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The most convenient way to learn Cantonese the way it is actually spoken and used. Start with our basic lessons, and in no time you'll be listening to music, watching films and television and engaging in the actual language. With free daily podcasts, a vibrant community, online study tools and much more, PopupCantonese is the most powerful and personal way to learn mandarin.
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The most convenient way to learn Chinese the way it is actually spoken and used. Start with our basic lessons, and in no time you'll be listening to music, watching films and television and engaging in the actual language. With free daily podcasts, a vibrant community, online study tools and much more, PopupChinese is the most powerful and personal way to learn mandarin.
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Sinica - Live: The Cultural Revolution at Fifty
1:19:09
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50 years ago, Mao Zedong launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, inaugurating a decade of political turmoil with his calls for young people to "bombard the headquarters." In this special live edition of our podcast recorded at The Bookworm Literary Festival in March, Kaiser Kuo and David Moser welcome Melinda Liu, longtime China bureau …
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Sinica - Public Opinion with Chinese Characteristics
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The immense popularity of social media has afforded China watchers a terrific window onto public opinion in China. In recent years, a slew of English-language websites have emerged to interpret the various trends and phenomena, discourse and debates on the Chinese Internet for non-Chinese audiences, but for our money, the very best of the bunch is …
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Members of the Politburo are rarely praised for their dancing skills, but consider Xi Jinping's almost flawless execution of the political two-step: first casting himself as the voice of liberal moderation in the face of Bo Xilai's mass propaganda, and then draping himself in the mantle of Maoist China and the Communist Revolution once his position…
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Kaiser and Jeremy recorded today's show from New York, where they waylaid Holly Chang, founder of Project Pengyou and now Acting Executive Director of the Committee of 100 for a discussion on spying, stealing commercial spying, spying and broadway. Yes, you read that right. After catching the Broadway musical Allegiance about the Japanese-American …
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Sinica - Sauced: American Cooking in China
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Kaiser Kuo and David Moser are joined this week by Howie Southworth and Greg Matza, creators of the independent video series Sauced in Translation, a reality show that journeys into the wilder parts of China in search of local Chinese specialities that can be repurposed into classic American dishes. The show is a great concept, brilliantly executed…
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With equity markets in freefall, housing prices skipping downwards, foreign reserves plummetting, and industrial production on a roadtrip back to the last decade, it's no surprise permabears like Gordan Chang are stocking up on popcorn to bask in what they see as the long-due collapse of the Chinese economy. It all raises the question of how bad th…
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Sinica - Air Pollution and Climate Change
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This week on Sinica, Kaiser Kuo and David Moser are joined by Deborah Seligsohn, former science counselor for the US Embassy in Beijing and currently a doctoral candidate at UCSD, where she studies environmental governance in China. With more than 20 years of China experience, Deborah is one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on the ques…
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Sinica - While We're Here: China Stories from a Writers' Colony
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When Ernest Hemingway somewhat presciently referred to Paris as a movable feast ("wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you") he captured the feelings of many long-term China expats rather concisely. So why exactly does everyone like to compare life here to Paris in the 1920s? And if life is so romantic here, where are the writer…
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Sinica - Out of Africa: the Swifts of Beijing
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With amazing research now suggesting that Beijing swifts, the tiny creatures most residents pass by without noticing, are some of the most well-travelled birds on the planet, averaging an astonishing 124,000 miles of flight in their life, barely landing for years-on-end, and migrating as far as the southern tip of Africa. this week on Sinica hosts …
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This is the second part of our episode of Sinica recorded last month during a special live event at the Bookworm literary festival. In this show David Moser and Kaiser Kuo were joined by China-newcomer Jeremy Goldkorn, fresh off the plane from Nashville to field questions from our live Beijing audience. During this show we talk about what Beijing m…
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Our episode of Sinica this week was captured last month during a special live event at the Bookworm literary festival, where David Moser and Kaiser Kuo were joined by China-newcomer Jeremy Goldkorn, fresh off the plane from Nashville. During the show we talked about Beijing-lifers and how the city has changed during our time here. If you're a long-…
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Sinica - Hope and Fear in the Age of Asia
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The West has spent decades pleading with China to become a responsible stakeholder in the global community, but what happens now that China is starting to take a more proactive role internationally? In today's show, Kaiser Kuo and David Moser are delighted to be joined by Dutch journalist Fokke Obbema (the de Volkskrant correspondent with a perfect…
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This week on Sinica, we are delighted to present a show on Tu Youyou, the Chinese scientist who recently shared a Nobel Prize in Medicine for her discovery of the anti-malaria compound artemisinin, thus making her the first citizen of the People's Republic of China to receive the Nobel Prize in the natural sciences. [standalone mp3 file]…
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Sinica - Edmund Backhouse in the Long View of History
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Edmund Backhouse, the 20th century Sinologist, long-time Beijing resident, and occasional con-artist, is perhaps best known for his incendiary memoirs, which not only distorted Western understanding of Chinese history for more than 50 years, but also included what in retrospect can only be seen as patently fictitious stories of erotic encounters be…
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Kaiser Kuo and David Moser are joined today by Jerry Chan and Matt Sheehan for a look at hip-hop in China. Both guests should be familiar to long-time listeners in Beijing. Jerry has been involved with the local music scene for over a decade and now works as marketing director for True Run Media. Matt Sheehan is the Beijing correspondent for the Hu…
