the wash with the rest of your clothing. Other than that, living in China is...
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The Most Popular Lawyer in Hogtown
After the scandalous acquittal of Nathan Darnell, Jeremy Harvale became one of the more sought-after solicitors in the city, his services in demand by everyone from white-collar criminals to gang leaders and hardened murderers. And while his popularity may not have reflected a vote of confidence in the ethics of the legal profession, it never helped to be too fastidious about morality when hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of personal freedom were on the line.Learning Chinese? Let...
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The French Revolution
Lest there be any doubt to the French protestors who have taken to milling about outside Popup Towers, let it be known that - like Byron - our hearts stand firmly with your people, save in those edge cases where demonstrations of solidarity run up against our inveterate hatred of early-morning calisthenics and other forms of fascist reveille.And what is that mon ami, you are learning Chinese but tired of the oppressive pablum that constitutes most Chinese textbooks? Then shake off your...
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The Huawei Enigma
Is there any other company that better captures the dual way China is perceived internationally than Huawei? As one of China's few market-based telecommunications equipment providers, the company is in many ways a symbol of China's high-tech, global future. And yet this is the same company frequently tarred as a security threat by foreign journalists who play up the military background of founder Ren Zhangfei and point with some justification to China's dismal record in Internet security and...
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Turtle in the Mud
It turns out that our first mistake doing business in China was giving our hosts a gift of dessicated turtle bones wrapped in bamboo and silk. They were polite enough to accept our offering and one of the younger staffers even commented on how well preserved the carapace seemed to be, but we never did get that contract, and they stopped replying to our emails. Chalk it up to cultural differences.This is an advanced show,and it's a bit different from anything we've done to date. While we...
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The Raid of the Scorned Mongol Woman
This week on Sinica, we take a break from the trial of Gu Kailai, the 18th Party Congress, and the recent flurry of disgruntled expat blog posts to cast our gaze back to the age of Mongol politics, barbarian cross-border raids, and that period in Chinese history which gave us the Great Wall as it currently stands in the mountains north of Beijing.With Kaiser Kuo abroad on business our show is a more intimate interview this week. Hosting is Jeremy Goldkorn of danwei.com renown, who is...
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The Second Vaccination
Learning Chinese? We've already had a few lessons about basic numbers in mandarin, so in today's show we take a step beyond that and talk about ordinals, or how to say that it is your first, second, third or four hundredth time doing something. The rules for doing this are much easier in Chinese than in English, so take a listen and in less than ten minutes you'll be well on your way to the elementary level, at least as far as numbers are concerned.
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Any Shanghai Restaurants Open Late?
This introduction has zero bearing on our actual lesson, but considering the gravity of the subject matter, if you live in Shanghai please throw us a bone and tell us where on earth people go for late-night dining. The "Eat Drink Man Woman" diner on Tongren Lu used to be a great place with serviceable coffee and 24-hours of nutritious WIFI. But with that shut down it seems the entire city's late-night dining options are restricted to McDonalds, 永和大王 and 避风塘. Say it ain't so.
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The Fourth Estate
Following the Chinese media's intense coverage of the blitzkrieg trial of Gu Kailai, those of us at Sinica want to take this opportunity to look back at the most riveting China story of the year. And while we've covered developments week-by-week and assume you have too, as Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn point out in today's show, there's been very little discussion of how the story itself broke: how and when did Western journalists cut through the Chinese rumor mill?Answering these questions...
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Gollum visits Beijing
Andy Serkis tossed the dungeons and dragons treatment onto his coffee table, where it thudded to rest atop the scattered remains of nine other fantasy scripts he had previously discarded. With The Hobbit in post-production and Game of Thrones earning rave reviews on HBO, there was no shortage of epic fantasy projects looking for his participation. How ironic that after years of struggling for this sort of legitimacy he was hoping for a more conventional role in a dramatic comedy.And it was...
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The Linguistic Massacre
Murder, wiretapping and blackmail aside, our focus today is actually on a more pedestrian form of linguistic crime: the way many Chinese speakers are managing to butcher mandarin by virtue of not understanding its origins. Specifically, today we focus on five useful idioms that almost every single native speaker now uses to mean the exact opposite of what they actually mean.This is more difficult show than most of our intermediate lessons, since we spend a bit of time talking about classical...
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The Chairman
Ten years after his elevation to General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, Hu Jintao remains almost as much of an enigma now as he was on first taking power. What do we know about the man beyond his reputation as a somewhat robotic consensus-seeker, and how will history look back at his time in power? To discuss this question and all the other news that is fit to podcast, Sinica host Jeremy Goldkorn is delighted to be joined for Sinica today with Economist correspondent Gady...
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Giving Directions in Shanghai
Things we love about Shanghai include its great subway system, fantastic nightlife, and its green and walkable city streets. But then there are the taxis... and have you ever tried getting a cab in Shanghai? First there is the matter of flagging one down in a place where convention demands that taxi lines are formed in parallel to the road. And assuming you wrest one from the masses and clamber in? Well... then your adventure has only begun.Learning Chinese? Our lesson today is all about...
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Yeah, She Wins - Sinica at the Olympics
This week on Sinica, we go to the Olympics in recognition of what is unarguably the biggest story coming out of London: the spectacular performance of Chinese swimming sensation Ye Shiwen and the subsequent allegations of doping and anti-competitive behavior by the international and particularly American media which has - unsurprisingly - prompted a defensive backlash throughout the Chinese Internet.Beyond the various Olympic scandals, we also turn our attention to other China stories that...
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Chinese Negotiation Tactics
The Shenzhen company's pricing strategy was simple but effective. Five minutes after any customer arrived, they would be guided to the executive sundeck and given several glasses of cool spring water while they waited for the executive team. Once the customer was sufficiently hydrated, their counterparts would arrive with apologies and a gift of the region's finest green tea. After several toasts, the pricing negotiations were never quite as protracted as some customers may have...
