A Chinese podcast · Same story, 4 levels
他已经下到安全的楼层了，然后他转身又上去了：二十五年后，「红头巾的人」拿到了总统自由勋章
He Had Already Reached a Safe Floor, and He Turned Round and Went Back Up: Twenty-Five Years On, the Man in the Red Bandana Received the Medal of Freedom
About this story
Welles Crowther, 24, worked on the 104th floor of the South Tower. On 11 September 2001 he tied the red bandana his father gave him at six over his face and led people to the one passable stairwell, carrying a woman down seventeen floors and going back up again and again. Survivors knew him only as the man in the red bandana. Chinese listening practice at four levels. HSK 5-6 Chinese listening practice.
This is an HSK 5-6 Chinese listening episode that runs about 5 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 结构、性质、本能 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
This episode is about one man, and about a question I think is more precise than "brave": what makes a person go back once they are already safe.
The news peg first.
Last week the Presidential Medal of Freedom was awarded to Welles Crowther, twenty-five years after his death.
The Medal of Freedom is the highest honour the United States gives a civilian; posthumous awards are not rare, but this time gap is unusual.
His parents accepted it on his behalf.
Now the facts, as far as possible in order.
Crowther was born in 1977 in Nyack, New York, graduated from Boston College in 1999, and played on the university lacrosse team.
In 2001 he was twenty-four, working as an equities trader for the investment bank Sandler O'Neill on the 104th floor of the World Trade Center's South Tower.
Two background details are necessary to understand what happened that day.
The first is the bandana.
When he was six, his father gave him a red bandana, and he carried it from then on — tucked into his jersey in his school playing days, in his suit pocket once he was working.
The second matters more: from the age of sixteen he served with his father in their home town's volunteer fire company.
Volunteer firefighters are unpaid; they have day jobs and turn out when the alarm goes.
Which means he had firefighting training, and could judge direction and evacuation routes in heavy smoke.
At 9:03 on the morning of 11 September, the second plane struck the South Tower, in the region between the 77th and 85th floors.
He was on the 104th floor — above the impact.
A structural fact needs stating here, or what follows carries no weight.
The impact severed most of the vertical routes in the upper tower; above the impact point exactly one stairwell remained passable.
Almost nobody knew it existed, and nobody knew where it was.
At 9:12 he phoned his mother and left a message.
He then moved down to the 78th-floor sky lobby.
That floor was among the most chaotic in the tower: people above could not descend, people on the floor had lost their bearings, and the space was full of smoke and falling debris.
He took out the red bandana and tied it over his nose and mouth — at that smoke density, a necessary act to keep breathing.
What he did next was very specific: he began shouting directions, telling people on that floor which stairwell was passable.
He led from the front and took a group down to a lower floor.
Having reached a relatively safe floor, he did not continue down.
He turned round and went back up.
He did this more than once.
On one of those trips he carried a woman who could not move on her own down seventeen floors, handed her to people below, and went back up again.
On the 78th floor he also fought fires and administered first aid.
The last recorded sighting has him with several New York firefighters, heading upward.
At 9:59 a.m., the South Tower collapsed.
He did not come out.
What follows is the most unusual part of the story in how it travelled.
For a long time afterwards, nobody knew his identity.
Several survivors independently described the same person: a young man with red fabric over his face, calling out in the smoke to direct people to a particular stairwell.
Nobody had asked his name; there had been no opportunity.
In survivors' accounts he had only one designation — "the man in the red bandana".
In March 2002 his body was found in the South Tower lobby, positioned alongside several firefighters.
In May 2002, a survivor publicly recounted that day in the New York Times.
His mother read that piece.
At the moment the words "red bandana" appeared, she identified her son.
Taking the survivor testimony together, his actions that day directly helped about eighteen people get out.
All eighteen left that building alive that day.
Since 2014, Boston College has held an annual "Red Bandana Game", with the whole crowd in red.
Now back to the question I opened with.
Telling this as "he was brave" is not wrong, but it misses the structure.
Leading people down the first time was an immediate response in chaos; training and instinct were both doing work.
What actually needs explaining is the second time.
At that moment he was standing on a safe floor, he had confirmed where the exit was, and he had done everything anyone would consider sufficient.
Turning upward from that position is no longer a reaction. It is a decision made again, from scratch.
And he made it more than once.
Morally, these two acts get run together constantly, but they are completely different in kind.
One is a choice made with no time to think. The other is a choice made after there was time.
Two questions to leave you with.
The first is concrete: which good thing you have done was done after you could already have walked away?
The second is bigger: when someone has discharged every duty anyone would recognise, what makes them go back one more time?
Listen again
Try it without the transcript and notice what sounds clearer.
What vocabulary does this episode teach?
词汇HSK 5. 把这件事讲成"他很勇敢"，不算错，但漏掉了结构。
HSK 5. 它们的性质完全不同 — two acts that look alike and are not.
HSK 6. 训练和本能都在起作用 — what was doing the work the first time.
HSK 4. 在浓烟环境中判断方向 — the specific capability his training gave him.
HSK 4. 已经尽到了所有人都认可的责任 — the closing question turns on it.
HSK 5. 这两种行为在道德评价上常常被混在一起。
Not rare in itself — the twenty-five-year gap is what makes this one unusual.
判断方向和疏散路线的能力 — trained capability, exercised above the impact point.
The 78th floor: people above could not descend, people on it had lost their bearings.
最后一次目击记录 — he was with firefighters, and moving upward.
面部蒙有红色织物 — how multiple survivors independently described the same man.
在混乱中做出的即时反应 — distinguished sharply from a decision made with time.
* beyond level超纲词
What grammar patterns appear in this episode?
语法这里需要说明一个……事实，否则……
A fact has to be established here, or else… Signals that what follows cannot be understood without a piece of background.
这里需要说明一个结构性事实，否则后面的内容无法理解其分量。
不再是 A，而是 B
No longer A, but B. Marks a change in kind rather than degree — here, from reaction to decision.
从那个位置转身向上，不再是反应，而是一次重新做出的决定。
一个是……，一个是……
One is X, the other is Y. Sets two things side by side in parallel clauses and lets the contrast speak without a connector.
一个是没有时间思考时的选择，一个是有时间思考之后的选择。
Proper Nouns
专有名词Sources
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