Hello everybody and welcome to this week's edition of the newsletter! :D

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Halloween overseas, but burning papers (烧纸) in China for the ancestors.

It was a busy week despite us not publishing very much. That's because we spent a large portion of time preparing and researching a few things. Notably, we crafted an audio book from one of the short stories in LiaoZhia ZhiYi, titled Lian Xiang. So that, and the LiaoZhai video itself, took up quite a bit of our time.

Further, our latest walk n talk video titled "Why Am I STILL in China?!" received quite a bit of attention and generated more than a few comments, one of which stood out and, I think, requires another video response.

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This week's videos:

1. Chinese: 聊斋志异 and The Chinese Horror Story
2. Russian: Reading Код да Винчи - Дэн Браун
3. English: Why Am I STILL in China?!
4. EXTRA: Working on that book!
5. EXTRA EXTRA: Lian Xiang Audiobook preview!

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Our big effort this week was a special long form video on the well-known LiaoZhai ZhiYi (聊斋志异) collection of short stories by Pu Songling. We mentioned him in last week's newsletter as we were preparing a video that would go into a little bit more detail about the stories.

The collection of stories, known in English as "Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio", consist of some 431 short stories that were penned in the 1600-1700s by Pu Songling, a government clerk, writer, and educator. Although several of his stories have been made into movies (聂小倩，画皮，画壁), the writer himself was portrayed by Jackie Chan in the 2019 movie "The Knight of the Shadows".

Other than that, the collection of stories is not easy to get through and, to be honest, is probably easier to be read in translation than in its original. Although these tales often deal with ghosts or spirits, they typically consist of the normal world we know but mixed with a bit of strangeness that you'd hear from someone exaggerating a story they heard second or third hand. "Must've been magic or something," along those lines.

If you're interested, I've linked our Google Doc below that you can download with the resources and links we used to create our video on the topic.

The Google Doc is here, and the video is here.

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The week was rather quiet for studying Russian as I spent most of my time researching the LiaoZhai video. However, I did manage to continue with my morning reading time (20 minutes) before heading out to the gym. This is a habit I want to keep and so I am trying my best to make it a non-negotiable in my day. Currently I'm reading The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown (Код да Винчи - Дэн Браун), which is easier than some of the other books I have. I was thinking of doing a live stream about some of my books, if only to take stock of what I have among my bookshelves.

I'm currently on Page 78 out of 543 and can generally get about 2-2.5 pages done in a day.

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The big English video this week was "Why Am I STILL in China?!" and I think the video hit a mark.

Not only has it generated over 4000 views so far, but it's also bolstered our subscriber count. But, more importantly, it did draw a few comments, one of which stood out:

I did respond a little and the commentator did follow up, but I think he raises quite a few points that should be clarified. So my next walk n talk video might have to be a response to the comment in an effort to clear up a few things not just about the comment, but about my video about still being in China.

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Next, we are continuing with working on our book which we hope will be released towards the end of this year. This week saw us compiling a rough draft to make sure it looks something like a book and if there were any things missing from it. So far we have the following:

-Transcripts from YouTube Shorts

-Extra downloads section

-Recommended Reading

-Graphs and lists related to learning multiple languages.

Is there anything else you can think of that we should include?

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Finally, an extra bonus this week as we took some time to craft an audiobook from one of the stories from LiaoZhai. Titled "Lian Xiang", which translates as "Lotus Fragrance" but refers to one of the main characters' names, the story is about a guy who all of a sudden finds himself the centre between two lovely ladies.

However, things are not as they seem as both of them have a bit of a secret: one is a ghost and the other is a fox! What could go wrong?

You can find the FULL VERSION on our Buy Me A Coffee website or tune into this week's episode of the podcast to hear a snippet from the audiobook.

This might be something we try again later on so stay tuned for more!

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Alright, we'll leave it there for this week! We hope you are well! Please do click through on the links above and sort through those resources as we think they will help you in your own language learning journeys.

Comments? Questions? Concerns? Suggestions? Get in touch! We'd love to hear from you! You can email us here or follow us on YouTube and post a comment, we'll get back to you!

Thanks for reading and let us know if there's anything we can help you with!

-Steve

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