In Chinese, the term refers to something many of us can associate with – the downward spiral of stress and despair that comes from having too much work and too little time to look after your health properly.

The phrase was coined in Chinese media as part of coverage of the plight of 30-something male white-collar workers, who increasingly suffer psychological problems due to the pressures of balancing their working life with the need to provide their family with a standard of living acceptable to busy-body relatives.

Readers who associate with this miserable state of being can find refuge in this anthem, penned by our intern Shu Yang (杨舒):

In this hot summer,

在炎热的夏天里，

Zài yánrè de xiàtiān lǐ,

I still have to go to work under the scorching sun,

还要顶着烈日去上班，

Háiyào dǐngzhe lièrì qù shàngbān

and won’t be able to return home until the stars are shinning.

披着星星回家，

Pīzhe xīngxing huíjiā,

The high pressure weight is so heavy, that I can barely stand against it,

高压压得我都直不起来了，

Gāoyā yā de wǒ dōu zhí bù qǐláile,

It’s really not so easy being part of this pressure cooker family.

高压锅族真心不容易啊。

Gāoyāguō zú zhēnxīn bùróngyì a.

Chinese kitchens filled with stoves that can double as jet engines are simply amazing to me. The heat and noise mix together to create a cacophony that is really hard to work in, yet the chefs spend hours flipping woks all day and night. Every temple, whether Buddhist, shaman, or Confucian, has sacrificial and ornamental candles, incense and offerings, filling it with holy smoke. Factories all over China manufacture everything, thus the welding torch and laser cutter are ubiquitous machines that send sparks bouncing over the cement floors. Ancient chinese medicine in its quest to balance the yin and yang relies on fire as a healing tool. Fire is everywhere you go.

At a shamanistic altar in Guizhou

Floating candles outside a Confucius temple in Nanjing

The kitchen inside a 5-star restaurant in Changzhou

The kitchen inside a 5-star restaurant in Changzhou

Welders in Changzhou

Welders in Changzhou

A popcorn pressure cooker on the street in Qingdao

Incense burning in a Buddhist temple in Qingdao

Jewelry making in Yunnan

Moxibustion in Liaoning

Wall mural in Beijing

Candles burning inside a Nanjing memorial

The morning sun crawled over the peaks, leaked through the haze of fog and slipped its way through the dense quilt of trees to illuminate the monastery where I’d taken shelter for the night after a six hour hike. The previous day’s rain hadn’t dissipated the fog, as it often does in the mountains of Hunan Province, my temporary home in China. The deep mist persisted through the night and threatened to extend my two-day hike into a three-day excursion. I zipped up my rain shell and clipped my pack onto my shoulders; my neck gave a muted crack as I tightened the strap across my chest. My watch read an even 6:00am.

As is often the case for foreign teachers (外教 wàijiào) in China, I wasn’t told about my week-long vacation until just two days before it began. “You can have a travel,” my colleague explained. “It will be good for you to see China.” Having already completed the Tiger Leaping Gorge circuit, Sichuan Province seemed ideal for a week’s sojourn: a place well-known for its mouth-numbing spices, its beautiful flora, and its ability to retain expats far beyond their budgeted time within its borders. A few days into my vacation, I boarded a bus from the capital of Chengdu to Mount Emei, one of the Four Sacred Buddhist Mountains of China and a pretty safe bet for a bumbling foreigner to visit.

Golden Buddha statue at the summit of Mount Emei

I snuck to the main door of the monastery to determine how many layers to have ready once I reached a higher altitude, but a monk stopped me before I could get near the giant, brass handles. The warps in his face resembled the wax of a melting candle and his robes clung to his skinny frame like a damaged windsock.

“It’s too early,” he said in Mandarin. “You need to eat breakfast.”

His tone did not invite discussion, so I resigned to eat whatever fuel the monk could provide for me before trudging through the rain. Unlike many of the conversations I have with middle-aged Chinese men, the monk and I didn’t speak of money; rather, our polite banter lingered on the topic of food and whether or not I could tolerate the spice in Sichuan. Eventually, my vocabulary was exhausted, our cultural exchange dwindled, and the monk served me a bowl of congee topped with zhacai (榨菜,  a pickled mustard plant stem famous in Sichuan). I burned the roof of my mouth as I rapidly knocked back the steaming bowl’s contents.

“I’m full,” I said as polished the bowl and patted my stomach. “I’ll go now.”

