Today's listening test is a bit of an anomaly, since even the most advanced student will probably have difficulty with some elements of this conversation.

Is your curiosity piqued? Take a listen to our Chinese podcast and then scroll back to the quiz section to test your comprehension. And don't worry if you missed something. You can always click over to the text section afterwards for a manually annotated copy of the dialogue with our helpful mouseover popups. Let the test begin!
 said on
October 2, 2008
This is a hilarious recording! I swear I used to have an Ayi who sounded just like this. I could never figure out what she was saying.

The worse thing was my Chinese was absolutely primitive back then, so the communication problems went both ways. I'd get into these elaborate pantomimes asking her to clean the washroom, or separate the whites from the reds when doing the laundry. She'd just look at me with this puzzled expression on her face. We eventually settled into a live and let live relationship, her doing the housework as she saw fit and me staying out of the way.

Every now and then she'd cook too. Which was a problem since she wasn't a good cook but I didn't know how to tell her to knock it off and would feel guilty about leaving the food in the fridge until she came over the next time. So I'd end up going out of my way to throw it out before she came. In retrospect, I can't believe I was leaving the building to throw out fried rice just to avoid hurting her feelings.

There's a lesson idea for you anyway. "Please stop cooking for me". It'll be a hit - I promise.

 said on
October 2, 2008
哈哈哈. That was truely advanced.

Hope none of the HSK guys speaks like that. ;)
 said on
October 2, 2008
Hangzhouhua? ha ha ha. I'm going to start saying "na saydi" for 拿手 and 我来听听.
 said on
October 2, 2008
Hangzhouhua is well-known as 吴侬软语 in China. It belongs to 吴方言. We will have a show about Hangzhouhua later. You don't need to understand it if you're an intermediate student. Hopefully you'll enjoy it though :)

Hangzhou is a great city too. Very beautiful.

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com
 said on
October 3, 2008
That was tricky. By the way the English part of the popup for the last line of the text goes off the bottom of the screen in my browser.
 said on
October 10, 2008
“再会”的用法跟”再见“差不多吗?是杭州话吗?

课文里的popup写了“扫扫地”是 mop the floor,“搽搽地”是 sweep the floor。我以为是反过来?
 said on
October 11, 2008
@weijin,

“再会”和“再见”是一个意思。普通话里也会说“再会”,有一点儿书面语的性质,不过一般说“再见”。

“扫扫地”和“擦擦地”的翻译反了,现在已经改过来了。

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com
 said on
June 9, 2009
no play buttons for the lines of dialogue on the text page?
 said on
July 27, 2009
特别棒!什么时候开始“泡泡吴语”啊? =D
 said on
July 3, 2011
Any chance of getting the audio "play" function for the line by line text? (Preferably in standard Mandarin:-)