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The Beijing Floods
Memories of last week's floods in Beijing are dying hard, at least judging by the way the hottest selling items on Taobao continue to be car escape kits, and the way traffic now manages to grind to a halt everywhere around the capital anytime there's even a touch of inclement weather.As a consequence, today on Popup Chinese we're happy to publish a fully-Chinese discussion podcast for advanced listeners. This is really just listening practice, but we have a discussion focused on the topic of...
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A Torrential Rainstorm
This week on Sinica, attention turns to the torrential flooding which plagued Beijing earlier this week and claimed the lives of at least 77 residents in the Chinese capital. As tempers flare and city officials resign, questions mount over whether this natural disaster is turning into a political crisis for the city government. Also under discussion is a sharp increase in hospital killings, a brazen rise in online shadow banking, Chinese acquisitions in foreign oil-field markets, and...
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Suicidal Tendencies
Samuel had always appreciated architecture, which was why he had insisted on hiring a top-tier architect to design his new office. So how ironic that it would be here - in the iconic glass lobby that had symbolized his success - that he would end both his career and his life. It had not been an easy choice, but what other could he make? In the last week everything he had lived for had been taken away in an elaborate and cruel con game in which even his closest friends and relatives seemed...
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Attack of the Piranhas
This week on Sinica, Chinese economic growth is on the rocks, ASEAN tensions are breaking through the facade of East-Asian political unity, a major Chinese telecom company is implicated in an international trade scandal, and man-eating fish have escaped into the wilds of Guangxi, prompting a profusion of local get-rich-quick schemes and threatening our plans to take a break from it all with a swimming vacation in southern China.Joining host Jeremy Goldkorn for this week's wide-ranging show...
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Good Morning, Mr. Bond
The sheer scale of Emilio Largo's China operations -- including the military bunker in which James now found himself sequestered -- suggested far more menacing plans than the mere narcotics-smuggling suspected in London. But there were more mysteries here than how MI5 had missed the rebirth of SPECTRE, such as how his former adversary had survived their last encounter, or how anyone could setup such a labyrinthine operation in Shanghai without the active complicity of the Chinese...
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A Glass of Ice Water
Although he couldn't remember any details of the accident, having been knocked unconscious by the force of the truck's initial impact, Xiao Li found himself scarred by the collision in unexpected ways. Even months after waking up in a Shunyi hospital, the young man would find his thoughts drifting off at the strangest of times. And his memory was not what it had been in the past, something particularly problematic for someone in the service profession.Learning Chinese? This is a Chinese...
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Sino-American Perceptions
This week on Sinica, Kaiser Kuo is joined by two guests from the Committee of 100, an organization formed over twenty years ago by I.M. Pei and other prominent Chinese-Americans to address issues in the Sino-American relationship. The Committee recently released its fourth in-depth survey, the 2012 US China Public Opinion Perceptions Survey which turns up some surprising findings about changes in how Americans and Chinese perceive each other.Representing the Committee of 100 to talk about...
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Knife to a Gunfight
Officer Stevens pried open the warehouse door and slipped into the musty interior. Although armed solely with a knife, he was not the least concerned about his lack of firepower. More pressing in his mind was the far-off wail of sirens, an audible sign the rest of his squad was closing in on this complex. In perhaps fifteen minutes the entire compound would be surrounded by uniformed officers, at which point the escape options for everyone would narrow considerably.Learning Chinese? This...
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Home Invasion
Hands trussed behind his back as the thieves ransacked his flat, the diamond merchant reflected with unromantic detachment that this could be the work of almost any of his colleagues. Yet he was not totally unprepared for this eventuality, which was why his thoughts kept returning to his home security system. "There's a special wireless mode enabled by default," the salesperson had confided in him. "It can't be bypassed by cutting the wire, and when the alarm is forcibly disabled it will...
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Consoling a Friend
Providing emotional support isn't exactly our forte here at Popup Towers, and it probably isn't wrong to call our philosophy closer to the sink-or-swim variety. But when an esteemed listener wrote in requesting a lesson on how to console a distraught friend, we couldn't say no. So if you're curious how to handle yourself the next time a Chinese-speaking friend suffers a nervous breakdown, we have your back with this podcast. Because life will probably get better for them. Maybe.
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Undue Pressure
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...
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The Manchu Legacy
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...
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Our Hong Kong Subsidiary
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 growth to demand-pull in Asia and management's hands-off attitude towards 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...
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Lost in the Forest
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...
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The One Child Policy
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...
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The Limits of Evolution
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...
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Crossing the Border
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....
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The Detective Welder, part II
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...
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The State Bowling Champion
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...
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Morally Adrift?
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...
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An Education for Life
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...
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Network Transfer
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...
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All Sinica Federation of Women
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...
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Beijing Autopia, 2157
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.
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Return of the Roommate
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...
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The Indiana Jones of China
After his controversial involvement with the Tarim mummy excavations in Western Xinjiang, Victor Mair might just be the closest thing Sinology has to Indiana Jones, assuming the fictional Spielberg character was a renowned linguist, translator and popular blogger in addition to his standing as a historian/archeologist. So it can be no surprise that we're delighted to be joined by Victor today for a discussion that delves from the origins of well-known Buddhist texts to digressions on ancient...
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The Interminable Wait
At forty-five minutes past the hour Mark was visibly restless, and by a quarter past he was positively pacing. It didn't matter to him that this was a sensitive legal affair involving three major parties across two continents. Considering that Hawkins-Billet was extending its services pro bono - hardly an inexpensive favor - surely it wasn't too much to expect punctuality from the client?Learning mandarin? Our lesson today teaches how to make confident statements about the future using what...
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The Anti-Foreign Crackdown
If you've been following the news, you'll know our title for this show refers to the latest "official crackdown" going on in Beijing: this time aimed at the apparent flood of itinerant foreigners in China to steal money, jobs and women from Yang Rui at CCTV. In unrelated news, if you want to buy some drugs, you can apparently still pick them up at Sanlitun.As far as we can tell, the most immediate effect of all this commotion has been a clampdown on visas issued in Hong Kong and a tightening...
