It's been a busy month for us. We could lie and say the highlight was reading all your great comments on Popup Chinese. But the truth is that the best part came when the Chinese government finally turned on central heating, arresting a precipitous decline in the ambient temperature of our recording space. We're grateful to be no longer living out a Jack London story. And alive to bring you this monthly news round-up:

NEWS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS:

* Our Great North American Tour *

God and the Canadian Embassy willing, Echo and David will be in Toronto from December 21st through December 30th. Brendan will be in Philadelphia around the same time. Assuming everything comes through we'd love to get together with anyone who's within driving/boating/flying/spitting distance and feels like grabbing a bite or a drink. So get in touch. We promise to speak nothing but Chinese if you do too. [email:service@popupchinese.com]

* Christmas Promotion *

Thought about giving a Popup Chinese subscription as a Christmas gift? In the spirit of the holidays, if you'd like to order a subscription for someone special get us the details by December 1st and we'll mail you or them a special Christmas card signed by our team. If you've got a special message you'd like us to translate into Chinese and add to the card we're happy to do that too. Just remember that we're operating under a deadline if we're going to get things mailed off in time for the holidays, so don't put this off. [email:orders@popupchinese.com]

* The Next Version of Popup Chinese: Codename Awesome *

Although we launched our latest version of Popup Chinese in September, we've already started work on the next iteration. We have a long list of features we want to add, so if there is something that bothers you about the site, or if you'd like to see us add a particular extra feature, please let us know. This is one of the best times to make technical requests as we're combing through our codebase anyway. For our part, we're planning major changes to our lesson scheduling, community and content creation sections, and will also be adding dialogue-only recordings for most of our lessons. We expect the next version to go live sometime in February.

OUR POPULAR LESSONS:

This month we'd like to showcase some of the non-lesson shows we've produced recently. If you listen to Popup Chinese mostly through our public RSS feed, you may not know that some of this even exists. So drop by the site and check it out. It will help your mandarin get much better, especially if you're an intermediate to advanced student.

* KTV Wednesday: Nothing Remains *

About twice a month, our KTV show features a popular Chinese music video. Last month we were proud to feature one of the best Chinese rock songs written in the last ten years. If you don't know why Wang Fei is the best music act around (we know some of you are partial to Wang Leehom) be sure to check out this video. It's fantastic. And Wang Fei wrote the lyrics and music herself. We are definite fans. [http://popupchinese.com/lessons/ktv-wednesday/wang-fei-nothing-remains]

* Film Friday: A Holiday Visit *

Film Friday is a film guessing game we run two or three times a month. Each show we pick a clip from a famous Hollywood movie that's been dubbed into mandarin and play it to see if you can guess the original film. We have a lot of fun picking the films and recording these shows, so if you haven't listened yet check this one out. In addition to being a lot of fun, Film Friday also offers listeners the chance of winning a month of free premium access to Popup Chinese. [http://www.popupchinese.com/lessons/film-friday/a-holiday-visit]

* Video: Trash-Talk Ping Pong *

Anthony, Tiansen, Qin and Echo went out for "work" one afternoon in early November. When they came back smiling and laughing and the near-frozen remainder of our office crew quite reasonably asked what on earth they were doing when their heat-producing bodies were desperately needed in the office, they said it was "too cold inside" so they went out to play ping pong. Ping pong! And then they produced this video. If you're heavily into either trash-talking or table tennis, there's something here for you. [http://www.popupchinese.com/lessons/video/trash-talk-ping-pong]

And that's our newsletter for this month. As always, we're grateful to everyone who is supporting us with a paid subscription: you're the reason we're able to keep this up. And if you aren't a subscriber you're seriously breaking our hearts. Subscriptions cost as little as $49.99 per year. Cast off your cloak of darkness and subscribe by visiting [http://popupchinese.com/account].

Best from us all and Happy Thanksgiving to all of our American friends and colleagues,

The Popup Team