A Chinese podcast · Same story, 4 levels
《荒野大镖客二》地图上那块过不去的墨西哥，一个玩家用二十二个月自己补上了，九月十六号免费发布
One Person Spent Twenty-Two Months Rebuilding the Mexico You Could See But Never Reach in Red Dead Redemption 2 — and He Is Giving It Away Free on 16 September
About this story
Red Dead Redemption 2 shipped with Mexico visible across the river and permanently out of reach — terrain half-built, never opened. A single player started rebuilding it in April 2024 and, after twenty-two months of largely solo work, releases it free on 16 September 2026. 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 做、玩、看见 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 one person and one game.
Do you play games?
A lot of people do.
There is one game that everybody knows.
In this game, you are a person.
You have a horse.
You ride around in a very big place.
The place is very, very big.
You can ride for many days.
You can look at mountains, and you can look at water.
A lot of people love this game.
But this game has a problem.
Below this game there is a country.
On the map you can see it.
You can see that place.
But you cannot go there.
You ride to it, and then you cannot go any further.
Why?
Because the people who made the game did not make that place.
They made the part above, and they did not make the part below.
The people who made the game are a very big company.
There are a great many people in that company.
The company said: we are not doing it.
The people who play the game very much wanted to go.
They said: we want to see what is down there.
But the company did not make it.
One year, two years, three years.
The company still did not make it.
Later, one person spoke up.
This person is not in that company.
He is just someone who plays the game.
He said: the company will not do it, so I will.
He did it by himself.
How long did it take him?
Nearly two years.
For two years, he worked at it day after day.
He made the mountains, he made the water.
He made the people, he made the horses.
He made everything in that country.
He finished it on his own.
This is a big thing.
Something this big takes a lot of people at a big company.
He did it by himself.
This September he said: I have finished.
He said: on the sixteenth of September, everyone can play it.
So then — how much does it cost?
Nothing.
Not one cent.
You can go and take it, and you can play it.
Two years of his work, and he gave it to everybody.
Here is what I want to say.
This person is not in the company.
Nobody paid him.
Nobody said to him: you have to make this.
He made it because he wanted to.
He wanted to go to that place.
But that place did not exist, so he made one himself.
Think about it:
There is something you really want.
But nobody is making it.
Do you wait, or do you make it yourself?
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 runs on — who made it, who did not, who did in the end.
HSK 2. 你玩游戏吗？— the opening question, and the closing payoff.
HSK 1. 你可以看见它。可是你不能去。 — the whole problem in two lines.
HSK 1. Asked as a question, then answered three ways: 不要钱。一块钱也不要。
HSK 3. 他自己做了一个 — the word the closing question hands to the listener.
HSK 2. 他做，是因为他想做 — the only motive the episode offers.
HSK 3. The object of the story, introduced before anything technical.
HSK 3. 在地图上，你可以看见它 — where the missing country still appears.
HSK 2. Thousands of people who decided not to; one person who did.
HSK 3. The place at the bottom of the map you could see and never enter.
HSK 3. 你有一个马 — how the episode establishes the world in one line.
HSK 2. 可是没有那个地方，所以他自己做了一个。
* beyond level超纲词
What grammar patterns appear in this episode?
语法可以……，可是不能……
Sets a permission against a prohibition. Chinese distinguishes 可以 (allowed, possible) from 能 (able), and the episode leans on both.
你可以看见它。
可是你不能去。
一……也不……
Not even one. 一 plus a measure word plus a negative is the strongest way to say "none at all" in Chinese.
一块钱也不要。
没有人 + verb
Nobody does it. Stacked three times in a row here, it turns an absence of instruction into the whole point of the story.
没有人给他钱。
没有人对他说：你要做这个。
可是没有人做它。
Proper Nouns
专有名词Sources
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