A Chinese podcast · Same story, 4 levels
推理大师东野圭吾去世，最后一本新书八月出版
Mystery Master Keigo Higashino Dies; His Final New Book Comes Out in August
About this story
An easy Chinese listening story: Keigo Higashino, the famous Japanese mystery writer of White Night and the Namiya General Store, has died at 68, and his very last new book still arrives in August. HSK 2 Chinese listening practice.
This is an HSK 2 Chinese listening episode that runs about 1 minute. 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 11 key vocabulary words such as 喜欢、晚上、新 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
Keigo Higashino was a very famous Japanese author.
Over many, many years, he wrote more than a hundred books.
What he wrote was mostly mystery fiction.
What is mystery fiction?
It's when there's a hard-to-understand event in the book, and bit by bit, slowly, it gets figured out.
His books are famous in China too.
Journey Under the Midnight Sun and The Miracles of the Namiya General Store — many people have read them.
At night, many people open one of his books and can't put it down, reading until very late.
But this month, a piece of very sad news arrived.
In July, Keigo Higashino got sick and passed away, only sixty-eight.
Hearing this, many people who loved him were heartbroken.
Still, he left everyone one more new book.
This book will meet readers in August.
In other words, even after he's gone, people can still see one more new book from him.
It is also the last book he ever wrote.
Many people say to him: thank you for writing so many wonderful stories.
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Try it without the transcript and notice what sounds clearer.
What vocabulary does this episode teach?
词汇很多喜欢他的人 = many people who liked him.
晚上一打开他的书 = at night, opening one of his books.
留了一本新书 = left one new book.
本来只想看几页 = originally only wanted to read a few pages.
只有六十八岁 = only sixty-eight years old.
很多人都看过 = many people have read them.
一个很有名的日本作家 = a very famous Japanese author.
推理小说 = mystery/detective fiction.
推理小说 = a mystery novel.
都很难过 = were all heartbroken.
写了这么多好看的故事 = wrote so many wonderful stories.
* beyond level超纲词
What grammar patterns appear in this episode?
语法什么是……？
什么是 X？ = "what is X?", used to introduce a definition.
什么是推理小说？
一……就……
一 A 就 B = "as soon as A, then B".
很多人晚上一打开他的书，就放不下。
也就是说，……
也就是说 = "in other words / that is to say".
也就是说，他走了以后，大家还能再看到一本他的新书。
Proper Nouns
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