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Stirring up the South China Sea
This week on Sinica, as the situation in the South China Seas simmers and Chinese society turns noticeably xenophobic, we're pleased to be joined by Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt from the International Crisis Group, a non-governmental organization which has just released a fantastic report on the actors and factors in Chinese policymaking that are contributing to increased tensions in the South China Sea. In contrast with much of the writing on this issue which assumes that China is a unitary...
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Occupational Hazard
Flying into Los Angeles at night was like falling into the stars themselves. Below the plane, the darkened sprawl stretched to the ends of the horizon, the streets bathed in a hundred thousand glimmering lights, flashing and twinkling as the cars on the expressway churned their way home. And welcoming them all was the LAX airport in the distance, its runways framed by strobing lights....
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Drinks with the Boss
Remember the time you worked for that state-owned auto company and got invited to the annual banquet and said yes and were surprised when everyone started relaxing and having a good time and soon you were even flirting with Xiao Li and thinking it might go somewhere but then the next thing you remember was waking in a pitch-black room with your body wracked in a kind of throbbing scream and your mind seized with visions from Ecclesiastes, wondering how you managed to get from the banquet...
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Interesting Times
Joining Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn on Sinica this week are special guests Gady Epstein from the Economist and Ed Wong from the New York Times, here to discuss what has been a surreal two weeks even by Chinese standards, bringing us the spectacle of a blind activist's refuge in the American Embassy in Beijing, the ensuing diplomatic negotiations for his release, and an upsurge of popular Chinese outrage over a maritime dispute with the Philippines. Our guests also chat about...
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Thinking and Feeling
Our lesson today is for absolute beginners to the Chinese language, which means that even if you don't know any Chinese you should still find it accessible enough to pick up some of the basics. In it we cover two useful verbs you can use to tell others what you are thinking and feeling. And as a bonus, we also cover a useful phrase for apologizing in Chinese, either so you can apologize yourself, or so you can demand satisfaction from everyone around you.New to Popup Chinese and not sure...
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The Monkey King: chapter 1, part 3
The Monkey King is one of the four classic works of Chinese literature, standing alongside Dream of the Red Chamber, the Water Margin and Three Kingdoms as foundational pillars in Chinese civilization. As such, we are pleased to present this unabridged and manually annotated transcript of the story for advanced students of Chinese literature. If you are starting from scratch, we suggest beginning with part one, which outlines the Chinese creation myth and discusses the mysterious origins of...
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Tearing it Up
Our clip today has it all: useful language for subverting the local establishment while showcasing the amazing vocal diversity in mainland film-dubbing circles. And for fun, we're happy to offer useful advice on pronouncing Colin Firth's name at no extra charge. So take a listen. And if you can identify our mystery clip, be sure to write Echo for a chance to win a free month of premium access. Good luck!
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Son of Gump
The somnolent corpse twitched as the first jolts of electricity seared through its head, trunk and prostrate limbs until wreaths of blue flame arced up and down the leg braces as the voltage faded and the laboratory returned to silence, a silence filled with only the smell of charred flesh and the unspoken question that reached between the two observers, asking if this might finally be the time for the legend to rise again?Our Chinese podcast for today is all about speed, and is filled with...
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Sex and Marriage
We hurriedly cleaned up the studio and tried to set a bit more of a romantic tone this week, a feat accomplished mostly by positioning small candles and trays of potpourri by the microphones. And why else than because our subject today is sex and marriage, and perhaps more of the former than the latter. So join us for a show about who wants it, who gets it, and exactly how far some researchers will go when doing work on the Chinese sex industry.Joining Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn on...
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Chinese Industrial Policy and the Automotive Market
Even as the Beijing Auto Show prepares to toast the Chinese market with its typical mixture of sex and tech, industry insiders have been stunned by recent news showing the market share of domestic Chinese manufacturers falling relative to their foreign counterparts, a trend that has persisted even in the face of strongly preferential government policies and even overt efforts to push the industry into Chinese hands. In this show, we ask what this failure means for Chinese ambitions to be an...
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Pulling a Car
Max was still not clear on exactly how his Volvo had ended up stuck in this patch of loose sand somewhere off-road in Utah, and Robert was not being exactly forthcoming about the details. The last thing he could remember was dozing off somewhere by Shiprock, only to be jolted awake by a sort of sliding brake that left them stranded on the side of this dirt road with two wheels spinning in the sand, no cellular signal and not another car in sight. This was a problem they would have to solve...
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The Saga of the Bottle Cap
Gandhi said something about being the change you want to see, and we agree. Because while you may have purchased that bottle of orangeade, and even handed over good money for it, it was a transaction made under false pretenses. So go stand up for yourself. Head back to that newspaper stand and tell the owner what you think of his business. You can insist this is not good enough and demand satisfaction.Learning Chinese? We have more beginner lessons coming out later this week. In the...
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In Dialogue with China Dialogue
"So what you're saying is... you can't give awards for good journalism to bad journalism?"After a few upbeat weeks on political intrigue in Chongqing, Sinica is back this week with another depressing show about the various ways China is killing us all. This week our conversation turns to cadmium-laced rice, endangered species and the pollution of the food supply in a conversation with writer and broadcaster Isabel Hilton, founder of China Dialogue, and Jonathan Watts, Guardian correspondent...
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Conflicts in the Medical System
We're pretty lucky not to have had to deal with any major medical crises while in China. Which is probably a good thing judging by the contents of this Advanced podcast, which features a native-native Chinese conversation between Echo and Tiansen about the medical system and how it often puts doctors and patients at odds. So if you've already got pretty decent Chinese and are looking for listening practice that will help you pick up new words and phrases, give this podcast and shot and see...
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Memories of High School
Suffering the mockery of his high school peers, Stephen had retreated into scholastics to escape from pain and loneliness. Eventually, this would lead him to graduate with top honors and be accepted by one of the most prestigious universities in the nation. And yet as he accepted his diploma, he wondered if one day he might return to this small town and show them all that with courage and determination, a man could still succeed.
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Muckraking with Chinese Characteristics
In one of the juicier quotes making the rounds on social networks this week a private equity investor in Shanghai savaged the Chinese media for its unblinking corruption, quipping to the New York Times that "if one of my companies came up with a cure for cancer, I still couldn’t get any journalists to come to the press conference without promising them a huge envelope filled with cash.”Exactly how bad is this problem and were does it cross the line? This week Sinica dives into the question...
