Archive for the 'Regional/cultural' Category



I’ll be home for… Giftmas?!

See that? That’s my big gun and I’m not afraid to use it. Oh, yes, my friends. I’m a card-carrying poet and author and my blatant disregard for grammar and punctuation are legendary. In fact, in my first major book release, Valley of Shadows (Cove Press, 2004), my rampant comma usage became so widespread that […]

Congratulations. It’s an apostrophe.

Can’t. Won’t. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Shouldn’t.
What do all of the words above have in common, aside from a resounding negativity? Yes, they all apply to my ex-fiancée, but more importantly, they’re all contractions. (For those non-native speakers, a contraction is an often-useful tool in English wherein we take two words and smash them together so hard […]

Retention and 地方

Yesterday I reviewed two of my favorite lessons: 初级61 Encouraging Words and 初级78 Dealing With Praise. There’s a lot to drill down on in these and I find that keep going back to them. If you’re not a premium subscriber to ChinesePod, I don’t know how you’d assimilate this. I’ve got access to the expansion […]

Favorite Chinese movies

A few posts back, I promised that I’d spend a few minutes talking about my favorite movies to come out of the PRC. First, let’s get the obvious out of the way:
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
House of Flying Daggers
Hero
You’d simply have to be born without a soul not to be completely captivated by the beauty of […]