I paid for my meal with a crumpled RMB5 bill. As the monk took my payment, he mumbled a word not recognizable to my very limited grasp of the language.

“Excuse me,” I interjected, “What did you say?”

“Mon-key,” he replied in heavily accented English. He then immediately reverted to Mandarin. “Please wait a moment.”

The monk scurried into a dusty room near the entrance and, after a hollow clattering, he emerged with a bamboo pole about two meters in length and two inches in diameter. With a severe look on his face, he struck the stone floor a few times with the end of the pole and then gently handed the rod over to me. I smiled and thanked him, but the monk’s face did not lose its stern expression.

“Mon-key,” he repeated.

When I finally set off, the fog layered the continuous stairs of Mount Emei; its trail disappeared into the mist. With a full stomach and a cramp in my side, I pushed through the flurry of rain in a desperate hope that the sky would clear before I reached the 3,099-meter peak. My watch, its face spotted with droplets of moisture, read 8:00 am—a full two hours since my departure from the monastery and I’d only made it a tenth of the way. The largest slope of the mountain still lay in front of me and, after a few exhausted huffs, I stepped forward to climb the mist-obscured, heavily-ridged snake of concrete. The stairs glimmered with a thin layer of wetness and, for a few seconds, I debated whether to conquer the mountain as most Chinese tourists prefer to: by crowded buses and expensive cable cars.

A quarter of my way up the slope, my head tilted upwards to gauge how many more grueling steps I had to endure before I could make time to rest. Through the dense fog, I spotted a faint, lumbering, bipedal shadow tracing my movements. I froze. The ominous, gray shape mirrored my abrupt change in movement. Carefully, I began to creep forward and the shape took on a fur-lined form. A rather skinny Tibetan macaque was my observer, its hair a slick, golden-brown and its mouth slightly agape. In a syncopated rhythm, its head and shoulders bobbed about in order to get a better look at my comparatively hairless figure. Like me, the macaque’s face was a deep pink with cold and its breath dwindled in the air with brief puffs of steam.

Either frightened or simply pleased with its observation, the monkey soon turned around and scampered back into the clouds of fog and rain. I gave a steamy sigh of relief, the white-knuckled grip on my bamboo pole loosened, and my eyes drifted back to my soggy trainers as my concrete march continued. Only a few steps later though, the thin, staccato chattering of primates broke through the haze and my sharp glance upwards revealed the scout backed by a small congregation of red-faced brothers, their sizes varied but their stares unwaveringly focused on the sweaty foreigner.

More than a dozen monkeys lined the winding staircase, their expressions stoic but undoubtedly honed in on each, deliberate step of my trudge—it seemed as if even their blinks came in unison. Forming untouchable, breathing handrails, the primates were hunched, animated gargoyles on the skirts of the staircase. With no alternate route and no choice but to continue, I opened my palms as a peaceful gesture and proceeded up the stairs, careful not to make any sudden movements or any signals of discomfort.

“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter,” I cooed under my breath as I made my way through the corridor of fur and beady eyes. The expression served to comfort me more than it did the primates. “Don’t kill me. Don’t kill me.”

Like the fog on Mount Emei, the small horde of monkeys failed to wane as I ascended. Most of my anxiety appeared unjustified—the monkeys didn’t bear their teeth and only a few gave an indifferent stir as I passed by them and their black and silver babies. Convinced that I was one with the macaques, I felt a wave of confidence surging through me and my pace quickened to escape their expressionless faces.

No more than a few legs ahead of me sat the largest monkey of the troop: the muscles of his torso tucked behind a dense layer of firm fat and his whiskers like those of a Civil War general. His seat was plum in the middle of my path. Like many alpha males—simian and otherwise—who exert their dominance over their underlings, the chief of this tribe did not devote his attention to the soft chatter of the young; rather, he focused solely on his penis.

Not the monkey king himself, but another Tibetan macaque who looks to have been in a few scraps

The monk’s anti-monkey measures ultimately proved pointless as I gave three sharp raps of my bamboo pole on the stair in front of me—the monkey king lifted his head, his eyes half open, and gave an unimpressed snort of steam from his snout. A slight twitch of his eyes informed me that I was being measured, sized-up. Skepticism swept over the macaque’s face, as if to say: That’s it? I struck my bamboo against the stairs once more and the disinterested primate went back to the far more important matter of prodding his genitals.