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Advice for Dealing with New Parents
In the spirit of sharing a helpful tip for dealing with friends who procreate, one thing we've learned something of the hard way is the astonishing degree to which parents end up being more patient with their new offspring than they are with their non-childbearing but emotionally supportive friends, especially should one happen to make a stray remark about asking the little guy to hurry up because other people might need to go too.Just starting to learn Chinese? Our podcast for today is one...
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Happy Easter
I know you were doing email long before I signed up for the yahoo, but could anyone really have imagined what the Internet would have become when AOL invented it in 1993? I mean... just look at this beautiful scarf I bought to celebrate our Easter gift-giving tradition. It might seem like an ordinary piece of clothing at first, but if you look carefully you'll see it's hand-made. And I had to get it shipped in overnight from a store that specializes in one-of-a-kind pieces, so don't get it...
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The End of the Expat Package?
Heard the bad news? Word on the street is that Fat Package passed away in a Suzhou bar last month. We never really moved in the same circles as the guy, but if true we'll miss his presence in town. Even while we were hustling to make ends meet downtown, it was somehow comforting to know Fat was enjoying the Shunyi lifestyle. And with his place just a quick heiche from the Lido hotel who could be faulted for wondering what it might take for them to get a taste of the expat lifestyle...
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Introduction to Pinyin
By now we assume you've heard of pinyin: the dominant method of writing the sound of Chinese characters using the roman alphabet. We use pinyin everywhere on Popup Chinese and while we obviously can't teach you all of the sounds in a single podcast, we did want to put something together for those of you having trouble making sense of the system, and in particular to clear up three common misconceptions people have about the romanization system: the mistaken idea that pronunciation follows...
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A Visit to the Dentist
Today we are pleased but mystified to present another edition of Popup Total Request Live, this time with an advanced show directed at the astonishingly large number of you (N > 1) who have written in to request a Chinese-only discussion on dental hygiene. Facing the incredulity of the rest of the office, Echo tried to explain your enthusiasm to us as follows. "It's because everyone loves the dentist," she said. "It's like a holiday when you take a day off work to go to get your teeth...
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Where did you put the plunger?
Long-time listeners may be hard-pressed to forget our first foray into the exciting world of home plumbing, and if you're new to Popup Chinese you may want to listen to that show before exposing yourself to today's sequel, which picks where the last one left off. Our two protagonists now return home after a hearty lunch and turn their attention to the question we have left hanging all these three years: where did the plunger go anyway?Learning Chinese? We're not sure if this lesson is a step...
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Excavation and Betrayal
With fears inflated by a few carefully placed rumors, the local populace was wise enough to stay away from the dig site, rightly fearing what might surface in a place which had lain buried for so long in the sands outside Cairo. And yet this same caution did not apply to the members of the excavation team, of whom no-one could predict which way their loyalties would bend once the tomb was opened and its treasures revealed once more to a waiting world.Learning Chinese? Our Intermediate lesson...
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Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
The world's cultural heritage had been incinerated along with its servers when the first bombs fell, and what little film stock survived had decayed in the years that followed as human society struggled to rebuild itself after the apocalypse. And yet here (here!) in this musty storehouse in Tibet, Xiao Wang had somehow stumbled across an astonishingly large collection of twentieth century cultural artifacts. Would it be enough to piece the past back into existence, and rediscover the fabled...
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Adventures on the Second Ring Road
Stephen looked at his cab driver with newfound respect. Although traffic on the second ring road was otherwise touch-and-go, here at last was a man attempting to change it. Hunched over the steering wheel with his eyes on the road, the driver pushed forward at a slow but constant pace, sometimes lagging behind and sometimes nearly hitting the vehicle in front but never stopping. It was traffic smoothing applied as expertly as Stephen had ever seen done, as if this one man were trying to...
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L'affaire Daisey
If you smell anything burning, it's likely your Internet cable melting from the heat of all these rumors. Which is why at Sinica we turn our unforgiving gaze this week at unsubstantiated press foreign and domestic, focusing first on reports of heightened police security in Beijing, midnight tank appearances, gunshots near the square, luxury car crashes, and even whispers of a coup d'etat. And more internationally, we can't help but discuss This American Life's recent retraction of a...
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The Fate of an Industry
Things were starting to look ugly. While blockbuster films could still draw people to theaters, the rise of Youtube and Bittorrent had savaged the rest of the industry, destroying the rental income most studios relied upon to break even. And while the big studios had adjusted with ever more extravagant productions, the reality for most directors was less pretty. Unable to cast big name stars, smaller productions were forced into hiring cheaper and cheaper actors, to the point that the cast...
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Holding Pattern
What was it about his in-law's apartment that put Derek on edge? The kitchen was small but serviceable and the rest of the apartment didn't seem to lack any amenities: the living room had a television and pull-out sofabed, a wireless router provided steady Internet access, and a fridge and washing machine stood tucked into a tiny alcove near the door. At only fifty square meters it wasn't exactly a place he would choose to live himself, but why should even a short visit give him such a...
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Midnight in Peking
In a China accustomed to glacial political change, Bo Xilai's dramatic fall from power this week has stunned observers nationwide. Joining us to help make sense of things is Guardian correspondent Tania Branigan, who helps review what exactly happened to the former Chongqing Party Secretary and once Politburo contender. Sinica then turns to a discussion of history, architecture and murder with fellow guest and soon-to-be-famous author Paul French, whose non-fiction murder mystery Midnight in...
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A Plunge from the Cliff
Given the recent death of Edward's solicitor and the mysterious disappearance of his wife, it seemed natural to suspect foul play in the millionaire's own untimely passing. But who could the culprit be? There were but five people on the island at the time of his death, and every one had an ironclad alibi, having gathered to dine not only with each other at the time of the murder, but with none other than Detective Wentworth Summers, the most reputable sleuth in all of Scotland Yard.Learning...
