A Chinese podcast · Same story, 4 levels
十一岁开店、五十万粉丝：英国小城的解压玩具店靠抖音国际版火了
Opened at 11, Half a Million Fans: How TikTok Shop Turned a Small-Town British Fidget-Toy Shop Into a Hit
About this story
Alex opened Funky Fidgets in Darlington, northern England, at 11 during the pandemic. At 16 she has 14 staff, half a million TikTok followers and four-hour Saturday queues — part of a TikTok Shop boom among Britain's small businesses. Her mum wants to stay small; Alex wants shops all over the world. Chinese listening practice at four levels. HSK 3 Chinese listening practice.
This is an HSK 3-4 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 紧张、无聊、世界 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
What were you doing when you were eleven?
In the small town of Darlington in northern England, a girl opened her own shop at the age of eleven.
The shop is called Funky Fidgets, and it sells small toys you can squeeze, pull and twist in your hand.
When lots of people are nervous or bored, they like to keep playing with these toys.
The girl's name is Alex, and she started selling toys online during the covid pandemic.
At the time, lots of people couldn't go out and could only shop online.
Now Alex is sixteen, her shop has fourteen staff, and its toys are sold all over the world.
The postman comes three times a day to collect the parcels.
Most of the shop's orders come from TikTok.
On TikTok, you can watch a video and buy things directly at the same time, without leaving the app.
In Britain, about three hundred thousand small businesses also sell on TikTok, most of them only in the past year.
Why is this way of shopping so popular in Britain?
One reason is that shops on many British high streets are disappearing, faster than in other European countries.
Another reason is that British people are very open to Chinese-style livestream shopping.
Lots of young British people like watching shopping livestreams.
In a livestream, the seller packs orders while chatting with customers.
Customers can watch staff put the things they've bought into boxes.
And it's not only young people who watch.
Miller at a butcher's shop says sixty percent of its customers on TikTok are women aged forty to sixty.
Even more surprising, the online fans are also willing to come to the shop in person.
Alex's shop has half a million fans on TikTok.
Every Saturday there's a long queue outside, and some people wait four hours.
Some customers come from London, some from Edinburgh, both a long way off.
Alex's mother, Brunskill, said: we bring a lot of tourists to Darlington.
Alex is still at school, so her mother runs the shop day to day.
But Alex is still very busy.
She designs new toys, answers customers' questions and holds meetings with brands, all while studying accountancy.
Still, mother and daughter have very different ideas about the future.
Brunskill said: I want to keep this shop as small as I can.
But she says her daughter wants to open shops all over the world.
If you were Alex, would you grow the little shop, or keep it small forever?
Listen again
Try it without the transcript and notice what sounds clearer.
What vocabulary does this episode teach?
词汇HSK 3. 很多人紧张或者无聊的时候.
HSK 3. 喜欢一直玩这种玩具.
HSK 3. 玩具卖到世界各地.
HSK 2. 受欢迎 = popular.
HSK 3. 很愿意接受中国式的直播购物.
HSK 3. 一个原因是……另一个原因是…….
可以拿在手里捏、拉、转的小玩具.
新冠疫情 = the covid pandemic.
订 (to order) + 单 (slip).
商业 (commerce) + 街 (street).
购物直播 = shopping livestream.
A loanword from "fans".
* beyond level超纲词
What grammar patterns appear in this episode?
语法一边……，一边……
Doing two things at once.
在直播里，卖家一边打包，一边和顾客聊天。
越来越 + adjective
More and more…
一个原因是，英国很多商业街上的商店越来越少，比欧洲其他国家少得更快。
更让人意外的是
Even more surprising is…
更让人意外的是，网上的粉丝，也愿意到店里来。
Proper Nouns
专有名词Free account
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