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 2 Chinese listening practice.
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 12 key vocabulary words such as 故事、公司、地方 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
Today's story is about something a games player did.
First, the game.
It is called Red Dead Redemption 2, and it is a very famous game.
The story takes place in the American West a bit over a hundred years ago.
In the game you are a man on a horse.
You can ride around in an enormous space.
You can hunt, you can fish, or you can do nothing at all and just watch the sun go down.
A lot of people say it is the most beautiful game they have ever played.
But there is one place in this game that has always bothered people.
At the very bottom of the map there is a region called Nuevo Paraiso.
That is Mexico.
Standing on a hill and looking south, you can see it.
Far off, there are buildings, there are hills.
But you cannot get across.
You ride your horse to the river, and the game will not let you go any further.
Why is it like that?
Because in the previous game, players could go to Mexico.
For a lot of people it was their favourite part.
So when the second one was made, everybody assumed it would be there.
Only later did people find out that the company had not finished it.
What was left on the map was a shadow, and nobody could get inside.
The company that made this game is a very big one.
It has several thousand people, and plenty of money.
But all these years have gone by and they have never filled that region in.
Players waited a year, two years, many years.
Then one player stopped waiting.
He does not work at that company.
He is just a player who loves this game very much.
In April 2024 he started building Mexico himself.
Not a group of people working together — essentially him on his own.
How long did it take?
Twenty-two months.
Nearly two years.
Over those two years he had to build the hills, the rivers, the buildings.
He had to build the people on the roads and the things they say.
He had to make the new region join onto the old map so that riding across it you cannot tell.
And he had to make it fit the timeline of the earlier game.
Work like this normally takes a team several years.
This September he said it was finished.
He set a date: the sixteenth of September, when everyone can download it.
The most surprising part is the price.
There is none.
Not a cent.
If you own the game, you can install it and ride south.
That river you could never cross — now you can cross it.
What I find interesting about this is the following.
The company has thousands of people, money, and tools.
And this region was filled in by someone making games after he got off work.
He did not do it for money.
He did it because he wanted to go to that place, and that place did not exist.
So he made one.
Think about it:
There is something you really want, and nobody is making it.
Do you keep waiting, or do you get to work yourself?
Listen again
Try it without the transcript and notice what sounds clearer.
What vocabulary does this episode teach?
词汇HSK 3. 故事发生在一百多年前的美国西部。
HSK 2. 公司有几千个人，也有很多钱 — and still it was never filled in.
HSK 3. 这个游戏有一个地方，一直让人不舒服。
HSK 2. 不是几个人一起做 — the negative that makes the scale land.
HSK 5. 地图上留了一个影子，人进不去 — the most exact image in the episode.
HSK 1. 一个很喜欢这个游戏的玩家 — the entire stated motive.
The category the story turns on: not an employee, a player.
The region you can see from the hills and never reach.
你骑马走到河边，游戏就不让你再走了。
一般是一个团队做几年的 — the comparison that shows what he did.
九月十六号，大家可以下载 — the date and the whole distribution model.
The hardest constraint: this Mexico has to look like its own earlier self.
* beyond level超纲词
What grammar patterns appear in this episode?
语法一直……
All along, continuously up to now. Placed before the verb, it turns an absence into a grievance with duration.
这个游戏有一个地方，一直让人不舒服。
他们一直没有补上这块地方。
让 + somebody + verb
Makes or lets someone do something. Chinese uses one verb for both permission and causation, and the episode uses both senses.
游戏就不让你再走了。
要让这块新地方和老地图接在一起。
不是为了……，是因为……
Not for the sake of X; rather, because of Y. Separates purpose from cause, which is exactly the distinction this story rests on.
他不是为了钱。
他是因为自己想去那个地方，可是那个地方不存在。
Proper Nouns
专有名词Sources
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