A Chinese podcast · Same story, 4 levels
一只蜱虫咬了他，从此他不能吃牛肉：七年后，这个营养师自己养起了四百只鸵鸟
A Tick Bit Him and He Could Never Eat Beef Again — Seven Years Later, This Nutritionist Is Raising Four Hundred Ostriches
About this story
A Kentucky nutritionist developed alpha-gal syndrome from a tick bite: he can no longer eat mammal meat, and reacts to grill smoke and to the gelatin in pill capsules. Ostriches are birds, so ostrich meat is safe — and it looks and tastes close to beef. He is now a partner in a farm running over 400 of them. Chinese listening practice at four levels. HSK 1 Chinese listening practice.
This is an HSK 1 Chinese listening episode that runs about 3 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 吃、身上、工作 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.
Read at your level
原文Read the complete story in Chinese. Reveal pinyin and English only when you need them.
English transcript reference
Today we are talking about a man.
This man is in America.
He loves eating meat.
Beef — he loves that most of all.
But one day, he was not well.
That day he was not at home. He was at work.
He ate something.
There was beef in it.
After he ate it, his body was not right.
His whole body went red.
He did not know what this was.
Earlier, a small insect had bitten him.
This insect is very, very small.
The insect bit him and he did not know.
But from that day on, he could not eat meat.
Beef, he cannot eat.
Other meat, he cannot eat either.
If he eats it, his body goes red.
And there is one more thing that is not good.
Even if he does not eat it, he can be unwell.
If other people are cooking meat and he is there, it is bad for him.
He takes medicine, and there is that thing in the medicine too.
So he cannot take that medicine either.
What is this man's job?
His job is looking at what other people eat.
Every day he thinks about food.
But he himself cannot eat meat.
He wanted beef for many years.
He said: I can eat chicken.
But he said: chicken — I have eaten too much of it.
Then he found something new.
There is a bird that is very, very big.
This bird is tall — taller than a person.
This bird's meat is red.
You look at it and you think: this is beef.
You eat it and you think: this is beef.
But it is not a cow.
It is a bird.
So he can eat it!
He was delighted.
He thought: I am going to do this.
Now he has a place.
In this place he has four hundred of these big birds.
Four hundred big birds.
And he wants seven hundred.
Other people can come here and buy this meat.
He said: when I eat it, I am happy.
He said: this meat is the thing I used to eat.
Here is what I want to say.
This man cannot eat meat any more.
One small insect did that.
But he did not say: fine, I will go without.
He went and found a new one.
Think about it:
There is something you cannot have any more.
Will you think about it for years?
Or will you go and find a new one?
Listen again
Try it without the transcript and notice what sounds clearer.
What vocabulary does this episode teach?
词汇HSK 1. The verb the entire episode is built on — what he can and cannot do.
他的身上都红了 — how the reaction is described without a medical word.
HSK 1. His job is looking at what other people eat — which is the irony of it.
HSK 1. Used twice at the turn: when he finds it, and when he eats it.
HSK 2. 虫子咬了他，他不知道 — the bite nobody feels.
HSK 2. Carries the one causal link the story needs.
The thing he lost, and the thing he got back from a completely different animal.
Named first because it is what he misses, not because it is the medical category.
一个小虫子，做了这个事 — the whole cause, in five characters.
One bite, and thirty years of eating habits ended.
Does double duty: the reaction on his skin, and the colour of ostrich meat.
可是它不是牛。它是鸟。 — the sentence the whole solution rests on.
* beyond level超纲词
What grammar patterns appear in this episode?
语法……了以后，……
After doing something. Chinese puts the whole action before 以后, where English puts "after" in front.
吃了以后，他的身上不好了。
他吃了，身上就红。
你看它，你会想：……
Look at it and you will think: … Chinese chains two bare clauses where English needs "if" or "when", and the colon carries the thought.
你看它，你会想：这是牛肉。
你吃它，你也会想：这是牛肉。
不是 A。是 B。
Two short flat sentences instead of one long one. Splitting the correction across two lines gives the second one all the weight.
可是它不是牛。
它是鸟。
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