A Chinese podcast · Same story, 4 levels
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’s Founder Got Life. The Company Left 1.62 Million Unfinished Apartments — 700,000 Are Still Empty.
About this story
Evergrande’s Founder Got Life. The Company Left 1.62 Million Unfinished Apartments — 700,000 Are Still Empty. HSK 3 Chinese listening practice.
This is an HSK 3-4 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 8 key vocabulary words such as 楼、相信、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
Start with a number: 1.62 million apartments, never finished.
Behind one apartment stands one family; behind 1.62 million stand more than six million people.
These people have one thing in common: the money was paid long ago.
Buying a home in China usually means buying off-plan: the building is still going up, you pay first, wait a year or two, then collect the keys.
That arrangement only works because of one thing: you believe this company will finish the building.
Evergrande was then the largest property developer in China, and Xu Jiayin had once been the richest man in the country.
Then the building stopped.
Where did the money go?
Across those five years the accounts did two things: where there were assets they wrote them larger — that is inflation of assets; where there were debts they wrote them smaller — that is concealment.
As long as the numbers looked good, money could keep being borrowed and off-plan flats could keep being sold.
The real debt was more than 2.4 trillion yuan.
On the twentieth of August this year, the Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court delivered its first-instance verdict.
Evergrande Group, fined 8.82 billion yuan; Evergrande Real Estate, fined 7 billion.
Xu Jiayin himself: life imprisonment, and confiscation of all personal property.
The news usually ends here; but for those six million people, nothing has ended.
Through the delivery programme, more than 800,000 units have been completed these past years; the remaining 700,000 stand empty.
Plenty of people are waiting and paying a monthly mortgage at the same time — on an apartment they have never once walked into.
A court can sentence a man to life. It cannot produce an apartment.
Think about it:
You paid first and the thing never arrives. How long would you wait?
Listen again
Try it without the transcript and notice what sounds clearer.
What vocabulary does this episode teach?
词汇楼还在盖 — the building is still going up. 然后，楼停了。
The entire off-plan system rests on buyers 相信 the developer.
这套办法能转起来 — this arrangement only works because…
Both senses appear: 一家人 (one family) and 这家公司 (this company).
A home sold before it is built. You pay now, collect keys later.
虚 false, 增 increase. Writing assets larger than they are.
The counterpart to 虚增 — writing debts smaller than they are.
Many buyers are still paying 房贷 on a flat they have never entered.
* beyond level超纲词
What grammar patterns appear in this episode?
语法只靠一件事：……
Reduces something to its single load-bearing condition.
这套办法能转起来，只靠一件事：你相信这家公司会把楼盖完。
一……就……
As soon as X, then Y.
数字一好看，钱就能继续借。 — As soon as the numbers looked good, the borrowing could continue.
能……，判不出……
Contrasts what a power can and cannot do.
法院能判一个人无期，判不出一套房子。 — A court can sentence a man to life; it cannot produce an apartment.
Proper Nouns
专有名词Sources
来源Free account
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