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The Movie Store
Could the police crackdowns and online competition really be having such a deleterious effect on Shanghai's leading film shop? Whatever the cause, it was clear the quality of the merchandise at Movie World was regressing. As recently as the Shanghai Expo the store had managed to keep the latest releases consistently in stock. But now the shelves would stay empty for days on end, while the clerks showed almost complete indifference to the state of the selection.Learning Chinese? This...
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The Mirror of History: China through the Looking Glass
Sinica is coming out a bit earlier than usual this week: we were lucky enough to catch Jeffrey Wasserstrom this Monday during a well-timed visit to Beijing, and so dragged him into the studio to get his views on the recent elections at Wukan, what is happening in Beijing right now with the CPPCC, and also his more general thoughts on the way people tend to look into China's past when seeking a mirror for its present: what comparisons are actually useful or valid for this current period?For...
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Roald Amundsen's Shanghai Diaries
Winter had arrived with unexpected vigor, and from his window overlooking People's Square, Roald could still see the scattered husks of several unfortunate souls who had failed to find shelter. This was the survival of the fittest at work - in Shanghai as in Antarctica - and yet the Norwegian explorer's narrow escape from a similar fate still haunted the man. For despite the high price of rental properties in Shanghai, his current accommodations were still inadequate for the coming chill,...
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What happened to my credit card?
We're not suggesting that the Lido hotel is evil in the same way as the Overlook from the Shining, but be informed that at least one of the bank machines in there is on the fritz, and withdrawing cash may involve a longer wait than is customary, with the exact length depending on how many technicians are needed to pry off the faceplate of the machine and dive into its innards in search of your American Express card.Learning Chinese? This is a pretty basic lesson all about various cards (bank...
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China in the World
This week on Sinica, your hosts Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn are pleased to welcome Geremie R Barm, the well-known Chinese historian, author, filmmaker and translator, and the Director of the Australian Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University in Canberra.And the topic for debate? Today we take a break from our usual focus on current affairs for a more wide-ranging discussion that starts with the history and constant reinvention of Hangzhou's West Lake, and moves...
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Father, why must you dress up like this every Wednesday?
A comedy-mystery-thriller laced with father-son conflict and a subplot involving the Transportation Security Administration, "Father, why must you dress up like this every Wednesday" is a masterpiece of contemporary drama that defies categorization while calling attention to the all too human costs of airport security theater. Learning Chinese? Our dialogue today is about as fast as they get at the Elementary level. Our focus is on how to tell others to mind their own business using one of a...
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Journey to the West
This week on Sinica, Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn are pleased to host Ed Wong from the New York Times along with Adrienne Mong who you've seen on NBC News. First up is Xi Jinping's recent visit to the United States, and a closer look at the personal and political background of the man who will be King. Also on our roster is a discussion of the state of development across Southeast Asia, and of course Eric Li's controversial editorial in the New York Times last week, which seemed to argue...
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Let the Bullets Fly
In our inaugural episode of the Popup Chinese movie show, opinions split over Let the Bullets Fly, the Chinese western directed by Jiang Wen and starring train-robbing, gun-shooting and horse-riding versions of himself and Chow Yun-Fat. This is the film that broke the Chinese box-office record shortly after its release, but considering that its competition that year included possibly the worst Chinese film ever made, we thought it about time for a discussion of whether the film is actually...
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The Next Generation
Liu laid the device on the table to the confusion of the assembled crowd. It seemed to be nothing so much as a strange evolutionary variant of the mobile phone, perhaps half the size of a normal wallet, although illustrating the same folding mechanism. Gone was the touch screen and sleek glass cover, replaced with an industrial keyboard that folded into the casing. And there didn't seem to be anywhere to scrawl Chinese input.Back in the 1990s, McDonalds used to bear the brunt of public riots...
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Middle-Child Syndrome
Until the age of five, Simon had never known misery, his life being a series of happy discoveries, as the young boy discovered in turn the pleasures of self-locomotion, the power of speech, and eventually the joy of socializing with a group of well-adjusted peers in the local kindergarten. And yet these good times were not to last, as events beyond his control conspired to end this idyllic period of this life.Learning Chinese? Our Chinese podcast today is for absolute beginners to mandarin....
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The Satellite Conspiracy
Although his vision was still clouded by the drugs in his system, James had enough sense to know he was in a scientific laboratory of sorts, or perhaps a telecommunications center. The distinct hum of an industrial-grade ventilation system and lack of any natural light suggested a deep subterranean lair or perhaps military-grade bunker. Yet it was not until his head began to clear and the room came into focus that the true peril of his situation became menacingly clear.
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The Allure of the Southwest
This week on Sinica, Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn take a closer look at the beautiful city of Chongqing with a forthright discussion that delves into the myriad attractions of this beautiful and occasionally mysterious Chinese city, famous recently not only for its spicy cuisine and panda reserves, but now also as a leading destination for vacation-style medical treatment among the mainland elite.Beyond this standard tourist fare, we're also pleased this week to host Jeremiah Jenne of...
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Reading Passage Exercise #4
Our sample HSK tests here on Popup Chinese all consist of fifteen questions that measure your knowledge of the exact grammar and vocabulary points on which you will be tested for the real exam. Your challenge in this sample HSK test is to fill-in-the-blanks with the only word which makes contextual sense. Once you're done this exercise, you can find the rest of our HSK tests through our online HSK test center. Good luck!
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The Great Wall of Music
We're developing a conspiracy theory that the Great Wall was really designed to act as a two-way non-permeable culture membrane. Because while it manages to keep an enormous amount of foreign music from getting into China, it also tends to trap what little amount trickles in, amplifying seemingly random musicians into Asian megastars and ricocheting their work around the country until it pervades everything from banking telephone hotlines to railways to practically every handheld device with...
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Listening Exercise #2
Today we are pleased to present another HSK listening test for students preparing for China's official test of mandarin proficiency. These questions lie at the more difficult end of the spectrum for the this level. If you have no difficulty with this material challenge yourself and consider testing for a higher grade. You can find more difficult materials and many more sample tests in our HSK test center, along with official wordlists and other HSK study materials.