My next movements were to be uncomfortably intimate as strategy and safety were both rendered meaningless by the macaque’s refusal to budge from his stony throne. Determined to show confidence behind my trickles of cold sweat, I tiptoed to the side of the staircase and around the monkey king. Faint chirps of objection and warning sounded from the audience behind me as my trainers inched closer to their chief—a guttural noise emanated from his rounded belly as an obvious hint of discontentment. The dull, electric sensation of being watched surged through me and, while I passed the alpha, the group of spectators grew eerily silent.

A smaller breed of monkey snapped on the ascent

I passed unscathed.

Suddenly, though, my bamboo pole jerked back. My grip was a tense vice and the harsh tug spun me around to reveal a set of arms, long and toned from a lifetime of tree-swinging, clutched on the opposite end. Eyes ablaze, the monkey king was not satisfied with my lack of a snack offering. I pulled on the stick to retrieve it, but on the other side sat the hairy, 40-pound anchor of raw monkey. In retrospect, foregoing the bamboo would’ve been the safest option, but, nerves on overdrive, I clung to the pole.

In an instinctual change of tactic, my weight shifted and I gave the bamboo an aggressive thrust in the macaque’s direction. His eyes widened and the beast stumbled backward as he released his grip to regain balance. I smirked, smug with satisfaction. The monkey king blinked a few times, his face contorted with rage. His lips curled back to revel a set of twisted, bamboo-stained incisors.

Panic.

As the macaque sprung forward, my perception of time decelerated to the speed of an action scene in a Shaw Brothers movie. However, unlike Huang Feihong (a revered turn-of-the-century folk hero and martial artist), I was incapable of twirling my pole in a Shaolin monk-like flourish to knock the primate back to his rightful place on the evolutionary ladder—I was cemented to the stairs. He lunged toward me, his surprisingly large hands extended, and managed to nab a fistful of my left pant leg before I could step aside. A yelp escaped me and I frantically shook my leg to pry the fabric free. For a few seconds, the monkey king’s hold stayed solid and I winced, anticipating the piercing pain of his bite. But, having proved his point and demonstrated his superior masculinity, the primate unexpectedly released my pants and I tumbled up the steps.

With the exception of his surge toward my shin, the monkey king and I didn’t break eye contact during our altercation. Even as I scampered up the remainder of the slope, our stares were inexorably linked. Mine was a gaze that reeked of terror. His, though, was a glare that simply said: “Go home, Lao Wai.”

If you live in Beijing then you’ve probably heard of Buyi, who play frequently at 2 Kolegas and folk-rock enclaves like Jianghu Jiuba or Jiangjinjiu, but you might not know how important they are to China’s indie folk scene. In my ignorance, I thought of them as a local gig band – until, that is, I checked out their Douban and saw that they had almost 14,000 fans, which, to put it in perspective, is more than renowned folk experimental artist Xiao He, and twice the number of widely praised folk-rockers Nanwu.

Part of the reason Buyi (whose Chinese name 布衣, which means “the common people”) are so well loved is that they’re among the oldest folk rock bands around. Hailing from the Ningxia capital of Yinchuan, Buyi started up in 1995 after several of their members returned from studying at Beijing’s MIDI Music School. “We all liked rock music, and would listen to music together every day, singing songs,” says Buyi singer Wu Dingyue. “After a while I wasn’t satisfied and wanted to sing my own songs, so I just started my own band.”

Though Ningxia, which out in China’s wild west, boasts a rich history of traditional music, the live music scene in Yinchuan left something to be desired. “At that time the Ningxia music scene was pretty small, and most were cover bands; almost none of them made their own music,” Wu says. “There was no place to play shows, no bars, and you had to arrange all the shows yourself.” So in 2000, the band made a leap of faith, and hightailed it out to Beijing. “We needed to be going to more shows to work ourselves out.”

Though the group only knew a few players in Beijing’s burgeoning rock scene, they soon formed their own community. The band settled in a courtyard and began living the hippie dream, which soon enough inspired scores of other musicians from their hometown to move to Beijing.

Since then, a veritable Ningxia community of musicians has built up around Buyi and 2 Kolegas, and the group have released several studio albums that showcase a mature, evocative mix of traditional folk and modern rock. Their music marries the big-guitar sound of 90s Western rock with the delicate whimsy of traditional northwestern folk, creating an earthy mix with the guzheng (古筝) and hulusi (葫芦丝) alongside electric guitars and trumpet. The result is music for nomads: a soundtrack that, with rollicking riffs, gypsy-like beats and the rough, visceral growl of singer Wu Ningyue, paints the mystery and romance of Ningxia’s Wild West plains.

