A Chinese podcast · Same story, 4 levels
买下沃尔沃的那个人交班了：他把公司交给了一个不姓李的人
The Man Who Bought Volvo Just Handed His Carmaker to Someone Who Is Not Family
About this story
On 17 August 2026 Geely Auto announced that founder Li Shufu, 63, was stepping down as chairman. He built the group from fridge parts and motorcycles, was refused a car-making licence, and told officials: please give me one chance to fail. He got it in 2001, bought Volvo from Ford for $1.8bn in 2010, and led China's domestic brands on sales by 2017. His successor is An Conghui, a professional manager raised inside the company — not his son, which is the default in Chinese private business. Li barred his own brothers from management once carmaking began, and said in 2006 that the company could not be run by him alone. 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 车、买、钱 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
There is a man, and he has a very big company.
This company makes cars.
There are a lot of these cars on the road.
This man is called Li Shufu.
He is Chinese.
In the past, Li Shufu did not make cars.
In the past he made small things.
Later he thought: I am going to make cars.
Many people said: don't.
Making cars is hard.
You will end up with no money.
Li Shufu said: please give me one chance to fail.
Later he did make cars.
His cars got better and better.
There is a very famous car called Volvo.
Volvo is not a Chinese car.
Li Shufu bought Volvo.
Nobody could understand it.
A small Chinese company, buying something that big?
But he pulled it off.
After he bought it, his cars got better too.
Li Shufu is sixty-three now.
This August he said: I am stepping back.
The company has to go to someone else.
To whom?
A lot of people thought: to his son.
In China, this is what many bosses do.
The boss gets old, and the son takes over.
But Li Shufu did not do that.
The person he gave it to is not family.
He gave it to someone who had worked at the company for many years.
Li Shufu once said: this company cannot be run by me alone.
He also said he does not want a company that lasts a few decades.
He wants one that lasts a hundred years.
Now have a think.
You have a very big company.
You are old.
Your son wants to run it.
Do you give it to him?
Listen again
Try it without the transcript and notice what sounds clearer.
What vocabulary does this episode teach?
词汇The subject of the whole episode, and a character a beginner already meets in 出租车.
HSK 1. 李书福买了沃尔沃 — four characters carrying the most improbable deal in the story.
HSK 1. 你会没有钱 — the warning he was given, and the thing he already had.
The verb the whole second half turns on: 公司要给别人。给谁呢？
HSK 1. 老板老了，儿子来做 — the default that this story breaks.
HSK 1. 很多人想：给他的儿子 — what everyone assumed, stated before what happened.
HSK 2. Said fourteen times. Everything in the episode is about who holds it.
在中国，很多老板都是这样 — the generalisation that makes his choice visible.
HSK 3. 请给我一次失败的机会 — the most quoted sentence in modern Chinese business.
一个很有名的车，叫沃尔沃 — built from 有 and 名, both already known.
公司要给别人 — the word doing all the work in this story.
我一个人是管不了的 — 管不了 is the potential complement: cannot manage it however hard one tries.
* beyond level超纲词
What grammar patterns appear in this episode?
语法越 V 越 + adjective
The more it is done, the more X it becomes. 越做越好 compresses years of improvement into three characters.
他的车越做越好。
V 不了
The potential complement 不了 means the action cannot be completed, no matter the effort. Different from 不 alone, which is simply a refusal.
这个公司，我一个人是管不了的。
可是……没有这样做
Sets out what everyone expected, then negates it. The most economical way in Chinese to mark a decision as a departure from the norm.
可是李书福没有这样做。
他给的不是家里的人。
Proper Nouns
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