A Chinese podcast · Same story, 4 levels
克里斯蒂安·贝尔用了二十年，盖出十二栋房子，只为让寄养的兄弟姐妹不再被分开
Christian Bale Spent Twenty Years Building Twelve Houses So Foster Brothers and Sisters Would Stop Being Split Up
About this story
In the American foster system, a sibling group is harder to place than a single child, so the requirement that brothers and sisters stay together is usually the first thing dropped. Christian Bale spent close to twenty years on that one problem. Together California opened in Palmdale in September 2026: twelve furnished homes on roughly a thousand square metres, the first of its kind in the state, funded by nearly $9 million in donations. The first children move in in October. Chinese listening practice at four levels. HSK 1 Chinese listening practice.
This is an HSK 1 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 12 key vocabulary words such as 儿子、女儿、住 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
A family has a father and a mother.
It also has a son and a daughter.
The son and the daughter are one family.
But sometimes the father and mother cannot be at home.
They cannot look after these two children.
When that happens, the children have to live in someone else's home.
In America, this is true for a lot of children.
The son lives in one home.
The daughter lives in a different home.
The two of them cannot be in the same home.
Day after day, they cannot see each other.
The son and the daughter have been separated.
This is not good.
One man saw this happening.
His name is Bale.
Bale is a film person.
When you watch a film, you will see him.
Bale thought: the son and the daughter should live in one home.
They must not be separated.
Bale thought about this for twenty years.
Twenty years is very, very long.
He did not walk away.
He kept thinking, and he kept working.
This September, he finished.
He built twelve new houses.
The houses are in America, in a place that is not big.
These twelve houses are for the children.
A son and a daughter can live in the same house.
They can be together every single day.
They can see each other every single day.
In October, the children are arriving.
On the day they come, Bale spoke.
He said: these children are deeply unhappy.
He said: we have to make them happy.
We have to let them see a future.
Twenty years, twelve houses.
In those twenty years, he could have walked away.
But he did not walk away.
Now think about it for a moment.
You have one thing to do, and it will take twenty years.
Will you do it?
Listen again
Try it without the transcript and notice what sounds clearer.
What vocabulary does this episode teach?
词汇HSK 1. The episode says 儿子和女儿 rather than "siblings" — the two words a beginner already owns carry the whole relationship.
HSK 1. 儿子住在一个家。女儿住在别的家。— two lines, and the problem is on the table.
HSK 1. Repeated seven times. Everything in this story is about who lives where.
HSK 1. 他们天天不能看见 — the loss stated without a single abstract word.
HSK 1. 他没有走 — used twice at the end, and it is the point of the episode.
HSK 1. 你看电影，你会看见他 — how a famous person is introduced to someone who does not know the name.
HSK 2. 孩子要住在别人的家里 — the plain statement of what foster care is.
住在别人的家里 — the word doing all the emotional work in that sentence.
儿子和女儿分开了。这不好。— the verb the entire project exists to prevent.
他做了十二个新房子 — twelve of them, and the number is the achievement.
他们可以天天在一起 — the payoff line, and the opposite of 分开.
他一直想，一直做 — twenty years compressed into one adverb, used twice.
* beyond level超纲词
What grammar patterns appear in this episode?
语法想了 + duration
Verb plus 了 plus a length of time states how long an action went on. Putting the duration last lands the weight on the number.
贝尔想这件事，想了二十年。
要让他们……
让 introduces a causative: to make or let someone be a certain way. Stacking two 让 clauses is how the quoted speech states an intention.
我们要让他们高兴。
我们要让他们看见以后。
他可以……，可是他没有……
He could have, but he did not. Naming the available exit first is what gives the refusal its weight.
二十年里，他可以走。
可是他没有走。
Proper Nouns
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