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A tutor you can talk to for as long as you want.
It leads, you steer, and it answers anything.
Every call builds on the last.
Hear a call
Tutor: Hi, welcome to Konakai! Is there a place or situation you'd like to start in, or shall I choose?
Learner: You choose. Surprise me!
Tutor: Sunset outside 敦煌 (Dūnhuáng). Your sled races down a dune that booms beneath you like a low-flying plane, and skids to a stop at a cliff edge. Below, hundreds of cave doorways: 莫高窟 (Mògāo Kū). A woman with a brush behind her ear runs over: 你没事吧？ (Nǐ méishì ba?), "Are you okay?" Tell her: 我没事！ (Wǒ méishì!), "I'm fine!"
Learner: 我没事！ (Wǒ méishì!)
Tutor: She laughs: 你疯了！ (Nǐ fēng le!), "You're crazy!" She's 林夏 (Lín Xià), who restores the murals below. Then she freezes: the sand you knocked loose has slid away from a doorway framed in faded blue lotuses. Ask her: 这是什么？ (Zhè shì shénme?), "What is this?"
Learner: 这是什么吗？ (Zhè shì shénme ma?)
Tutor: So close! 什么 (shénme) already makes it a question, so drop the 吗 (ma) and ask again.
Learner: 这是什么？ (Zhè shì shénme?)
Tutor: She whispers: 我也不知道。 (Wǒ yě bù zhīdào.), "I don't know either." No map shows a cave here. You shine your phone through the gap: painted dancers swirl across the walls, one playing a lute behind her back. Tell her: 进去看看！ (Jìnqu kànkan!), "Let's go in and look!"
Learner: Wait, have people found hidden caves here before?
Tutor: They have! In nineteen hundred, workers clearing sand here found a sealed room packed with tens of thousands of manuscripts, untouched for about nine hundred years. One is a scroll printed in eight sixty-eight, nearly six hundred years before Gutenberg. Now tell her: 进去看看！ (Jìnqu kànkan!), "Let's go in and look!"
Learner: 进去看看！ (Jìnqu kànkan!)