I’m not sure if time passes quicker for students or for teachers. Maybe it comes down to who has to prepare more? Anyway, this past week we had air raid sirens in Beijing, wedding stickers on drain hole covers outside the hotel, a new video that discusses Chinese and Western literature, and the teacher becomes a student: I’m learning how to build APPs.
🎵Listen to the latest podcast episode🎵
Available on Libsyn, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube
Recent posts
|
|
🚨 Air Raids
Another thing that I never experienced when growing up: air raid tests. I guess this is a feature of living in a capital city, right?
|
|
|
囍 Wedding Stickers
A neat little discovery outside the hotel: happiness stickers on the drain hole covers. Follow the path to the wedding reception!
|
|
|
📚 Talking About Chinese and Western Literature
A sit down with a literature graduate to talk about books.
|
|
|
🤖 The AI Course
They say you’re never too old to learn, so let's dive into this AI thing.
|
🚨 Air Raids
I'm going to assume that this is a feature of living in a capital city such as Beijing, but this is something that I had never experienced growing up: practice air raid sirens.
This would be the second or third time that the city has performed this type of drill, though I think you can only hear it if you're outside of the fifth ring road.
Luckily, I was able to hear it this time on Saturday, September 20.
The first warning signal was given at 10.00 am and lasted for three minutes. Then the second was given at 10.10 am and again lasted for three minutes. The final all clear was given around 10.18 am.
I've kinda wondered what the purpose of these are as they seem to be a bygone type of warning. That is, how would a city like Beijing ever be under attack before notice can be sent via text message, TV, or even WeChat? My point being that air raid sirens imply that everything else has been cut and the planes are on their way, how could that possibly happen?
Better yet, I don't want to think about how that could happen. All I know is that Beijing still runs practice drills every few years, usually around these other big anniversaries, such as the Victory Day military parade they had a couple of weeks ago.
I guess it's better to test the old technology rather than assume it will still work when it's needed most?
👉 Does your city have practice air raid siren drills?
Chinese words to learn:
防空演习 (fángkōng yǎnxí, "air raid drill")
An interesting and unexpected find today: 囍 (xǐ, "happiness").
As I was outside to capture the sound of the air raid siren test on Saturday, I saw these stickers placed atop the drain hole covers. I asked the BaoAn (security guy) what they were for.
"囍纸儿 (xǐ zhǐ er)。" (Happiness paper).
Apparently there is a wedding going on at the hotel today and the couple placed these stickers atop the drain covers to lead the way to the party.
No, I wasn't invited and wasn't looking to go either. Chinese weddings can be spectacles to behold, especially if you're privey to the goings on in the hotel itself, ie, where the bridegroom has to force entry or bribe his way past the bridesmaids to get into the room where his future wife is awaiting his arrival.
This usually involves any number of cute tricks or packets of small money (think 1 RMB) to which the bridesmaids can agree or disagree. This portion of the wedding day is usually for the immediate family and wedding party, after which everybody heads out to the ceremony proper.
婚礼快乐！
👉 Ever been to a wedding in a foreign country and a foreign culture?
📚 Talking About Chinese and Western Literature
In a video that we recorded a few months ago, we finally published this chat with one of the graduate students I met on campus in a previous video. I asked if he would be willing to be on the channel and he agreed. So we sat down to talk a little bit about the books he was reading.
For quick reference, here are the books mentioned:
Western Literature
- William Shakespeare – works referenced in general (e.g., Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth)
- Albert Camus – works referenced in general
- Jean-Paul Sartre – two books read in English (not specified; noted as “thought, the French writer”)
- Gabriel García Márquez – One Hundred Years of Solitude (referred to as “the lonely 100 years”)
Chinese Literature
- Laozi (Lao Tzu) – Dao De Jing (referred to as “laws”)
- Zhuangzi – works referenced generally (noted as “the cons”)
- Sunzi (Sun Tzu) – The Art of War
- Lu Xun – general recommendation for modern Chinese literature
- Mo Yan – Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out (also noted that he won the Nobel Prize)
👉 Watch the full video HERE
🤖 The AI Course
Finally, I'm embarking on a new venture - I'm learning how to build APPs using AI.
You might have heard of something called "vibe coding" with which you can build APPs and AI agents to help you do stuff. While it is true that you can build an APP to help out with your production workflow (of even learn a language!), the reality of these APPs is that they are NOT for production nor are they for mass deployment. That is to say, you're not building the next Angry Birds or Duolingo using these APPs.
What you CAN do, however, is build yourself a micro APP that can help you out with some things.
The course will run about a month and will (hopefully) see me build three or four APPs in that time. I'm not sure how many of them will be deployable in that they may be highly tailored to my own use.
That being said, what I envision for this channel and for users and vewiers of these newsletters, are micro-APP tools that can be used for certain purspoes, such as language podcast generation, worksheet generation, a language progress tracker, etc.
So, while these APPs may not change the world, they may greatly help in our language study efficiency. (Remember that Chinese course from last year? That's one of the first things I'm looking to rebuild.)
👉 What APP would you like to see built?
We'll leave it there for this week. Thanks for reading. I hope you found this useful.
📩 Questions or comments? Just reply to this email.
Hope you’re well,
Steve
☕ Support the Channel
Like the work? Join the Coffee Club:
☕ Buy Me a Coffee
🔗 Follow me on:
YouTube | TikTok | Twitter | Threads | Newsletter
