In this Intermediate show, David, Echo and Sylvia drop into our studio to chat about The Art of War, revealing not only what the Chinese military classic has in common with Monty Python, but also our own personal favorites from among the text's celebrated 36 strategems. And our goal? Helping you seem hyper-educated: because we're all about shortcuts, and why read the original text when you can just fake it through a podcast?

Learning Chinese? This lesson is a touch on the more difficult side for our intermediate series. Not only do we have a lot of native Chinese spoken in the discussion section of our podcast, but our non-dialogue focus is on some of the more commonly used strategems from The Art of War that you'll run into in daily life in China. But if you're an upper-level student, please do check it out and let us know what you think.
 said on
October 16, 2013
Great idea for a lesson, guys. Man, if only I had heard this before I left Binzhou ... would have appreciated 孙子兵法成 just that much more :) Have any of you been to that "museum" there in 滨州,惠民? That was I think the first tourist spot I visited outside of Beijing (made sense, living in Binzhou) but that was when I first moved to China so I had absolutely no idea what I was looking at.
 said on
October 27, 2013
Great lesson! I've been waiting for a history related lesson for years. Hope there are more of these to continue. Isn't Bizhou near Zibo? I believe I've actually passed by that museum on a business trip between Zibo and Jinan. Wished I had taken to time to stop by.

BTW - Who is the women in the dialogue? He voice sounds very familiar.
 said on
October 28, 2013
@drummerboy,

Yeah, Binzhou is just directly north of Zibo (well, 滨城 is anyway). Huimin is off to the west of the "city proper." I can't speak for its various counties, but Binzhou (滨城) is one of the nicest/cleanest cities I've been in... especially if you want to compare it to Jinan! :)
 said on
November 11, 2013
Great lesson! Thank you.
 said on
February 5, 2014
very cool! thanks!
 said on
May 22, 2014
I liked this one a lot! More like this one please!
 said on
August 5, 2015
Nice:)