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Running Dogs and Locusts
Ongoing tension between Hong Kong and mainland citizens erupted into open flames on February 1 when a Hong Kong group raised more than HKD 100,000 to publish a full-page anti-China advertisement in the Apple Daily comparing mainlanders to parasitic locusts and calling for curtailment of benefits enjoyed by Chinese visitors to the Special Administrative Region. The ad was the latest move in an increasingly acrimonious spat that shows no sign of letting up.Joining Kaiser Kuo this week are...
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The Beijing Accent and Standard Mandarin
It's probably the biggest source of misinformation out there about the Chinese language, so today Echo and David take to our studio to chat about what exactly constitutes the difference between standard mandarin and the Beijing dialect. If you're totally new to Chinese, you can use this show to practice some key words in a way that will help you come across like a native speaker. And if you're a more advanced beginner, we also have some real Beijing slang in here we encourage you to throw...
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Epilogue to A Scanner Darkly
Today we take a break from showcasing Chinese literature to feature the epilogue from the Chinese translation of Philip K. Dick's well-known short novel, A Scanner Darkly. As fans of PKD, we found the full translations to a number of his books buried in the foreign literature section of the Xinhua bookstore at Xidan and thought it might be worthwhile highlighting a passage as an example of a fairly straightforward English to Chinese translation.On a related note, reading foreign literature...
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A Matter of Food Security
It felt as though the household was passing through some horrible wartime rationing. Once a daily luxury, the mid-afternoon milking had become at first irregular before fading to an almost complete absence. Conferring on the crisis from the comfort of the third floor sun deck, Edmund and Susan decided that the time had passed for inaction. If they were not to live at the mercy of others for their basic food security, it would be necessary to root out their own reserves, however problematic...
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A Perversion of Justice
It had been particularly dark that evening, which lent some credence to the claims of the parking lot attendants not to have seen the actual killing. But while the evidence against the main suspect was admittedly circumstantial, the drive to secure a conviction was shared at all levels of government, with it being quite clear to those in power that whoever killed Andrei Prodan had not only an uncommon viciousness, but a fundamental disregard for the institutions of public governance itself.
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The Elections in Taiwan
If your impression of Taiwanese politics has been dominated by the island's recurring stories of vote-buying and parliamentary brawls, you'll probably be shocked to hear what Mary Kay Magistad has to say about her recent trip to cover last week's elections on the island, in which Ma Ying-jeou of the Kuomingtang Party was re-elected to a second term in a surprisingly sedate process.Trying to keep up with what's going on in China? Today Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn are joined by Mary Kay...
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The Ultimatum
The sales report was taking longer than Xiao Hong expected, which was surprising considering that sales were down two hundred percent in the quarter and there wasn't actually that much to write-up. Yet the document weighed on his mind, clouding his mid-morning QQ chats and distracting him during his pre-lunch sales meeting. Fortunately, the prospect of lunch with an old friend promised at least a brief respite from the dark clouds of work left undone.Learning Chinese? The stark terror the...
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Impressions of Sichuan
Our collective vote for the most incomprehensible Chinese we've ever heard still goes to whatever that farmer selling miniature Terracotta statues was speaking the day we stopped by Qin Shihuang's tomb in Xi'an. And compared to that, the Sichuanese accent is delightful and funny and amazingly comprehensible. And it's actually so very *almost* mandarin that - had history turned but slightly differently in 1955 - we would all be speaking it today.Learning Chinese? Our advanced shows at Popup...
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Year End Roundup
It was the year of the housing market (up then down), Ai Weiwei's imprisonment, Wukan, the Wenzhou train crash, air pollution, gutter oil, tainted milk, clenbuterol, China bulls and bears, government transparency, the soaring price of Maotai, Guo Meimei sticking it to the Red Cross, drinking and driving crackdowns, the sixth plenary session, Weibo and the real name system, Shenzhou 8 and Chinese space exploration, the 100th anniversary of the Xinhai revolution, SARFT declaration of war on...
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A Trip to the Gym
Surrounded by an objectively unpleasant mass of grunting, sweating fleshcakes, Hank's body resented his mind for its foolish attempt to impose such Spartan discipline on them both. And to have the gall to disguise it as self-improvement? Gone indeed were the halcyon days of 2011 with its late nights at the pub and mid-morning breakfasts, replaced with this daily hell of early-morning suffering and pain.Learning Chinese? Even if you're as generally slothful as some of us you'll still be able...
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Horrors of the Chinese Rail System
Now that Chinese New Years is barreling down on us like a t-shirt salesperson at the Great Wall, the thoughts of pretty much everyone throughout China are turning to the obvious question of the holidays: how on earth to get home. If you've ever experienced traveling during what the locals euphemistically refer to as the "Golden Week", you'll know what this involves. And if you've been lucky enough to avoid the spectacle, let our Chinese podcast for today provide the horrifying...
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Comrades in Space
The Captain grew reflective as earth loomed out the starboard window. His crew would be pleased with their extended shore leave, but the inner planets were far too crowded for his tastes. Although the first few days off-ship were always refreshing, after that he would miss the constant adventures and brotherly camaraderie that had made his time in space so professionally and personally fulfilling. Years traversing the galaxy would do that to a man, he thought. In time you could come to feel...
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The Fleet Street Murders
Fleet Street had embraced the killings with the unbridled enthusiasm of the British press, pouring rivers of ink into outraged editorials denouncing the demise of traditional values and calling for the heads of practically the entire city council. The authorities responded with the imposition of a strict curfew, yet seemed powerless to arrest London's downward spiral. Practically every dawn brought new rumors of death and dismemberment, and breathless reporting on the discovery of yet...
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The Wukan Uprising
For the last few days, international attention has focused on the small fishing town of Wukan in southern China where villagers are in open revolt. Simmering tensions caused by corruption and illegal land sales have escalated into an armed uprising by locals against security forces and local government, both of which have been driven into at least temporary exile.Starting with the question of what exactly is happening down south, our conversation on Sinica this week eventually turns to a...
