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 2 Chinese listening practice.
This is an HSK 2 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 问题、孩子、办法 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
On September the fourth, the World Health Organization announced something good.
The country of Bhutan has driven an ancient disease out of its people.
The disease is called rabies.
It comes from dogs.
Let's start with how frightening this disease is.
If a dog has rabies and bites someone, the disease passes into that person.
At the moment of the bite, it does not even hurt much.
But after some days have passed, the person falls ill.
And once they are ill, there is almost no way to save them.
Worldwide, tens of thousands of people die of it every year.
Many of the dead are children.
So in many places, when a parent sees a dog in the street, they tense up.
Bhutan is a very small country.
It sits in the Himalayas, with fewer people than many single cities.
It is not a wealthy country either.
And yet this time it has done something many large countries still have not.
So how did they do it?
The first idea most people have is: save the person.
Someone is bitten, they get an injection straight away, and they do not die.
That approach is right, and it has to be done.
But it has a problem: the dogs are still out there, and so is the disease.
You save this person today; tomorrow somebody else gets bitten.
Carry on like that and you are forever running behind.
Bhutan changed the thinking.
They said: we have to deal with the people, and with the dogs.
So they started giving the dogs injections.
Dogs in the villages, dogs on the mountain roads, dogs with no owner — they looked for all of them.
One dog at a time.
One year after another.
They did this for over ten years, and never stopped.
Slowly, there was less of the disease among the dogs.
Less disease among the dogs meant fewer chances for it to reach people.
And in the end, the chain broke on the human side.
Since June 2023, nobody in Bhutan has died of rabies.
That is now more than three years.
This August, the World Health Organization sent people to Bhutan to look.
They looked for six days and checked a great many things.
When they got back they said: it is true, Bhutan has done it.
Of all the countries in this region, Bhutan is the first.
Why is this worth talking about?
Because it tells us something very simple.
If the problem is over on the dogs' side, that is where you have to go.
Standing on the human side and waiting, you will be waiting forever.
Bhutan is not big and not rich, but they looked in the right place.
Think about it: where you live, is there a problem where everyone is rescuing people, and nobody is dealing with the thing that started it?
Listen again
Try it without the transcript and notice what sounds clearer.
What vocabulary does this episode teach?
词汇HSK 2. The framing of the episode: a problem, and where you attack it.
HSK 2. Who dies most from this disease: 死的人里面，很多是小孩子。
HSK 3. 一般人第一个想到的办法是：救人 — and why it is not enough.
HSK 3. Bhutan against the countries that have not managed it.
HSK 3. The closing question turns on it — treating causes versus consequences.
HSK 3. 人被传上的机会也就少了 — how the mechanism actually works.
Named once the episode has already described it, so the word lands on something known.
Applied to people first, then to dogs — the whole turn of the story.
救人 is the intuitive response, and the episode explains why it is not sufficient.
没有主人的狗 — stray dogs, the hardest part of the job.
The cost of only treating people: 你永远在后面追。
What the disease did to everyday life: 家长看见路上的狗，心里都会紧张。
* beyond level超纲词
What grammar patterns appear in this episode?
语法一……一……地 + verb
Doing something one at a time, steadily. The reduplication conveys the patience the work required.
一只一只地打。
一年一年地打。
这样下去，……
If things continue like this, then… Used to project a current pattern into the future, usually as a warning.
这样下去，你永远在后面追。
再也没有……过
Never again since. 再也 plus a negative plus 过 marks something that stopped happening and has not resumed.
二零二三年六月以后，不丹再也没有人因为狂犬病死过。
Proper Nouns
专有名词Sources
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