Despite its international reputation for stability, speed and open access, the Chinese Internet is not as infallible as often portrayed in the Western media: it too suffers from the occasional dropped packet, misconfigured router, and hoe-through-the-fiber-optic-backbone.

Now that we're running our own servers though, the hand is very much on the other foot when it comes to network quality. Listen in today as we play a short joke on our Chinese voice actors, slowly dismantling their network while they're busy checking email. There were laughs all around. Or were until Xiao Liu passed his fist through our monitor.
 said on
September 15, 2008
Great lesson! Top notch acting with lots of useful vocab.
 said on
September 16, 2008
awesome stuff. this was the most natural sounding chinese i've heard in a language learning podcast.
 said on
December 17, 2008
你好, 我有一个问题: 我们可不可以说 "... 着呢吗?", e.g. "灯亮着呢吗?" ("Is the light on?")
 said on
December 17, 2008
@barnaby.low,

非常好的问题!

完全没问题,可以这样说。例如,“孩子睡着呢吗?”“你正忙着呢吗?”

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com

 said on
December 18, 2008
In the vocab list, it might be nice to flag words like 歇菜 as NFUOB (not for use outside Beijing)

Anyway, great lesson, 非常酷的 (in a nerdy way),听起来很流畅.
 said on
January 6, 2009
Perhaps you are all just playing a really nerdy joke on us, but the audio for 掉线(掉線)[diàoxiàn] in the vocab tab seems to have 掉'd its 線.
 said on
January 6, 2009
we'll re-record it too. Thanks for pointing out the problem bryan.
 said on
May 28, 2009
in the text section all the apostrophe's of the english translation come out as a&opste; instead of just an apostrophe, also can't access the pdf or text only pages, in the vocab section 掉线 has no sound and 停电了 has no 了 written...
 said on
May 28, 2009
happy dragon boat festival nadasax :) - we'll correct the recordings for 掉线 and 停电 later this evening. Where exactly are you having problems with the apostrophes? I've just checked the text page and pdf/transcript downloads and they seem fine here. Is this a browser issue and can you confirm that a reload doesn't fix the problem (i.e. it wasn't just network corruption) - are you on your normal machine?
 said on
May 28, 2009
happy dragon boat festival back- its in the "display translation" of the text page (not the pdf or text only downloads but the top of the page hyperlinked page between 'discussion' and 'vocabulary')...i've just rechecked and its still there...at least on my machine running vista and IE
 said on
October 30, 2009
Just curious, why is there not a measure word after 那 in 那路由器灯 (nà lùyóuqì dēng/ the router light) or 你那打印机 (nà dǎyìnjī/ your printer). Is it just omitted for brevity or is it not supposed to be there. If it could be included, what would the correct measure word be?
 said on
October 30, 2009
@valluckett,

Yes, it is an omission here, because they were speaking casually. You can put the measure word 个 in it. That sounds good too.

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com

 said on
November 20, 2012
my first popup chinese podcast! love it! been away from China for a while but this brings me right back!
 said on
November 20, 2012
@watchyourbreath,

Welcome to the site! 欢迎你!

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com
 said on
February 2, 2014
When they are beginning their sentence with 我说。。as in the sentence, 我說你那邊兒網怎麼樣啊? Is this used for emphasis?
 said on
February 4, 2014
@oyamakuma,

我说 here can be considered as being used for emphasis on the tone - it's like a lead-in when people start a sentence and it does make the tone stronger.

i.e.我說你想什麼呢?What are you thinking?

我说你到底去不去?Are you going or not?

 said on
June 14, 2015
I used this dialogue to mess with the IT guys at my office in Beijing. haha
 said on
January 13, 2017
what is the character for the de2 they are talking about? the "de de de" meaning "enough" or "ok" or "whatever" thing.
 said on
January 14, 2017
miranda.a.jarret -- the character is 得 . It means "to get" or "to obtain". I guess in this context it's a variant of that sense of the word, meaning "I've had enough" or something like that.