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Writing Exercise #5
There are certain segments of the Chinese population whose terminal detention have led them to complain to fellow inmates that the Chinese government doesn't have a sense of humor. We believe this is not strictly true, since it's the people in the Chinese government rather than the institution itself who lack the introspection necessary for self-deprecation. Or that is the message we're taking from the hysterical fits the Chinese Internet seems to be throwing our way each time we try to view...
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A Trip to the Orphanage
The Shaanxi orphanage was not where Xi Jinping had hoped to spend his weekend, but a western pilgrimage was an easy way to shore up support among the Party's left-leaning student faction and consolidate his lead as front-runner for replacing Hu Jintao as Party Chairman in 2012. Nonetheless, as the children bustled into the room screaming and yelling, one of the most powerful men on the Politburo couldn't help but think back to his last vacation in Tahiti, with its endless beaches, seaside...
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The Revolutionary Breakthrough
In real life, we suspect this Hollywood conversation would have a lot less breathless talk about "revolutionary breakthroughs" and a lot more apologetic mumbling about how "it seemed like a good idea at the time" and "is there any way we can avoid getting the Feds involved?" Not that we'd necessarily do anything differently to be perfectly frank, because what use are close friends and family if they're not going to be supportive about personal development goals and/or hostile to...
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What Year-End Bonus?
There's a story circulating on Weibo that may or may not be apocryphal, but is whipping up resentment and envy among proles like us nationwide. You may have heard it: it's about a secretary in a Chinese investment company who broke down in tears after receiving a six-figure year-end bonus. When news of this hit our office, work stopped for at least a minute, although less out of shock at the excesses of finance and more from our collective inability to rapidly handle currency conversion when...
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Cthulhu visits the Wiltshire Bed and Breakfast
The dream had been rich in suffering and in omens of his imminent return: creatures of unspeakable form pooling in the blood-soaked depths, waves of terrible power foaming beneath a darkening midday sun. And through it all the chanting, chanting, chanting of his true name. Over and over the chorus called for his return, for the restoration of his empire and the slaughter of all mankind. And it would soon come to pass, once his sojourn in this quiet British village was complete.
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Learning Chinese
Shortly after his arrival in China, the late, great, 19th century Sinologist Robert Hart would write his frustrations in his private diary, confiding that the convoluted phonemes of the Chinese language struck him like nothing so much as "the sounds one would make talking to a horse," and bemoaning his placement in Shanghai, a damnable city far from the Imperial capital where he considered it impossible to pick up mandarin "through one's skin."Fast forward more than a century and while none...
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Beijing City Directions
We should have a special show called "Total Request Live" which will be much like MTV's video request show except with less sex and more conversational mandarin. In any event, that's what we're getting today as we're pleased to publish a Chinese lesson on a topic that's been requested by you guys: the basics of asking for directions in Chinese. The mandarin to do this is actually fairly simple, but our dialogue moves quickly so we're publishing this at the elementary rather than absolute...
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Asking for Directions
Two days west from Guilin and the riders were all but lost. Despite the effectiveness of China's Imperial road network, which strung together the major cities of the empire and helped ensure the political fealty of the far-flung provinces, nationwide travel was still dangerous. And the maps from the Imperial College in Beijing were nearly worthless too, showing only the general lay of the land and occasional geographic landmark. To find a small town in this maze-like mountainous region the...
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Chinese Literature
Our podcast this week is all about books and money in modern China. If you like us are tired of Lu Xun and Lao She, listen to Sinica this week as we look into the state of contemporary Chinese literature, asking what writers are hot, what writers are not, and even the more humdrum question of how much authors make these days.Joining host Jeremy Goldkorn today are three of the most knowledgeable people from Beijing publishing circles. We're delighted to be joined by Jo Lusby, general manager...
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Echo's Secret Diary
Discovered in a bundle of personal effects years after Popup Chinese morphed into the world's leading educational-military conglomerate, Echo Yao's secret diary paints a different portrait of the organization's early history than that found in the sanitized corporate histories which would follow. And while the authenticity of this material cannot be verified beyond all doubt, these fragmentary recordings offer historians a fascinating window into working class life in China at the start of...
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The Soul of Beijing
Today we're pleased to share a special live edition of Sinica recorded last Saturday at Capital-M in Beijing. Held to a standing-room only crowd, we talked all about our ongoing love-hate relationship with Beijing, and asked what on earth is happening to the city that so many of us have known since the 1980s and even earlier. As housing prices and rents soar, hutongs get ripped down and "crazy bad" air becomes the new normal, will Beijing maintain its heart as a cultural capital, or is the...
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The Deaf Pickpocket Gang
"Enough with this small-scale stuff," Wang Zecun signed. Although the pickpocket gang had been working the railroad station for years, using their heightened observation and non-vocal communication skills to outwit the authorities, the encroachments of the local police were becoming too obvious to ignore. "If they're going to crack down on us like this, we might as well get out of petty crime completely."
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The Bears are Back in Town
Falling housing prices, soaring inflation and an export market peering over the brink of what seems a cataclysmic abyss. If you've been following the economic news lately, you can be forgiven for being overwhelmed by the chorus of bearish voices crying out that now - at last - the time has come for the Chinese economy to pay penance for its years of impressive economic growth. Is this really the end of good times?This week on Sinica, we're delighted to have Arthur Kroeber from Dragonomics...
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The Popup Cheerleading Squad
We'll admit, our Popup Chinese cheerleaders are probably not what you're expecting. First of all because they're all men in an industry dominated by the other gender. But also because their previous cheering experience consists mostly of mild swearing at the Beijing soccer team and the occasional caustic remark directed at Liu Xiang for selling out to Nike and letting down the hopes and dreams of the Chinese people in 2008.Nonetheless, when we asked them to lend a hand and show us how to...
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Chinese Drinking Games
Since there are doubtless schoolchildren reading this, let us paint a picture for you: you've just arrived in China after a series of adventures in Southeast Asia and - hungry after the eight hour cargo flight from Nepal - head out to a local canteen to grab some dinner before heading back to your hotel. You've barely walked in when a small gang of local thugs saunters over to size you up. "A foreigner," the leader smirks, "I guess it's about time to see how much milk your stomach can...
