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 dealing with multiples of Chinese 万....

Learning Chinese? In this podcast, Echo takes to the studio with two guests whose voices will be familiar by now if you've listened to a lot of our more intermediate podcasts. And the subject of our discussion is the year-end bonus culture in China. If you're curious about how the numbers add up on the Chinese side, want to know if you're the only one who has been gifted cured pork ("as good as cash"), or just want some insider Popup gossip, take a listen to our advanced Chinese podcast for today.