In a dark, dank bunker nestled miles under solid bedrock in the Himalayan Plateau lies the HSK Tribunal. Imposing men with soulless faces gather around a cursed table made from the bones of those slain by the HSK test. This tribunal exists for the sole purpose of exacting pain and suffering on those few warriors who enter the deadly labyrinth that is the HSK exam. With these exercises we give a guiding light to those lost in the caverns of this deadly maze.

One of the secrets of KTV in China is that you don't have to be good at singing. You just have to be loud. So it helps to have a small repertoire of fallback songs you can belt out whenever the occasion calls for it. And for those of you just starting, we recommend this one. Mumble your way through the first couple of versus before striding into laowai stardom with the chorus.

There are plenty of versions and covers of this song floating around. If you're not in China, you may get better performance from this version hosted on Youtube.

Those of us living in Beijing occasionally hear tales of the strange lands and barbarous customs that exist beyond the third ring road. Visitors to our studios bring whispers and rumors of yet wilder places that stretch off in the lands beyond the fourth. And beyond them? Few have seen the savage mystery of Greater Hebei and returned to tell the tale. We know of only one, and his name is Frank Fradella.

Beijing has a lot of stray cats. Which translates into a lot of stray kittens. They are small, cute and usually covered with mud. And should you run into one while out on a date, you're likely to witness something along the lines of what happens in our lesson for today. So listen up and be prepared for the next time savage cuteness intrudes on your love life.

We've recently released an updated version of our downloadable Chinese annotation software. Our thanks to all of you who have helped push this release forward by making edits and additions through our online Chinese-English dictionary.

If you are already a user of our Firefox Chinese dictionary plugin you can upgrade to the latest release by reinstalling it here. And if you aren't using it... why not? Don't you want easy tooltip popups with pinyin and english definitions whenever you mouseover Chinese words on any webpage? And what about the convenience of our power hotkeys: "A" fires words to your Popup Chinese vocabulary list, "D" switches between simplified and traditional characters and "G" fetches the Google translation of any highlighted passage? Then there's that whole click-to-edit thing that lets you customize the dictionary.

We hope you find these materials useful and encourage you to take part in our editing community. Questions and feedback are always welcome at service@popupchinese.com, while software developers are encourged to check out the raw database and source code distribution by visiting our software downloads page.

Due to factors beyond the control of man, we're going to have to delay Film Friday until hopefully tomorrow. In the meantime, we're proud to present this Intermediate HSK exercise. If you've been with us for a while, you know the drill. Head over to our quiz and see how many of our fifteen questions you can answer correctly. If you can complete the quiz in less than twelve minutes you are making excellent time.

Did you know the average person spends two to three years of their life sitting on the toilet? It goes without saying that most of this time is not spent productively, which is why we're pleased to share this listening test with you today. In it we offer up a life-saving secret that will help free up some of your time for more important things like studying Chinese.

Office visitors please note: in response to the growing popularity of this technique among staff, we have implemented draconian controls on office washroom usage. You are encouraged to bring your own toiletries.

About two hours into the exam your concentration wanes. And as the outside world reduces itself to a quiet hush your mind traces back to that moment when you first thought of picking up Chinese. "What was going through my head? Had I just finished watching Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon? Had I eaten Chinese takeout that week?" The what's and why's start piling up.

Then somewhere in the middle of this whirlwind of recollection Chuck Norris enters your train of thought, and kicks your mind into kungfu mode. And you remember why you are here: these questions are your enemies, and they must be eliminated with extreme prejudice....

In this podcast we'll teach you a respectful form of address you can use to refer cab drivers, serving staff and martial arts instructors. We'll also teach you left from right, and share some tips on how to make the best use of your newest language partner (the cab driver). And as icing on the cake, Brendan and Anthony share some of their taxi stories from the wilds of Zhengzhou and Harbin, known collectively in these parts as "the interior".

In today's lesson we return with another outburst of marital dischord, and a dialogue that falls somewhere around the upper boundary of our Elementary series. The mandarin here will come at you fast and furious as our voice actors tear into each other at full speed and sometimes even yell over each other - just like a real argument.

If you find yourself despairing of the speed, take a deep breath though. With the exception of a single idiom, our vocabulary is relatively basic. And in addition to all the screaming and melodrama you can handle in a Monday podcast, this podcast covers a very useful way and relatively basic way to express the Future Tense. This is the powerful 会... 的 construct, which you'll be using all the time.