A Chinese podcast · Same story, 4 levels
2:48
马修·麦康纳见到了历史上第一位美国教皇
Matthew McConaughey Meets the First American Pope
This is an HSK 2 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 10 key vocabulary words such as 照片、有名、世界 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 the complete story in Chinese. Reveal pinyin and English only when you need them.
These past few days there has been a photo that a lot of Americans have been looking at.
There are two people in it: one is an actor, one is the Pope.
Let's start with the actor.
His name is Matthew McConaughey, and he is one of the most famous actors in America.
He has been in a lot of films, and he has won the biggest film award there is.
Just how famous is he in America?
Stop ten people on the street and all ten know who he is.
He and his wife Camila have been married for over ten years.
Right — now the Pope.
The Pope is the highest person in the Catholic Church.
What is Catholicism?
Put simply, it is a kind of faith.
Over a billion people in the world are Catholic, and what the Pope says, they follow.
Over a billion — that is a very, very big number.
The Pope lives in the Vatican.
The Vatican is inside Italy, and it is the smallest country in the world.
How small is it?
On foot, you can walk across it in half an hour.
The current Pope is called Pope Leo.
He is unusual, because he is American.
Catholicism has been around more than a thousand years, and there had never been an American Pope before.
Not one.
He is the first.
Every Wednesday, Pope Leo sees a lot of people.
On that day people come from all sorts of countries, just to catch sight of him.
Last Wednesday, Matthew McConaughey and Camila went too.
They waited inside a very large church.
And then they really did get to see the Pope.
The two of them shook hands and exchanged a few words.
An American actor, meeting an American Pope.
It made the news in America.
Why did Matthew McConaughey want to go?
The first reason is that he has long been interested in these things.
Last year, he wrote a book.
That book is full of poems he wrote himself.
What he wrote about in it is people and belief.
So for him, this was not an ordinary meeting.
The second reason is much simpler: he happens to be in Italy right now.
He is shooting a new film there, for Netflix.
Where he is filming is not far from the Vatican.
So that day, he went.
Think about it: if you could meet any person in the world, who would you most want to meet?
Try it without the transcript and notice what sounds clearer.
有一张照片 = there is a photo. 张 is the measure word for flat things.
最有名的演员之一 = one of the most famous actors.
世界上最小的国家 = the smallest country in the world.
他很特别 = he is unusual — because he is American.
第一个原因…… 第二个原因…… — the way the episode lays out two reasons.
不是一次普通的见面 = not an ordinary meeting.
The head of the Catholic Church.
Glossed in the episode as "a kind of faith".
十几亿 = over a billion. Chinese counts in 万 and 亿, not thousands and millions.
他自己写的诗 = poems he wrote himself.
* beyond level超纲词
有多……呢？
Asks the degree of something, then answers it yourself — a host’s device.
在美国，他有名到什么样子呢？
它有多小呢？
因为……
"because …". In Chinese the reason clause often comes second, unlike the textbook order.
他很特别，因为他是美国人。
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