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Occupy Sinica
Earlier this week, the New York Times published an editorial by prominent Chinese academic Yan Xuetong claiming that China would defeat the United States on the grounds of moral superiority. While the American bafflement over this piece has died down with the advent of a national day for mass turkey slaughter, we remain puzzled enough to have invited an unbiased contingent of international journalists to Occupy Sinica and give us the skinny on how the ever-simmering Chinese-American...
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Opportunity Knocks
Now that our strategic T-shirt reserves are nearly depleted, we're having to stop with the blatant bribery and lean more towards intimidation and suggestion when it comes to making new friends. Occasionally this means implanting a subliminal message in one of our podcasts, such as - say - encouraging those of you with a bit of spare time to go door to door to help spread word.And on the education front? In addition to covering some useful vocabulary we throw at the kids in our neighborhood...
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The Apology, Part V
Written by Socrates' disciple Plato sometime in the decade after his mentor's death, The Apology is one of two surviving accounts of the trial of Socrates on charges of corrupting the youth of Athens. Delving into questions of morality, death and virtue, this speech as written by Plato is notable for Socrates uncompromising insistence on taking the moral highroad even at risk of condemnation and a capital sentence.In this, our fifth and final installment of a Chinese translation of this...
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Is soft power always this damn boring?
In some ways, the latest deluge of rhetoric from the Party feels timeless. Ever since Mao's famous speech in Yan'an on literature and art in 1942, the CCP has made clear that culture ought to serve politics. But there's also something new about the renewed focus on culture, whether in the resurgent confidence in the Party's top ranks that digital media can be sculpted, or in the amazing willingness of the top-level elite to pour billions into expanding China's global media presence.This week...
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Writing Exercise #4
We've had a lighter production schedule for the last two weeks as we've put more work into getting the next version of Popup Chinese ready. We have a fresh episode of Sinica for release tomorrow and a fresh roster of podcasts scheduled for release starting Monday. But in the meantime, we're pleased to release a sample HSK test at level five on the new exam. The challenge here is to rearrange the words provided into a grammatically correct sentence. We hope you do well, but if you have any...
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Get in Line
You know those stories about people lining up for hours at the Mac Store in Palo Alto? Or camping out overnight to get tickets to a movie premiere? Turns out that it doesn't tend to happen in China for a fairly simple reason: waiting in line is still something of a foreign concept in most of the country. We don't know if it's because Chinese people are on average too polite to call out people who cut in line, but as far as many people are concerned, why join the end when you can just...
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Reading Passage Exercise #4
If you've done any test prep for the older HSK, something will strike you about the reading passages on the new exam: they're fairly easy, or at least easier than they used to be. Whereas the older HSK test encouraged skim-reading longer passages and answering several questions about them at once, the newer test rewards reading different shorter passages more closely, and then answering a single question about each.Learning Chinese? On this sample HSK test, you'll find twelve questions that...
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The Unsuccessful Journey
Perhaps you've read Tom Friedman's paean to China's high-speed rail technology? Up until the damn things started smashing into each other, China had a fairly successful history of developing high-speed trains. But you don't hear so much about them these days.
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Donald Trump
When Brendan heard Echo and Sylvia were doing this podcast, he affected the motion of someone rolling over in a grave. But his complaints didn't stop the juggernaut that is this podcast, because despite Trump's bearish and often aggressive comments on China, the rest of us consider his show a must-see guilty pleasure, one that has somewhat amazingly survived replication by hordes of reality television programmers in China.Learning Chinese and new to Popup Chinese? This is an advanced Chinese...
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The Extremes of China Media
It seems to be the consensus among long-time China watchers that the Chinese media has become more radicalized over the last five years, with both online and traditional channels now feeding the public conflicting stories of both reflexive scorn for the status quo or patriotic jingoism. But how radical are things getting? And what are the limits to how much further they can go, or will be allowed to go on either side?This week on Sinica we look at two of the extremes. First up a discussion...
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The Marriage of True Minds
Now that you're getting married it's time for a short digression. Assuming you're like most people who've clawed their way to some modicum of Chinese competence through traditional language schools, you've likely been taught that 了 indicates past tense and that 过 indicates past tense too. Oddly, an astounding number of people never get past this. We've even run into intermediate and advanced students with a decent feel for mandarin who can't explain the difference between these two simple...
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Strictly Ballroom
Film Friday returns this afternoon with a longer clip from a Hollywood movie that you've almost certainly seen, but that Echo hadn't by the time we recorded this show. After hearing vague mention of the general theme, she promptly cleared her schedule and declared a Popup film night that evening, and the results did not disappoint. So if you're a film buff take a listen to our show today and see if you can guess our mystery movie from nothing more than a short clip dubbed into Chinese. And...
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Dwarf Net Epoch Park
The containment system had been designed by the greatest minds in the country. Keeping the animals in their pens were twin layers of barbed wire fencing with enough electricity surging through them to stun a herd of elephants. Cognizant of the dangers of reliance on the public grid, the park was powered by an off-grid system with enough reserve battery charge to keep the park operational for a week in the event of national disaster. Practically every potential security weakness had been...
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The Art of the Paraphrase
If you've spent much time in traditional Chinese classes, you've likely had that moment of frustration shortly after arriving in China when you realize your textbooks have been lying to you, or at least featuring a more Panglossian form of mandarin than seems to be spoken by anyone you've met. And that not only do Chinese people rarely speak in formal prose, but a disappointingly small number seem to spend weekends climbing the Great Wall or exploring tea plantations.We feel your pain, which...
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The End of the World
Shortly after the tsunamis wiped out the coasts, those inland were blindsided by solar flares, floods, landslides and volcanic eruptions. Within months the sky had blackened and from the pre-crash population only a handful of survivors remained, living mostly in fortified underground bunkers cut off from each other and the outside world. Theirs was a world of terror and crushing loneliness. And this Chinese podcast is their story.
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75 Chaoyangmen Nei Dajie, Beijing, China, 100086
+86-10-84030540
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