It's been almost two months since our last newsletter, and a lot has happened behind the scenes at Popup Chinese we want to share with you. Our two biggest developments are the coming launch of Popup Cantonese, and our expansion into other languages, and particularly Spanish.

1. Popup Cantonese (and how to get free access)

After much development... we're finally aiming for a mid-December launch for Popup Cantonese. We're currently putting the final touches on our first week of content and will be producing between two and three lessons per week on an ongoing basis. Most of our focus will be on the Absolute Beginner level to start, with more difficult lessons coming online over time.

And now a tip on getting FREE ACCESS. When Popup Cantonese launches, we'll be giving everyone at Popup Chinese comparable account on the new site. This means all paid subscribers will get paid accounts for Cantonese free-of-charge. We're doing this mostly to say thanks to everyone who has supported us over the years. But it also makes for a good unofficial promotion. So signup for Popup Chinese before Popup Cantonese launches and get access to both sites for the cost of a single subscription. This offer ends when Popup Cantonese goes live, so more quickly. You can upgrade by visiting [http://popupchinese.com/account].

2. Spanish on the Horizon....

And speaking of moving... did we mention that David and Echo are traveling to South America? Lured by the call of the mud-grass horse and the fact that it's now summer in South America, Echo and David are heading down to Santiago, Chile for at least six months to setup a Spanish version of Popup Chinese and Popup Cantonese. If things go well, we'll also hope to produce Spanish lessons a few months out as well.

Our Beijing operations are continuing under the wise stewardship of Brendan and Gail, so everything in Beijing will continue as normal. That said, we are in the process of setting up a "Popup Villa" and are pretty sure we are now the only Chinese school around with beach access in South America. So on the off chance you're passing through Santiago in the next year we warmly invite you to drop by. We'd love to head out with you for an evening of Chinese conversation, great seafood, and/or what passes for Chinese cuisine in these parts of the world.

With all that said... that's it for this newsletter. As always, our sincere thanks to all of you who've taken out a paid subscription and are helping us keep our servers online. And if you haven't, don't forget that the clock is ticking on our Cantonese promotion. Upgrade before Popup Cantonese launches and get free access to that as well as Popup Chinese.

-- The Popup Team
 said on
November 30, 2010
Great news about both! I might be tempted to upgrade. And if you're still looking for top-quality, near Echo-like native instructors, I would recommend poaching a certain "Nicole" from another program.
 said on
December 1, 2010
I admit that Brendan and Echo have been my dream team all the time. Echo, I will miss you.
 said on
December 1, 2010
I second that :0
 said on
December 1, 2010
I third that :p
 said on
December 1, 2010
We've done a decent amount of recording to prepare for this, so we'll still have some podcasts with Echo and Brendan coming out over the next while, and even Echo, Brendan and me. We are going to have more podcasts with Brendan and Gail like the last pirate podcast and probably get a wider variety of voices on the site week on week too.

That said, please don't get too sentimental because Brendan is already angling for a beach vacation and at this rate we might have to give him one. :)

--dave

 said on
December 13, 2010
Any possibility of the long future holding hope for a Popup Wu/Shanghainese?
 said on
December 14, 2010
@palafx,

I hope we'll get there eventually. We've designed the platform to support arbitrary language pairs, and I'd like us to be able to expand into quite a few. We're 100% bootstrapped and can only move as fast as we can pull ourselves up. Hopefully things will move faster and faster as we grow.

Best,

--david

Mark Lesson Studied