A Chinese podcast · Same story, 4 levels
Photo: Dcrjsr · CC BY 4.0
土拨鼠研究经费被砍，教授上 OnlyFans 卖照片筹款
Marmot Study Turns to OnlyFans After Funding Cut
About this story
Marmot Study Turns to OnlyFans After Funding Cut. 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 12 key vocabulary words such as 对象、连续、大幅 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: sixty-four years.
On a high mountain in Colorado, America, there is a research project that has run for sixty-four years straight.
The subject is marmots.
It is a small mountain animal, about the size of a cat, that hibernates in winter.
Over those sixty-four years, the researchers have gone up the mountain every year and recorded, one animal at a time: how many this year, which one had young, which one did not come back.
There are very few unbroken decades-long wildlife studies like it anywhere in the world.
The person running the project is Blumstein, a professor at the University of California.
The problem is money.
This kind of research depends on government funding: the climb, the accommodation, the staff, all of it costs.
This year, government funding for research fell sharply.
Cut the funding and the sixty-four-year record stops right here.
Blumstein came up with a move.
He said: we have no money, but we have marmots — and sixty-four years of marmot photographs.
So they opened a subscription account, on a website that has nothing whatsoever to do with animals.
That website does not usually sell this sort of content.
On it they wrote: uncensored marmots here.
Subscribe, and we will show you marmots.
So, what happened?
They took in around four thousand dollars.
Four thousand dollars cannot save a sixty-four-year project, and they know that better than anyone.
But because of this, a lot of people who would never otherwise have heard of the project learned it existed.
Think about it: when nobody is looking at what you have, is it worth setting it out somewhere else?
Listen again
Try it without the transcript and notice what sounds clearer.
What vocabulary does this episode teach?
词汇对象是土拨鼠 = the subject is marmots.
已经连着做了六十四年 = has run for sixty-four years straight.
政府给科研的钱大幅减少了 = government research funding fell sharply.
这一点他们自己也清楚 = they know that themselves.
第一次知道了它的存在 = learned it existed.
有一个研究项目 = there is a research project.
一个六十四年的项目 = a sixty-four-year project.
经费一断 = cut the funding.
一只一只地记录 = recorded one animal at a time.
开了一个订阅账号 = opened a subscription account.
冬天，要冬眠 = hibernates in winter.
这里有没打码的土拨鼠 = uncensored marmots here.
What grammar patterns appear in this episode?
语法一 + measure word + 一 + measure word + 地
"one by one". Conveys patient, exhaustive work.
一只一只地记录
靠
"to depend on X". Names what something rests on — and therefore what breaks it.
这种研究靠政府经费。
本来……的……
"a website that by rights has nothing to do with animals". 本来 inside a modifier.
一个本来跟动物完全没有关系的网站
Proper Nouns
专有名词Sources
来源Free account
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