A Chinese podcast · Same story, 4 levels
两百年来第一匹：野马在哈萨克斯坦的草原上自己生下了小马，而它们的父亲没能看到
The First in Two Hundred Years: Wild Horses Have Foaled on Their Own on the Kazakh Steppe — and Their Father Did Not Live to See It
About this story
Two Przewalski's horse foals were born on the Kazakh steppe in August 2026 — the first wild births there in two hundred years. The species, the last truly wild horse, went extinct in the wild by the mid-twentieth century and survived only in European zoos. Since 2024, twenty-two have been flown back. 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 马、自己、走 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 horses.
Have you ever seen a horse?
A lot of people have.
There are horses in a lot of places.
But all those horses belong to people.
People give them things to eat.
People sit on top of them too.
The horse we are talking about today does not belong to people.
This kind of horse is out in the grass on its own.
It eats on its own, it walks on its own.
There is nobody sitting on top of it.
There are very, very few of this kind of horse.
Long ago, in one very large place, there were many of these horses.
That place is flat, and there is a great deal of grass.
The horses walked through the grass, and they walked a long way.
Then the horses were gone.
Not one was left.
That was two hundred years ago.
Two hundred years is a very, very long time.
Where did those horses go?
Some of the horses were in other places.
There, people gave them things to eat.
They could not walk off on their own.
So this kind of horse still existed.
But they were not in their own place.
Two years ago, people did something.
People took some horses back to that big place.
That place is called Kazakhstan.
It is flat there, and there is plenty of grass.
Twenty-two horses.
People said: go home.
And the horses walked off.
They walked through the grass.
They ate the grass themselves, and drank the water themselves.
People watched them from a long way off.
People wondered: can they do it?
Then came August of this year.
One day in August, someone saw a small horse.
A very, very small horse.
This small horse was born there.
People did not bring it back.
Its mother gave birth to it there.
In two hundred years, this was the first one.
Later in August, there was another small horse.
Both of the small horses are well.
Their father is one horse.
But their father cannot see them.
Their father was gone before this.
Now the two small horses are out in the grass.
Their mother is there too.
People want to take more horses back.
They want forty horses.
With forty, the horses can be there on their own.
Here is what I want to say.
Two hundred years ago, there were no horses here.
Today there are small horses here.
Think about it:
There is something that is gone.
Two hundred years later, can it come back?
Listen again
Try it without the transcript and notice what sounds clearer.
What vocabulary does this episode teach?
词汇HSK 3. The subject, and the word the episode repeats more than any other.
HSK 3. Used eight times — everything that matters here, the horses did 自己.
HSK 2. 马就走了 — the moment the gate opened and it stopped being up to people.
HSK 3. 它们不在自己的地方 — the whole problem, stated in one line.
The closing question turns on it: 两百年以后，它可以回来吗？
HSK 1. 是它妈妈在那里生的 — who actually did the thing that made this news.
HSK 3. The steppe, described with a word a beginner already owns.
这种马，不是人的马 — how the episode separates wild horses from every horse you have seen.
那个地方很平 — the one word that makes a steppe picturable at HSK 1.
HSK 4. 人把一些马带回那个大地方 — the part people could do.
The part people could not do, and the reason this is a story at all.
HSK 1. 爸爸看不见它们了 — the quietest line in the episode.
* beyond level超纲词
What grammar patterns appear in this episode?
语法一个都没有了
Not a single one left. 都 with a negative is far stronger than plain 没有, which is why the episode saves it for the extinction.
一个都没有了。
自己 + verb
Does it oneself, without help. Placed before the verb, it is the difference between an animal in a zoo and an animal in the wild.
它自己吃，自己走。
它们自己吃草，自己喝水。
是……生的
The 是……的 frame emphasises the circumstance rather than the event. Here it puts all the weight on where and by whom.
这个小马，是在那里生的。
是它妈妈在那里生的。
Proper Nouns
专有名词Sources
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