A Chinese podcast · Same story, 4 levels
不丹三年没有一个人死于狂犬病：他们没有只救人，他们去给狗打针
Bhutan Has Gone Three Years Without a Single Rabies Death — Because It Stopped Only Treating People and Started Vaccinating Dogs
About this story
The WHO has validated Bhutan for eliminating dog-transmitted rabies — zero human deaths since June 2023, the first country in its region. It worked because Bhutan moved its effort from treating bitten people to vaccinating the dogs. Chinese listening practice at four levels. HSK 1 Chinese listening practice.
This is an HSK 1 Chinese listening episode that runs about 3 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 12 key vocabulary words such as 狗、人、年 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
Today we are talking about a small country.
The country is called Bhutan.
Bhutan is up in the mountains.
Bhutan is not big, and there are not many people.
Bhutan has a lot of dogs.
Dogs in front of the school, dogs in front of the houses, dogs up on the hills.
Bhutan used to have a big problem.
Some of the dogs carried a disease.
You cannot see this disease.
If one of those dogs bit someone, that person got the disease too.
And once a person had it, they would die.
It is a frightening disease.
So parents were afraid of the dogs.
Many countries have this same problem.
In many countries, people die because of dogs.
Every year, a great many of them.
So this is a very big problem.
So what did Bhutan do?
Listen.
When a dog bites someone, you can give that person an injection.
With the injection, they will not die.
That is a good thing.
But even so, people still get bitten.
The dogs still carry the disease.
Tomorrow, and the day after, more people get bitten.
So Bhutan said: we have to look at the people, and at the dogs.
They went out to find the dogs.
The dogs by the school, the dogs on the hills — they looked for all of them.
And they gave the dogs injections.
One dog, two dogs, a great many dogs.
Once a dog has had the injection, it no longer carries the disease.
If the dog has no disease, then even if it bites, the person does not get it.
They did this for more than ten years.
One year, two years, ten years.
Every single year, injections for the dogs.
In June 2023, one person in Bhutan died of this disease.
That was the last one.
After that, nobody.
For over three years, not one person.
On September the fourth, a very big organisation said: Bhutan has done it.
This organisation looks at diseases in many countries.
They said: here, Bhutan is the first.
People from the organisation came to Bhutan and looked for many days.
They looked, and then they said: it is true.
There is one thing about this that is very good.
Bhutan is not big, and it does not have much money.
But Bhutan did it.
They did not only look at the people.
They looked at the dogs as well.
Once the dogs were well, the people were well.
Think about it: where you live, are there dogs?
Listen again
Try it without the transcript and notice what sounds clearer.
What vocabulary does this episode teach?
词汇HSK 1. The animal at the centre of the whole story, and of the solution.
HSK 1. The episode is built on one contrast: 看人 versus 看狗.
HSK 1. 他们做了十多年 — the length of the effort is the point.
HSK 1. The closing logic: 狗好了，人就好了。
HSK 1. Where the dogs are, and why parents worried.
HSK 1. Used for what could and could not be seen about the disease.
The small mountain country the episode is about, introduced with floor words only.
Taught by what it does rather than by name: 这个病，你看不见。
The single action the whole chain runs through: 这个狗咬了人。
The solution, applied first to people and then — crucially — to dogs.
The stake of the story, and the number that makes it news: 一个人都没有。
What the disease did to ordinary life: 爸爸妈妈都很怕狗。
* beyond level超纲词
What grammar patterns appear in this episode?
语法A 了，B 就……
Once A happens, B follows. The episode chains these to walk through the logic one step at a time.
打了针，他就不会死。
狗打了针，狗就没有这个病了。
狗好了，人就好了。
因为……
Gives the cause. Chinese often puts 因为 in the middle of the sentence, attached to the reason itself.
在很多国家，都有人因为狗死了。
二零二三年六月，不丹有一个人因为这个病死了。
一个……都没有
Not a single one. 都 with a negative is far stronger than 没有 alone, and it is what makes the closing statistic land.
三年多，一个人都没有。
Proper Nouns
专有名词Sources
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