A Chinese podcast · Same story, 4 levels
Photo: China News Service · CC BY 4.0
许家印被判无期。恒大留下一百六十二万套没盖完的房子，还有七十万套空着。
Evergrande Founder Gets Life Sentence
About this story
Evergrande Founder Gets Life Sentence. HSK 2 Chinese listening practice.
This is an HSK 2 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 6 key vocabulary words such as 等、钱、公司 and walks through 2 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.
Read at your level
原文Read the complete story in Chinese. Reveal pinyin and English only when you need them.
English transcript reference
There is a company in China called Evergrande — in Chinese, Hengda.
It was the largest property developer in China.
The man who built the company is called Hui Ka Yan.
He used to be the richest man in China.
What Evergrande did was simple: build apartments, sell apartments.
In China there is one way of buying a home: the building is not finished yet, and you can pay first.
You pay, you wait a year or two, the building is finished, and then you move in.
A great many people bought exactly that way.
Then the buildings were not finished.
Not one building, or two.
One million six hundred and twenty thousand units.
Behind 1.62 million units are more than six million people.
These people had paid, and were waiting for a home — waiting and waiting.
Some are repaying a loan while renting somewhere else to live.
Where did the money go?
Evergrande said it had a great deal of money.
That was false.
From 2016 to 2021, Evergrande worked on the numbers it reported.
Where there were assets, it reported more than there were.
Where there were debts, it reported fewer than there were.
Later everyone saw the real figure: Evergrande owed more than 2.4 trillion yuan.
That is a number that is very hard to make sense of.
On the twentieth of August this year, the court ruled.
Evergrande Group: fined more than 8.8 billion yuan.
Evergrande Real Estate: fined 7 billion.
Hui Ka Yan himself: life.
Life means this: he stays inside for the rest of his life.
All of his money and property is confiscated.
His two sons were sentenced as well.
This is very big news; but the thing that matters most is the thing the court cannot rule on.
The buildings are still there.
Over these years the government has helped finish more than 800,000 units.
Another 700,000 have not been finished.
In those 700,000 units, right now, there is nobody.
The people who bought them are still waiting.
They have been waiting for years.
Think about it:
You paid first, and the thing never comes. How long would you wait?
Listen again
Try it without the transcript and notice what sounds clearer.
What vocabulary does this episode teach?
词汇Six million people paid, and then did nothing but 等.
钱去哪里了？ — where did the money go?
The developer people trusted to finish the building.
恒大欠了两万四千多亿 — Evergrande owed more than 2.4 trillion.
首 first, 富 rich. 中国首富 = the richest man in China.
Literally "no term" — a sentence with no end date.
* beyond level超纲词
What grammar patterns appear in this episode?
语法一边……，一边……
Doing two things at once — often with a sense of strain.
有的人一边还着钱，一边在外面租房子住。 — Some are repaying a loan while renting somewhere else.
……的意思是：……
Defines a term inside the narration.
无期的意思是：他要在里面待一辈子。 — "Life" means he stays inside for the rest of his life.
Proper nouns
专有名词Sources
来源Free account
Keep learning from this story
Create a free account to keep saved words and your preferred level together.
- Keep words with their story context
- Remember your preferred level
- Build your vocabulary over time