We'll be publishing the next chapter in our annotated edition of Dream of the Red Chamber a bit later today, but are throwing this softball quiz at you first. If you haven't run into these positioning questions yet, you can think of them a bit like those toys for toddlers where they have to fit the square peg in the square hole. The challenge is to complete the sentence by picking the only position where the word provided makes grammatical sense.

Even if you're not ready to tackle Qing dynasty literature yet, you can relax in the confidence we're going to get you there and that when you do everything will be glorious. These exercises focus on basic grammar relationships and are usually hardest for casual learners who haven't developed a solid understanding of the logic underlying Chinese grammar. Once you learn the basic rules they should become trivial, which is why they target the beginner and early intermediate levels of the HSK. Good luck!