Fluentide

A Chinese podcast · Same story, 4 levels

Snoop Dogg Offers $10K/Month Ice Cream Taster Job — episode cover art
3:34

一个月一万美元,请你吃冰淇淋:这个工作的后面,是一个爸爸和一个儿子

Snoop Dogg Offers $10K/Month Ice Cream Taster Job

About this story

Snoop Dogg's ice cream brand Dr. Bombay is hiring an International Ice Cream Taster — three months, $30,000, open worldwide. It is a marketing stunt, and it is also built on a real family story: his father made ice cream by hand on a Mississippi dairy farm. Chinese listening practice at four levels. HSK 4 Chinese listening practice.

This is an HSK 4 Chinese listening episode that runs about 4 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 广告、护照、聪明 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.

先说清楚这不是玩笑。
一个美国歌手的冰淇淋牌子,正在公开招一个人。
职位名字叫「国际冰淇淋试吃员」。
时间三个月,报酬三万美元,一个月一万。
面向全世界招人,远程办公,不用坐班。
工作内容是这样的:
你要去不同的国家,吃当地的冰淇淋和别的冷冻甜点。
你要看现在流行什么口味,把看到的写下来。
你要拍照片、拍视频,发到网上。
最后,你要提出新口味的想法,交给公司。
条件只有三条:会说英文,有护照,这三个月有空。
公司还特别说了一句:不管你原来是做什么的都可以。
学生、厨师、记者、做自媒体的、开公司的,都欢迎报名。
看到这里,你大概已经想到一件事:这也是一次广告。
这个判断是对的,而且公司自己也不否认。
我们可以算一笔账。
三万美元,在美国买不了多少广告。
可是这条招聘消息,一天之内就上了几十家媒体,社交平台上的转发更多。
用三万美元的成本,换来几百万人主动去看这个牌子的名字,这笔生意非常划算。
更妙的是,报名本身就是传播。
每一个填表的人,都会顺手转给朋友看一眼。
不过如果只把它当成一个广告,就漏掉了后面那一半。
这个歌手做冰淇淋,不是随便选的生意。
他的父亲在密西西比州的一个奶牛场长大。
那个年代家里没什么钱,冰淇淋是父亲自己动手做的。
牛奶是现成的,剩下的靠手工。
对那一家人来说,冰淇淋是做出来的东西。
再往下一代。
这个歌手自己当了父亲以后,儿子练完球,他会带儿子去买冰淇淋。
一个爸爸,一个儿子,坐在那里吃完再回家。
这样的下午重复了很多年。
儿子长大以后,父子俩一起把这件事做成了一个牌子。
他们的口味名字也都带着回忆的味道,有一个甚至直接用了他从小生活的那条街的名字。
所以这条招聘启事其实有两层。
表面上,它是一个花三万美元买注意力的营销动作。
往里一层,它卖的东西本身就是记忆:一个孩子在夏天吃到的那一口冰。
这两层并不矛盾。
最好卖的东西,往往是人本来就想要的东西。
顺便说一句,这类「梦想工作」的招聘并不新鲜。
以前有旅游局招人去岛上住半年,也有公司招人睡觉、招人吃巧克力。
它们的共同点是:工作内容听起来像放假,报名的人多到吓人,最后拿到的人成了一个活广告。
这一次的不同之处,是它背后真的有一个家庭的故事。
你想一想:有没有一种食物,你一吃到就想起小时候的某一天?
English transcript reference

Let's be clear that this is not a joke.

An American singer's ice cream brand is openly hiring one person.

The job title is "International Ice Cream Taster".

Three months, thirty thousand dollars in total, ten thousand a month.

Open to applicants worldwide, fully remote, no office.

The work involves the following.

You go to different countries and eat the local ice cream and other frozen desserts.

You watch which flavours are popular now, and write down what you see.

You take photographs and video, and post them online.

And finally, you propose ideas for new flavours and hand them to the company.

There are only three conditions: speak English, hold a passport, be free for these three months.

