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Good morning everyone! For the past few months I have been putting together the materials for the next book in the Capturing Chinese series. Again the author is Lu Xun, but this book will contain only one story. Ah Q The Real Story is Lu Xun's longest and the story is quickly becoming one of my favorites. During the process of writing, I read the story over and over so having a good story is very important. Lu Xun's Ah Q is witty and sometimes downright hysterical. His satire is right in your face. I am currently on track to publishing the book in early 2011 as planned and am very excited to share this next book with the Capturing Chinese audience. Currently our Chinese audio files are available if you are interested in starting to read the story early. You can find the audio files here. Please be patient as these books require tons of work. We are also compiling ideas for future publications. Do you have an author or story that you really love and would like to see made available in the Capturing Chinese series? Leave us a comment below! Kevin

Slow-Chinese is a great site to hear interesting dialogs slowly read aloud.  昕煜 (Xinyu) writes each of the dialogues himself and then reads them slowly aloud. He's really done a good job of putting the site together and on April 23rd he posted an interesting article on Lu Xun. He gives a very nice introduction to who Lu Xun is, what his more famous stories are, and the issue of whether school children should still read him in school. Check out his website and his post on Lu Xun below: Slow-Chinese 鲁迅和他笔下的人

I wrote a while back about China's involvement in World War I and got a response from one reader that he was utterly surprised that 140,000 Chinese went to Europe to fight with the Allied powers. (They fought as laborers building trenches and such). His comment made me think, "did China really send so many people or did I just find a bad source of information?" Well, the numbers are right. This week's addition of The Economist discusses China's involvement in WWI and how no one really knew. They sent so many people, did some of the dirty jobs, and in return they had part of their territory transferred from the losing power, Germany, to their more dominant neighbor, Japan. Lu Xun wrote his stories during this time in China and if his stories come across as a bit pessimistic then understand the times he was living in. He wanted to see a stronger China, but after WWI China seemed quite enfeebled. To read the article, visit this link. The Economist keeps their articles up for non-subscribers for about three weeks so read it while you can. China and The First World War (The Economist)

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On March 25th, 2010 Kate Merkel-Hess of The China Beat interviewed Kevin Nadolny regarding Capturing Chinese. You can read the entire interview at the link below. Capturing Chinese With Help from Lu Xun The China Beat is a gold mine of current news about China. Check out their other posts and subscribe to their feed to keep in touch. The reason for the delay in publishing this news about the interview is because Kevin recently got a promotion for his job in Japan from what they call in Japanese アルバイト (part-time worker) to 正社員 (real employee). The promotion is huge because Japanese companies are awfully hard to formally join unless you graduate from a Japanese university and then join the company right after graduation.

Today marks the first day of the year of the metal Tiger! We get to celebrate a double holiday this year with Valentine's Day falling on the same day. While Japan celebrated the year of the Tiger on January first, China keeps to the tradition of celebrating New Years based on the lunar calendar. The celebration of the new year spans two weeks and is marked by an incredible silence as many people head home to be with their families. Anyways that was my experience in Beijing 2005. While fireworks do go off on the new year to scare off those pesky ghosts, most of the holiday is spent eating with family and visiting temples. Many shops close and I found it hard to find a bite to eat at some times. Here is to wishing you all a prosperous new year in the Year of the Tiger!