A Chinese podcast · Same story, 4 levels
美国陆军开价：再服役两年，换四天假去打《侠盗猎车手6》
The US Army Offered Four Days Off to Play GTA 6 — If Soldiers Re-Enlist for Two More Years
About this story
The US Army Offered Four Days Off to Play GTA 6 — If Soldiers Re-Enlist for Two More Years. HSK 3 Chinese listening practice.
This is an HSK 3-4 Chinese listening episode that runs about 2 minutes. The full Mandarin script is shown with tap-for-pinyin and a line-by-line English translation, so you can listen and read at once — comprehensible input in the sense of Stephen Krashen's i+1 theory. It teaches 8 key vocabulary words such as 随便、够、打算 and walks through 3 grammar patterns, each explained in English with examples. The same news story is retold at 4 difficulty levels — use the level selector above to find the version that is challenging but still understandable for you.
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原文Read the complete story in Chinese. Reveal pinyin and English only when you need them.
English transcript reference
This August, an army battalion in the US state of Georgia posted a re-enlistment offer, and it came down to one sentence:
Serve two more years, and we will give you four days off.
Not any four days — the twentieth to the twenty-third of November.
Why those four days?
Because Grand Theft Auto VI comes out on the nineteenth of November.
Which means those four days are the first four days after the game goes on sale.
No reporting to base — you stay home and play for four days.
This game has kept people waiting a long time: twice announced, twice delayed, once by a year and once by six months.
Plenty of people have been waiting since secondary school and are now in work.
So for some of them, those four days genuinely carry weight.
The sign-up window ran from the first to the fourteenth of August; in this battalion, a hundred and thirty soldiers were eligible.
Two weeks later the number came in: twenty.
Twenty people, trading two years for four days.
You can laugh; but do the conversion — two years is seven hundred and thirty days, four days is four days, so a hundred and eighty days buys one.
Of course nobody signed on for two years purely for four days; more likely they had already decided to re-enlist, and the four days were a sweetener added on top.
But the truest layer of this is underneath: in the army, your time is not your own.
Which is exactly why four days you arrange yourself become valuable.
And one question nobody has answered: that game has already been delayed twice.
What if it slips again?
Two years is two years, not a day less.
The four days are written on paper, and have not been redeemed.
Think about it:
If someone wanted to buy two years of your life, what would you charge?
Listen again
Try it without the transcript and notice what sounds clearer.
What vocabulary does this episode teach?
词汇Not just any four days — 不是随便哪四天.
够条件 means to meet the requirements. A hundred and thirty soldiers 够条件.
They had already 打算 to re-enlist before the offer appeared.
Four days you 安排 yourself are worth more than four days someone else arranges.
The formal term for a term of military service.
续 is to continue, 签 is to sign. Exactly what the offer was for.
The game has 延期 twice already.
To make good on a promise. The four days are on paper and not yet 兑现.
* beyond level超纲词
What grammar patterns appear in this episode?
语法Which is to say — restates the previous point in plainer terms.
也就是说，这四天，是游戏上市以后的头四天。 — Which is to say, those are the first four days after release.
当然，……；更可能的是，……
Concedes an obvious reading, then supplies the likelier one.
当然，没有人是只为了四天才签的；更可能的是，他们本来就打算续签。 — Of course nobody signed for the four days alone; more likely they meant to re-enlist anyway.
归
To belong to. 不归你 = does not belong to you, is not yours to decide.
在部队里，你的时间不归你。 — In the army, your time is not your own.
这件事归他管。 — This matter is his to handle.
Proper Nouns
专有名词Sources
来源Free account
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