Course Description

Hello, everyone, welcome to Chinese idioms season 2: learn 80 most commonly used Chinese idioms through a comic story.

    Chinese idioms were originated from the ancient Chinese historical and philosophical works, crystallizing the wisdom of Chinese culture through thousands of years. They have become familiar daily language of today spoken by ordinary Chinese people in daily life. Being able to use them adroitly will lend vividness, authenticity, humor and refinement to your conversation and writing. The language in the Chinese idiom stories studied in this course encompasses the realms of politics, literature, military, philosophy and religion, which will enrich your Chinese vocabulary in all fields. While the season 1 of this course emphasizes the link of Chinese idiom stories with the four greatest indigenous classical Chinese philosophies, and taught 16 Chinese idioms and trace their source stories to Chinese philosophical and historical works, this season 2 aims to teach a much greater amount of idioms--80 in total-- by making you learn a piece of hilarious essay (taught in 11 parts) made of all these 80 idioms, so that you would easily memorize and understand their usage in sentence context that is hilarious and memorable.

     For each idiom story, there are three lectures, the first lecture is text practice of the idiom stories: I will lead you to learn the vocabulary, explain to you sentence by sentence the text, and lead you to read the text twice, and ask you questions about the text; the second lecture will teach you how to use the idioms in sentences, both grammatically and meaningfully. I will also explain briefly the source stories of most of these idioms. The third lecture will be my talking-head video speaking these stories, so that you can review them and understand them without the text.

    Chinese idiom stories are living fossils of language that are still extremely popular in daily conversation today, and will definitely lend humor, refinement, vividness and authenticity in your communication with Chinese people. You will find your Chinese acquire a new height with this course. If you go to China or talk to Chinese people, the use of a considerable amount of these Chinese idioms will make your Chinese truly sound sophisticated, refined and humorous, and make you easily be regarded as a true insider of Chinese culture.


Professor of Chinese, English and Comparative literature

Hong Zeng

I am an award-winning professor of Chinese, English and Comparative Literature. I have taught Mandarin Chinese at all levels in prestigious American colleges altogether for 16 years. I have taught nine years as a tenure-track professor of Chinese and comparative literature at Carleton College, ranked No. 1 in undergraduate teaching in all liberal arts colleges in America, and have directed the Chinese program for two years at Hamline University (the first university in Minnesota). In both my second year coming to Carleton and Hamline, I more than doubled their Beginning Chinese Class enrollment. I have also taught at Swarthmore College, College of William and Mary and University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Before I came to United States, I have taught English and American literature for 3 years at Beijing Foreign Studies University. I have two PhDs, one in Chinese and comparative literature from UNC, Chapel Hill, the other in  English and American literature, literature translation and second language education from Beijing Foreign Studies University. I have published five books in America (including two from Macmillan) on Chinese, English and comparative literature, film study, language study and language philosophy that are well-endorsed by world-renowned experts and book review journals in my field. I have earned 30000 dollars large grant from Asian Network in Chinese study.

Course curriculum

  • 1

    New Chapter

    • promo video

    • story text practice part 1

    • story part 1 acting video

    • Story Part 1-1 Idiom Usage

    • Story part 1-2 idiom usage

    • story text practice part 2

    • story part 2 acting video

    • story part 2 idiom usage

    • story text practice part 3

    • story part 3 acting video

    • story part 3 idiom usage

    • story text practice part 4

    • story part 4 acting video

    • Story part 4 idiom usage

    • story text practice part 5

    • story part 5 acting video

    • Story part 5 idiom usage

    • story text practice part 6

    • story part 6 acting video

    • story part 6 idiom usage

    • story text practice part 7

    • story part 7 acting video

    • Story part 7 idiom usage

    • story text practice part 8

    • story part 8 acting video

    • Story part 8 idiom usage

    • story text practice part 9

    • story part 9 acting video

    • Story part 9 idiom usage

    • story text practice part 10

    • story part 10 acting video

    • Story part 10 idiom usage

    • story text practice part 11

    • story part 11 acting video

    • Story part 11 idiom usage

    • the whole story acting video