A Chinese podcast · Same story, 4 levels
巴厘岛"安宁日"全岛停摆，一个瑞士游客照样出门，拍了视频发上网。他被判了一年。
Bali Shuts Down Completely for Its Day of Silence. A Swiss Tourist Walked Out, Filmed It, and Got a Year in Prison.
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Bali Shuts Down Completely for Its Day of Silence. A Swiss Tourist Walked Out, Filmed It, and Got a Year in Prison. HSK 5-6 Chinese listening practice.
This is an HSK 5-6 Chinese listening episode that runs about 4 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 9 key vocabulary words such as 罕见、区分、恰恰 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
Start with this one day, because in the world as it is now it is close to unique.
Bali is an island in Indonesia, packed year-round with people on holiday.
But one day out of the year, the entire island comes to a complete stop.
That day is called the Day of Silence, and it usually falls in March.
The rules do not quite sound real: no going out, no lights, no noise, no work.
No cars in the streets, nobody on the beaches, shops closed.
Rarer still is the airport closing — for a full day, not one aircraft takes off or lands.
The internet is cut as well.
These rules do not distinguish locals from foreigners; if you are here on holiday, you stay in your accommodation too.
The island has a traditional patrol that walks the streets that day, watching for anyone out moving about.
Why?
It is a day of Balinese Hinduism, and the intent is roughly this: clear out a whole day, let the outside fall quiet, and let people return to their own minds.
An island walked across by tens of thousands of feet every day picks one day a year and closes itself.
On the Day of Silence this March, one person did not comply.
He is twenty-six, from Switzerland, staying at a villa on the island.
That day he walked out of the villa and all the way down to the beach.
Walking out is not, in fact, the part the verdict is aimed at.
What matters is this: he filmed as he walked, and then posted the video to a social platform.
On camera he is smiling, calling the tradition "crazy", with an obscenity attached.
The islanders saw the video, and from that moment the nature of the thing changed.
It was no longer a tourist breaking a rule; it had become the mockery of several million people’s faith, in front of the whole world.
Many Balinese were furious, someone called the police, and officers came to the villa and took him away.
The case opened in June, and on the twentieth of August the Denpasar district court delivered its verdict.
One year, in prison.
The basis is a provision of Indonesia’s new criminal code relating to religious offence.
The judge wrote: the defendant’s conduct offended the Balinese people, wounded their faith, and provoked public outrage.
His own defence was this: that day he was hungry and frustrated, and had not fully understood the rules.
He said: I deeply regret what I did, and I apologise to the Balinese people.
That defence would ordinarily carry weight — did not know, made a mistake, apologised sincerely; usually enough to earn some leniency.
But the court found one detail, and it is precisely this detail that makes "did not know" collapse.
Before he posted those videos, the villa staff had explicitly informed him: today you may not go out.
He was told, he went out anyway, and after going out he filmed and published it.
The verdict lands on the third step.
Walking out of the villa is one person’s choice, and at worst a broken rule.
Filming it and putting it online is addressing an entire island — and doing it in the register of mockery.
Is one year too heavy?
The argument online is fierce, and both sides can produce reasons.
One side: a year in prison for a young foreigner who did not know is disproportionate.
The other: he was not ignorant — he was told and proceeded regardless, then made a public joke of it.
I am not going to settle it for either side, because the sentence is not the part worth remembering.
What is worth remembering is the day itself.
Several million people, on the same day, agreeing together to go quiet.
Nobody compels them. They want to.
In this age of noise and screens everywhere, something that can hold several million people silent for a whole day has all but died out.
So what that island is protecting is not really a clause of law. It is the one day it can still hold on to.
A person from outside walked out on that day, raised a phone, and said something with a smile.
To him, that was presumably just a video posted without thinking.
To the people of the island, it was the one silence they get each year, taken and made into a joke in front of the whole world.
Think about it:
When you arrive somewhere new, do you find out the rules first?
Listen again
Try it without the transcript and notice what sounds clearer.
What vocabulary does this episode teach?
词汇更罕见的，是机场关闭 — rarer still is the airport closing.
The rules 不区分 locals from foreigners.
恰恰是这个细节 — it is precisely this detail.
What made it worse was the 语气 — the register of mockery.
The point of the ending: 没有人强迫 — nobody forces them.
Literally a clock’s pendulum stopping. The whole island 停摆.
一年的刑期 — a one-year term.
The word in the judge’s written ruling.
Used for how rare collective silence has become.
* beyond level超纲词
What grammar patterns appear in this episode?
语法与其说是……
Reframes what something really is — used here as 不是……，是…… to relocate the point.
所以那座岛保护的其实不是一条法律条文，是它自己还保得住的那一天。
本来是……的
It would ordinarily have been … — sets up a reversal.
这个辩解本来是有力量的 — that defence would ordinarily have carried weight
近乎
Close to, verging on. More formal than 差不多.
已经近乎绝迹 — has all but died out
近乎荒唐 — verging on absurd
Proper Nouns
专有名词Sources
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