Check out the band playing a rendition “Fall” (秋天) from their 1997 album of the same name at the 2004 Midi Festival:

The new YCIS campus is just one part of the BP International Education Park (IEP), a larger educational development that will also house a new Yew Wah International Education School (YWIES) for local Chinese students.

The two schools aim to work together to combine the best of Eastern and Western education methods, across early childhood, primary and secondary school, as well as pre-university preparation.

The ceremony, which was attended by over 300 guests, was opened by two children - one Chinese and one foreign - to represent the project’s ambition to foster shared learning experiences amongst Chinese and foreign students. Guests were then treated to guzheng and violin performances, Italian Opera and Latin dance. performances that embodied the park’s vision of fostering global cross-cultural cooperation.

“Our unique cooperative model, which combines Chinese and Western Co-Principles and Co-Teachers, creates a dual culture learning environment and exemplifies acceptance and tolerance of diverse ideas, values and customs,” said IEP co-founder Dr. Betty Chan.

Yizhuang, which lies in the southeastern suburbs of Beijing and is part of one of the largest economic development zones in the city, is tipped to become the new Shunyi when the capital’s second airport opens a few years down the road.

The first phase of the IEP’s construction will be completed in 2013.

Maybe it was because the moment I stepped off the ferry, I was whisked back to a twisted version of backwoods Missouri, one speckled with Mandarin, palm trees and a faint salty smell. Suddenly, I no longer felt like a roughnecked backpacker outsider with tousled hair and legs blotchy with mosquito bites, an identity that alienated me in flashy cities like Hong Kong and Shanghai. Here, no one judged. Here, Marc Jacobs and Givenchy shop windows weren’t casting a glare on my features by nightfall, turning them ghostly. The villages shut off their lights at night, forcing me to find my way home in the shadows. For two days in Kinmen (jīnmén), I adopted the quiet life.

Before I set off to join a group of cyclists riding to Tibet in 2007, my parents were on the fence about supporting me. I pushed how safe the trip was, and that there’d be a couple of guys who could look out for me going as well. Eventually they gave their blessing, though my mom still lost a few pounds worrying about me that summer.

Still, even though that trip passed without a hitch, when I decided to bike solo to Tibet in 2009 I lied to my parents and said I was going to visit a Tibetan friend. Instead, I took a train to Geermu and started my journey there.

What I love most about biking alone is that the schedule is my own. The clear, open views along the Qinghai-Tibet route made me feel like I was the only person on earth. Sometimes I could even squat at the roadside and defecate without worrying that someone would pass by.

I ran into two vicious hailstorms on my way to Yanshiping (雁石坪), near the Tanggula Mountains (唐古拉山). The first time I luckily found shelter in a herdsman’s roadside house. Even though I was unable to talk to the old Tibetan woman who ran the home as she didn’t speak Mandarin, she still served me milk and steamed buns. When the hail stopped and I was about to leave, I could only clasp her hands, repeatedly saying “thank you” for the kindness she’d shown me.

Most people I met were super friendly and warmhearted. One day, shortly after I started from the Tuotuo River (沱沱河), I saw lightning in the near distance and heard the low rumble of breaking thunder. I was scared and stopped at a roadside construction site, where local Tibetans lived and worked. They invited me inside to wait for their boss to return and arrange lodging for me. No one spoke Mandarin, but I remember a boy of five or six who squeezed in beside me, asking in a serious voice, “Smoke?” I stayed for free that night and the next morning. Before I left, they kindly reminded me to pull my hair back so I looked like a guy, as they were concerned I might run into trouble.

There were also some unpleasant moments. I was chased by kids who attempted to rob me and threw stones at me along the Sichuan-Tibet route. But that wasn’t a big deal. They’d simply been corrupted by the tourists.

I never figured out why I decided to bike the Qinghai-Tibet route. Many complimented me on my bravery, but I know better than that. I’m not a person who gets lost in theorizing about the meaning of travel. I keep biking, lost in my thoughts, and just feel grateful for the chance to try and do something like this.

Have your own tales of adventurous escapades in the Middle Kingdom? Email mail@theworldofchinese.com (don’t forget to include pictures if you have them) and we ‘ll post them up!

