Back Streets, Big Questions, and Study Habits

Jul 20, 2025 8:21 am

This Week: Back Streets, Big Questions, and Study Habits

From exploring Changping's hidden corners to questioning English's global dominance, plus a dive into Chinese study resources and what really matters in language learning.

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🎥 This Week's Videos

🚲 A ride through the back streets of Changping - Taking the scenic route back from the PSB, discovering the "behind the scenes" of Beijing's northern district. 👉 Watch here
🌍 Should English be replaced as the global business language?! - A big question about power dynamics, money, and which language young people should study today. 👉 Watch here
📚 Let's look at Chinese Study Resources - A practical exploration of tools and materials for Chinese language learners. 👉 Watch here
🎯 What IS still important when learning another language?! - Even with ChatGPT and AI, some things never change in language learning. 👉 Watch here
🤖 AI Agents - One last note.

🚲 A ride through the back streets of Changping

After my PSB visit, instead of taking the main highway back, I decided to venture through Changping's back alleys and lanes. What I found was fascinating—areas that look run-down but might actually be temporary by design. Beijing's rapid growth means many structures were built quickly, meant to serve a purpose for the moment rather than stand forever.

These aren't necessarily neglected areas; they're places waiting for their turn in Beijing's constant cycle of renewal. It's a different perspective on urban development when you take the time to look behind the golden arches and main roads.

👉 Watch the full video

🌍 Should English be replaced as the global business language?!

Here's a question that got me thinking: English became the global business language because that's where the major powers, technology, and money were. But what happens when those dynamics shift?

We've all learned English because that's where the opportunities were, but I'm curious—where do you see the power and money moving next? And more importantly, what language would you recommend a young person study today? (Sorry Esperanto enthusiasts, but let's be realistic about where the money and technology actually are!)

What do you think? Are we approaching a linguistic shift in the global business world?

👉 Watch the full video

📚 Let's look at Chinese Study Resources

A practical session diving into the tools and resources available for Chinese language learners. Whether you're just starting out or looking to level up your studies, having the right resources makes all the difference. Google Doc here.

👉 Watch the full video

🎯 What IS still important when learning another language?!

"ChatGPT, teach me Chinese. 你好，我是史蒂芬。" It's not that easy, is it?

With all the technological advances we're seeing, there's one thing that remains absolutely crucial: study habits and discipline. The ability to maintain focus—especially with all the distractions technology brings—is going to be more important than ever.

Technology is blazing ahead, giving us more entertaining content and distractions than ever before. But what makes language learning stick? Focus. Showing up to your studies consistently, whether that's in a physical classroom or just showing up for yourself.

There's a Chinese saying I always butcher: "The teacher can only lead you to the door. The student must walk through it." No amount of technology can replace that fundamental truth.

👉 Watch the full video

🤖 AI Agents

If you’ve been online recently, then you’ll no doubt have seen or heard about “AI Agents”. Forget ChatGPT and other Large Language Models, it’s all about the AI AGENT now.

What is an “AI Agent”?

These are the modern version of a “bot” that can do various tasks for you automatically. Theoretically, you program it once and it should continue to do the repetitive tasks you don’t want to do, ie, watching your email inbox for a certain type of email and then responding with a unique response based on certain parameters given in the Agent’s documentation. That documentation can be example templates or instructions, much like you would give to an employee to follow.

The difference is that these bots can take in information, process it, and then respond using a similar tone and voice that you would. Basically, you can train it to write in a manner that is very similar to your own.

The other thing that they can do is research. Be it Claude, ChatGPT, Manus, Perplexity, etc., these new LLMs (large language models) can gather information from all over the place and then sort it for you.

My goal, however, was for these Agents to visit certain news websites each and every day at 5 am, compile a summary of the latest news articles, then translate that summary into either Russian or Mandarin Chinese at a level I can understand, and then email me the results.

How did it go?

The results have been mixed.

I currently use Zapier for a lot of backend, administrative things (such as transforming YouTube descriptions into content suitable for other platforms). But they also offer AI Agents in Beta. The results have been wanting, that is, not working.

They work up to a certain point (researching and summarizing), but then fail to continue the workflow through to creating a Google Doc and emailing me the content.

As a result, I’ve spent the better part of the last week tinkering with these bots and I still don’t see the solution.

Disappointed.. but undaunted.

I’ll get these to work some way or another so I can create and compile a list of relevant, graded-language material in my target languages.

Oh, but the one good thing about these LLMs is that they can translated documents a lot better than other platforms such as Google Translate (which can do text, but not documents). One example is the Chinese edition of this newsletter, which is linked below. Enjoy!

👉 Chinese edition here

We’ll leave it there for this week. Thanks for reading. I hope the resources linked above are useful. Let me know if you have any issues with them.