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 steady pace, sometimes lagging behind and sometimes nearly hitting the vehicle in front but never actually stopping. It was traffic smoothing applied as expertly as Stephen had ever seen done, as if this one man were trying to wrest Beijing congestion into shape through force of will alone.

Learning Chinese? Even if you don't speak any Chinese, this lesson should be at your level of difficulty. What we'll learn is how to double-up a number of high-frequency verbs in order to make suggestions. There's a simple trick here that's impossible to forget once you've learned it and using it will help you sound a lot more fluent than people who are learning from regular textbooks. So if you're working towards learning Chinese take a listen and see what you think. And if you have any questions, let us know in the discussion section below.