For instance, if during an online game one of the team members runs away unexpectedly, others may loudly complain, “坑爹呢这是” (Kēngdiē ne zhèshì), “Are you tricking me?” Or if an interesting-looking title lures you into clicking on a misleading ad, you might curse “这标题也太坑爹了吧！” (Zhè biāo tíyě tài kēngdiē le ba!), “That title is so tricky!”

Worst of all, of course, are the times that you scam yourself—as anyone who’s ever driven in Beijing or Shanghai on a Friday evening knows: “在北京开车太坑爹了” (Zài Běijīng kāichē tài kēng diēle)—“Driving in Beijing is like shooting yourself in the foot!”

Let us know if you have any alternative ways of getting your point across, and the situations when you think they might prove most useful!

So what’s all the hubbub about? As a member of the “Titanic” generation (who saw both the original and the 3D version in theaters), I have but one explanation to offer: pure, brute nostalgia.

For people of my generation, who were around 11 or 12 at the time of its release, “Titanic” was our first major blockbuster. Not only was it a dazzling spectacle and a love story designed to melt the hearts of pre-pubescent swooners, it was, for us, one of our first tastes of adulthood and independence.

Despite the film’s ubiquity, it was generally agreed to be inappropriate for children (the nude scene had been cut, but it allegedly contained other “adult material”), and so rather than ask my parents, I bided my time, waiting for my chance. My opportunity came on a day in late April when, thanks to an early dismissal and our parents’ ignorance, we had a free afternoon at our disposal. It was then that I, along with two classmates, rushed off to the theater to get our fill of “Titanic”’s mysterious adult delights.

We left the theater dazzled—and completely distraught over the lovers’ eternal separation, so much so that I even conjured up an alternative happy ending for Jack and Rose in which they end up running into each other years later at a coffee shop (hands off Hollywood scriptwriters! – ed). I’d also been a loyal fan of Leonardo for years, and kept track of news about him since I saw his bit-part role in the sitcom “Growing Pains” when it was released in China in 1994.

But swooning teenage girls weren’t the only ones captivated by “Titanic”. Shortly after its American release, then-General Secretary Jiang Zemin, bizarrely, brought the film up at a group discussion at a party meeting. According to an old report from Yangcheng Evening News, Jiang commented, “We should not assume that capitalist countries always produce things lacking in spiritual value. Soon, a movie called ‘Titanic’ is to be screened (in China). With an investment of 250 million, it has seen a box office of over one billion so far, which is a successful case of risk investment. This movie portrays in great detail the relationships between money and love, the rich and the poor, as well as how different individuals respond when faced with the disaster…I recommend the comrades of the political bureau go see the movie. I do not mean to see it so that we can ‘better know our enemy,’ but that we should not assume that only communists are capable of doing good moral work.”

Teenage sentiments and ideological morality aside, there was another reason why Chinese people fell so hard for “Titanic”: the trope of tragic love story. While it may be viewed as somewhat overly dramatic in the West, tragedy is a common feature of most works of great narrative art in China, ranging from the classic romance “Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai” (梁山伯与祝英台) to the soul-crushing “To Live.”

Over the past 14 years, “Titanic”’s influence (not to mention impact) seems only to have multiplied, as evidenced by its box office reception… and the girl who sat next to me at my 3D viewing, sobbing quietly as Celine Dion’s voice soared over “My Heart Will Go On.” A big part of this, of course, is nostalgia—for much of the audience, the 3D version has rekindled the innocence not only of their own youth, but of a younger, less commercial, and less worldly China.

“This movie impresses me with the memories of the passing years rather than its special effects,” commented one audience member in an online report. “I have different thoughts on the movie watching it again after 14 years. The puppy love is beautiful, but how long in reality can the talents of a poor guy win the heart of a beauty?”

It’s a sentiment that’s especially relevant today, as China is busy having a collective heart attack over the idea that its women have begun prioritizing money over love—as exemplified by the woman on a dating show who in 2010 said that she’d “rather cry in a BMW than smile on the back of a bike.”

Remembering simpler times (or what people idealize into simpler times) has given many viewers a jolt from the kind of cynicism that has invaded a generation of young adults struggling for and against money, jobs and materialism.

“What I am watching is not 3D, but memories” (姐看的不是3D，是回忆), noted another commenter. “Forget the abridged naked scenes, the three-dimensional iceberg and the plot—my heart, that has been so long covered with dust, is shocked to life once again hearing those same lines by the same actors, and seeing the different responses to this disaster on the big screen.”

