About

The Chinese teaching establishment had cornered us in a bar at Houhai, and was telling us it couldn't be

done over shots of tequila. "Who can teach coverbs to absolute beginners," they scoffed. "You want to

start with a lesson on drinking tea." The head of the Confucius Institute was nearly falling off his chair, but

still chipped in something about the Great Wall. It was less a suggestion than something more forceful.

"Play up the culture and make China look good, you know?"

And so we nodded and finished our drinks before heading home. "And down the hatches," Brendan said

heading into the studio. "If we're going out in a blaze of glory, at least it'll be a blaze of linguistic glory that

illustrates the topic-oriented nature of the Chinese language when it comes to giving instructions." The

rest of us nodded. The world could drink tea on its own time. In our corner of the Internet, there was an

urgent need for more podcasts about coverbs and topic-oriented sentences. The Great Wall could wait.