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Admittedly, this lesson doesn't have much to do with life in Hong Kong, if only because none of us can remember the last time we've actually driven on the island. In our car that is, because while we definitely enjoy shuffling around in a cab every now and then, if said cab happened to break down there is absolutely zero chance we would get out and…
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Mrs. Robinson had pushed her daughter to get involved with the university sports program. "You spend too much time in the library," she gestured dismissively at the concrete edifice. "Why don't you try to make different kinds of friends and broaden your experience here." And then had come the dinner parties, end-of-year gatherings and various minor…
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There are a couple of ways to get an iPad. The most expensive is to walk into the IFC and just buy one. But why wait in line? Or risk falling down that glass staircase and breaking your neck? We have your interests in mind, which is why this week we're going to talk about safer, alternative methods of iPad procurement. Oh, and we'll be chatting abo…
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Advanced - Our Love-Hate Relationship with China
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You think you have a love-hate relationship with China? Ever since 1997 we've been privvy to nothing but complaints over the water cooler about those guys. And then they complain back at us. No wonder 2012 was such a rough year in the annals of Hong Kong - China relations. That said, we're progressive people and are sick of the constant moaning. Wh…
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The temperature in Kowloon Financial's head office had risen steadily through the day, from a comfortable twenty degrees at opening to its current sweat-inducing thirty degrees. James would have opened the window to create a draft, but with the temperature outside several degrees higher than this, and not even the least wind blowing in off the bay,…
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This week we're happy to release an advanced show that's one hundred percent native Cantonese. In our studio this week are Aldo and Melody, who take to our studio to chat about relations between Hong Kong and China, and why we don't particularly mind being called running-dogs by certain members of the mainland political establishment. So if you're …
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The internship program was one of the most prestigious in all Washington State. And while Susan had expected running it to be a challenge, she had not expected the largest hurdles to come from the company's own upper management, which soon began exerting pressure to find space for the sons and daughters of those connected to the board. And so much …
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One of the best things about living in Hong Kong is the amazing culinary diversity in the city, and particularly the whole range of Asian cuisines. If you're planning on taking full advantage of life in the culinary metropolis that is Hong Kong, you'll need to know the Cantonese to talk about tastes and flavors. Which is where this podcast comes in…
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Mary had expected the long hours and the occasionally soul-crushing minutiae of handling the international accounts. Carpenter & Wilkins was one of the leading law firms on the island and catered to a top-tier clientele of financial firms, which meant a constant inflow of new legal issues. But even though her work environment was challenging, Mary …
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What was it about the New York professional set when it came to punctuality and romance? This was Susan's third date in mid-town Manhattan and the third time she'd been kept waiting over half an hour. In most situations you try to be a little flexible, sure, but thirty minutes? On a first date? It was as if this section of the city existed in a pri…
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It's not that we don't like the gym. It's that our enthusiasm for thirty minutes on the treadmill is highly contingent on the time of day, and what you're suggesting means getting out of bed at six in the morning and biking downtown before the subway even opens for the day. That might interest other people. But not us. Because if the sun isn't up t…
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Up until he turned five, Henry had never known the darker side of life, and his existence passed as a series of pleasures which ran one into the next. As he grew the boy discovered in turn the joy of self-locomotion, the power of speech, and the pleasure of socializing with a group of well-adjusted peers. And yet these happy times were not to last,…
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The thought was too horrible to bear: could the household be passing through wartime rationing? The mid-afternoon milkings which had once satiated them as kittens had become at first irregular before disappearing completely. Debating this crisis from the comfort of the third floor sundeck, Edmund and Lucy decided the time had come for action. If th…
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The moon had been hidden behind a layer of clouds blown in off the ocean, lending some credence to the claims of the parking lot staff not to have seen the actual killing. But while the evidence against the main suspect was admittedly circumstantial, the political pressure to secure his conviction was more intense than in any similar case, as it wa…
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It's hard to pull off being passive aggressive in a Cantonese. It isn't just that you need to keep your words in the right order, master those tones, and avoid flubbing the grammar, but you also have to perfect a certain je ne said quoi, a sort of supercilious attitude that never lets the other person be sure if you're really playing with them. Wan…
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Normally, Allan spent thirty minutes on the treadmill and then another half hour lifting weights, or at least hovering in the vicinity of the weight-lifting equipment soaking in the general vibes of the health equipment. As he woke up this morning with a slight headache from last night's business dinner, he wondered if perhaps it would be better to…
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Melody was halfway through chapter five by Tuesday morning. As is traditional with children's stories, her novel had started with the somewhat cliched passage of the children heading off to school. But it was now thickening with hints of the titanic struggle between good and evil to come, a clash that would test the extremes of both friendship and …
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Learning Cantonese? Trust us that no matter how fluent you get, at some point your language skills will fail and you'll find yourself resorting to pointing and grunting. Which is where this podcast comes in. In this Cantonese lesson for relative newbies, we teach you how point to things and express your opinion about them. Useful for everything fro…
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