A Chinese podcast · Same story, 4 levels
半夜四点房子着火，他开走了来救他的消防车，还碾过了正在给他家浇水的水带。
Man Steals Fire Truck at His Own House Fire
About this story
Man Steals Fire Truck at His Own House Fire. HSK 5-6 Chinese listening practice.
This is an HSK 5-6 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 6 key vocabulary words such as 水、条、站 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
At four in the morning last Tuesday, in a small New Hampshire town called Dalton, a house caught fire.
The homeowner was a thirty-year-old man.
The fire trucks arrived. So did the state police.
Here is something outsiders overlook: the most time-consuming part of putting out a fire is not spraying water, it is laying the hose.
The water is not on the truck. It has to be drawn from a source some way off, along the whole route.
Firefighters couple the hose section by section and lay it across the ground, all the way to the fire.
So that morning, several hose lines lay across that road.
The water moving through each of them was going onto this one family’s fire.
What happened next is hard to explain by any ordinary reasoning.
This man got into a rescue truck and drove it away.
At four in the morning, he drove off in a truck that had come specifically for his house.
Police say he drove east.
On the way, he struck a Whitefield engine that was actively fighting the fire.
He also ran his wheels over the hose lines on the ground, one line after another.
Those hose lines were, at that moment, supplying water to his own house.
Three firefighters on scene were very nearly hit.
The rescue truck then went into another family’s yard and came to a stop against it.
He got out, walked up onto that family’s porch, and started taking things.
When the state police arrived, he was still standing on someone else’s porch.
He was arrested right there.
The list of charges he now faces is long, running from stealing the truck and obstructing officials to burglary and resisting arrest.
Gather the whole thing up and the shape of it is almost too sharp to look at.
That truck came for him — and he drove it away.
Those hoses were laid for him — and he crushed them under his wheels.
Those three firefighters were standing by the fire for him — and he came within inches of hitting them.
At four in the morning, with his house burning, every single thing he damaged belonged to the only side that was helping him.
Think about it:
Why would a person take apart, with his own hands, the very thing that is saving him?
Listen again
Try it without the transcript and notice what sounds clearer.
What vocabulary does this episode teach?
词汇给他自己的房子供水 — supplying water to his own house.
It counts both the hose lines and the charges in this episode.
他还站在别人的门廊上 — he was still standing on someone else’s porch.
Related to 常理解释 in the script — reasoning something out.
铺水带 — laying the hose. The single most time-consuming job on a fire ground.
The formal counterpart of 罪名 — the act of bringing the charge.
* beyond level超纲词
What grammar patterns appear in this episode?
语法难用……解释
"Hard to explain by means of ..." — 用 introduces the tool of explanation.
接下来的事，很难用常理解释。 — What followed is hard to explain by ordinary reasoning.
为……而 + verb
A formal purpose construction: done for the sake of someone.
那辆车，是为他而来的。 — That truck came for him.
那些水带，是为他而铺的。 — Those hoses were laid for him.
清楚得刺眼
Adjective + 得 + a second adjective as a degree complement: so clear it hurts to look at.
形状清楚得刺眼。 — The shape of it is glaringly clear.
Proper nouns
专有名词Sources
来源Free account
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