The company added one line specifically: it does not matter what you did before.

Students, chefs, journalists, people who make their own content, people running companies — all are welcome to apply.

Reading this, you have probably already had one thought: this is also an advertisement.

That judgement is correct, and the company does not deny it either.

Let's do the arithmetic.

Thirty thousand dollars does not buy much advertising in America.

But this job posting was on dozens of news outlets within a day, and shared far more widely than that on social platforms.

Spending thirty thousand dollars to get millions of people voluntarily reading the brand's name is an excellent piece of business.

Better still, applying is itself a form of spreading it.

Everyone who fills in the form casually forwards it to a friend to look at.

But treating it purely as an advertisement misses the other half.

There is a reason this singer chose ice cream as his business.

His father grew up on a dairy farm in Mississippi.

Money was short in those years, and the ice cream was made by his father's own hands.

The milk was already there; the rest was done by hand.

For that family, ice cream was something you made.

Now the next generation.

When the singer became a father himself, he would take his son for ice cream after practice.

One father, one son, sitting there and finishing it before going home.

Afternoons like that repeated for years.

When the son grew up, the two of them turned it into a brand together.

Their flavour names carry that same memory, and one of them takes its name directly from the street he grew up on.

So this job posting really has two layers.

On the surface, it is a marketing move that buys attention for thirty thousand dollars.

Underneath, what it sells is memory: a mouthful of cold a child had one summer.

The two layers do not contradict each other.

The easiest thing to sell is usually something people already wanted.

Worth adding that this kind of "dream job" hiring is not new.

A tourism board once hired someone to live on an island for six months; companies have hired people to sleep, and to eat chocolate.

What they have in common: the duties sound like a holiday, the number of applicants is frightening, and whoever gets it becomes a walking advertisement.

What is different this time is that there is a real family story behind it.

Think about it: is there a food that, the moment you taste it, takes you back to one particular day in childhood?

Listen again

Try it without the transcript and notice what sounds clearer.

What vocabulary does this episode teach?

词汇
guǎnggàoadvertisement

HSK 3. The judgement the episode agrees with, then complicates.

hùzhàopassport

HSK 3. One of the three conditions, and the reason it is genuinely global.

cōngmingclever

HSK 3. What the arithmetic shows the company to be.

dàolǐsense, reason

HSK 3. How the episode concedes the cynical reading fairly.

guójiācountry

HSK 3. 你要去不同的国家 — the scope of the contract.

jīhuìopportunity

HSK 3. Why a job spreads where an advert would not.

shìchīyuántaste tester

The actual job title: 国际冰淇淋试吃员.

bàochoupay, remuneration

三个月,报酬三万美元 — the formal word for what a contract pays.

nǎiniúchǎngdairy farm

Where the family story begins, in Mississippi.

chuánbōto spread, dissemination

The key insight: 报名本身就是传播 — applying is itself distribution.

huásuàngood value, worth it

The verdict on the arithmetic: 这笔生意非常划算。

huíyìmemory, recollection

What the brand is really selling: 他们的口味名字也都带着回忆的味道。

* beyond level超纲词

What grammar patterns appear in this episode?

语法

不只是……

Not merely X — used to open up a second reading after conceding the first. It is the hinge of this episode.

可是这件事,也不只是广告。

不过如果只把它当成一个广告,就漏掉了后面那一半。

用 A 换 B

Trade A for B. The cleanest way to state a cost-benefit exchange.

用三万美元的成本,换来几百万人主动去看这个牌子的名字。

更妙的是,……

Better still — introduces a further advantage beyond the one just given. Spoken and slightly appreciative in tone.

更妙的是,报名本身就是传播。

Proper nouns

专有名词
美国Měiguóthe United States密西西比州Mìxīxībǐ ZhōuMississippi

Sources

来源

Free account

Keep learning from this story

Create a free account to keep saved words and your preferred level together.

  • Keep words with their story context
  • Remember your preferred level
  • Build your vocabulary over time

Keep learning