That commenter points to one aspect of China that remains as innocent now as it was in 1998—the “adult scenes” that our parents were then so afraid of. If you recall, one of the climactic scenes shows Jack sketching a naked Rose, who in the original China release was only shown from the back. Fourteen years later, viewers were again disappointed to be shown a chaste version of the scene—though we perhaps understood a bit better why our parents didn’t want to take us. Of her first viewing, my colleague Ling said the only thing she remembers is hearing the irritated voice of a kid asking, “Mom, why you keep covering my eyes with your hand?”

With “Learn to Speak Chinese through Contextualized Dialogues” – a text put out by our parent company, which we are now shamelessly plugging – students have a textbook that gives learners access to material that is relevant and immediately useful. Lessons present multiple dialogues all relating to a single topic (“Complaining,” “Greeting,” “Consoling,” etc.), including sets of common expressions and suggested responses. The book is designed for elementary through upper-intermediate learners, beginning with “见到你很高兴” (“It’s  very nice to see you”) and ending with “我欣赏你的演讲，深入浅出，很有说服力” (“I appreciate your speech. You explained the profound in simple terms and it was very convincing.”).

Dividing the lessons in two, users will find that half of the material is useful for solo study, and half is best tackled with a teacher or a tutor.  The dialogues are a great opportunity to practice reading, pronunciation and memorization of common expressions.  This kind of work is all teacher-optional; students can get a lot of practical language knowledge simply by internalizing the material. The English translations are often overly-formal and clunky, but the Chinese used is authentic and useful. After presenting the dialogues, students are given multiple tasks such as telling a story based on pictures or creating their own dialogue on the topic. These kinds of activities require guidance and corrections by a teacher to be truly useful.

In addition to the hefty textbook, “Learning to Speak Chinese Through Contextualized Dialogues” also includes tools that make self-study even easier. Each package contains 60 pocket-sized dialogue cards, with the Chinese characters (no pinyin) on one side and the English translation on the back. There is also a CD-ROM with audio files of all dialogues. Put together these form a powerful study tool that can be used anywhere. Got 30 minutes on the subway before work? Memorize a dialogue. Waiting for your noodles? Review that dialogue.

Buried in the appendices to the book is another great tool for: “120 Popular Expressions in Daily Life Among Students”. Along with the simplest and most common phrases, this chart contains gems such as “你吃错什么药了？“ (“Did you take the wrong medicine today?” e.g. “What’s your freaking problem?”) and “做你的白日梦” (“You’re day-dreaming” i.e. “That’s never going to happen”).

Approaching Chinese language studies with a Western education gives learners advantages and serious hang-ups. Most students who go through the American or European education system tend to be independent learners, to tackle a subject in a way that makes sense to them. This is a fantastic attitude and brings a wide array of advantages. Unfortunately this education background also handicaps Chinese-language learners in one way: Westerners often outright refuse to learn through memorization. The very idea of sitting down to memorize a passage rings alarm bells in a Western mind. We see it as monotonous, robotic, the very antithesis of what a true education in creativity should consist of.

As well as this attitude may work for the humanities and sciences, refusing to memorize Chinese dialogues deprives learners of a very powerful tool. The fact is, studying Chinese is unlike any other educational enterprise you’ll embark upon. Many Westerners would prefer to learn Chinese by studying a word and then using it to form as many original sentences as possible. This works well with European languages, where grammar and patterns of speech are comparatively similar.

Unfortunately, Chinese is a different beast, and it requires a different approach. Learners who spend their time translating phrases from their native tongue into Chinese will be barely understandable at best. If users try to console a friend whose lost a family member with the standard English “I’m very sorry for your loss,” they’ll probably come up with something like “为你的丧失很抱歉,” a phrase that will elicit more bafflement than comfort.

To speak coherent and fluent Chinese, learners must adopt the patterns of speech and above all the phrasings embedded in Chinese communication. This can only be done through countless hours of active listening or memorization of authentic Chinese speech. With Chinese language, true “creativity” comes at a higher level of learning, not by using words you have learned however you please, but by fluidly moving between and utilizing the constructions built into the language. By completely internalizing dialogues from this textbook, learners will find good Chinese phrases rolling off their tongues unconsciously. Essentially it’s how you make the jump from comprehensible Chinese to good Chinese.

If put to good use, “Learning Chinese Through Contextualized Dialogues” can provide a solid foundation for making the difficult transition to authentic-sounding Chinese. Providing the learner with dialogues and study tools, the text puts the onus for mastering the language where it belongs: squarely on your shoulders.