HSK 4 reading practice
Every passage here is written inside HSK 4 — the grammar and the vocabulary stay in the level, so you read rather than decode. Shortest first.
Does It Still Smell Okay闻着还能吃吗A mother smells a container of leftovers past its printed date and decides it is fine to eat; her adult daughter, raised on strict expiration dates, i…HSK 4 · 387 characters · 4 min · food
Should AI Write My Email该让人工智能写邮件吗Two coworkers argue about using artificial intelligence to draft work email. One says it saves an hour a day and no client has ever noticed. The other…HSK 4 · 447 characters · 5 min · tech
The City I Could Not Afford住不起的城市Wang Fang has decided to leave Beijing for a smaller city because rent eats most of her salary and her daily commute eats the rest of her time. Li Qia…HSK 4 · 453 characters · 5 min · current-events
Who Owns a Photograph照片是谁的A photographer discovers a company has used one of her photos in an advertisement without asking her. A friend who understands the law walks her throu…HSK 4 · 472 characters · 5 min · current-events
The Battery That Changed the Map电池改变了什么A skeptical friend doubts that cheaper batteries matter beyond electric cars. An engineer walks her through phones, storing power from the sun, and pl…HSK 4 · 500 characters · 6 min · tech
Translating a Joke笑话很难翻译A student translating a Chinese joke book asks a professional translator why a joke about hotel floor numbers stopped being funny in English. The tran…HSK 4 · 529 characters · 6 min · literature
The Old Man Who Moved the Mountains愚公移山A learner wants to quit studying Chinese because the characters feel endless and she will never live long enough to know them all. A friend tells her…HSK 4 · 541 characters · 6 min · philosophy
Grandfather's Knife爷爷的那把刀A grandson wants to throw out a family knife that has been sharpened down to half its original width over sixty years, and is startled to learn the ha…HSK 4 · 559 characters · 6 min · philosophy
The Toast You Cannot Refuse你不能拒绝的敬酒At a company dinner, a junior employee is pressured into toast after toast though he doesn't want to drink. A senior colleague explains the unwritten…HSK 4 · 566 characters · 6 min · culture
The Cook and the Ox庖丁的刀A frustrated learner complains that Chinese has too many characters to force-memorize. Her friend tells her Zhuangzi's story of Cook Ding, whose knife…HSK 4 · 567 characters · 6 min · philosophy
Have You Eaten你吃了吗A foreign tenant is confused that his elderly landlady asks every day whether he has eaten and never seems interested in the actual answer. A friend e…HSK 4 · 580 characters · 6 min · food
How a Character Was Built一个汉字是怎么来的A learner notices that 妈, 吗, and 骂 all sound alike and guesses it is because they share the component 马. A friend confirms the pattern, traces 马's sha…HSK 4 · 603 characters · 7 min · literature
The Village That Came Back重新有人的村子Ten years ago the village emptied out as family after family moved to the cities. Now a few families have come back to run guesthouses and sell tea on…HSK 4 · 608 characters · 7 min · history
The Subscription I Forgot to Cancel忘记取消的订阅Wang Fang discovers a subscription has auto-renewed for six months even though she has not used the app since spring. Li Qiang explains that this kind…HSK 4 · 616 characters · 7 min · current-events
The Review Nobody Wrote没人写的评论Two friends discover that a product's five hundred glowing reviews were generated by artificial intelligence rather than written by real buyers, and d…HSK 4 · 633 characters · 7 min · tech
The Emperor's Diary皇帝的日记Two friends compare notes on keeping a diary. One describes a Roman emperor's private notebook, never meant for readers, reminding himself each mornin…HSK 4 · 642 characters · 7 min · philosophy
The Thousand-Year Exam考了一千年的试Stuck near a school during gaokao week, a foreign friend asks why one exam shuts down the whole street. His Chinese friend answers by going back more…HSK 4 · 667 characters · 7 min · historyWhat is in HSK 4 reading practice
17 passages, each between 387 and 667 characters (4 to 7 minutes). Themes: philosophy, tech, current-events, food, literature and history. The shortest is Does It Still Smell Okay; the longest is The Thousand-Year Exam.
How to read HSK 4 passages
Start with the shortest and work up. Each passage ends in comprehension questions (71 across this level), so you find out whether you followed it before you move on. They flag 75 new words between them. Unknown words are worth looking up in the dictionary.
Around HSK 4
HSK 3 readings · HSK 5 readings · printable HSK 4 word list · HSK 4 grammar · how to pass HSK 4 · free HSK 4 practice test
Questions about HSK 4 readings
How many HSK 4 readings are there?
17 passages, from 387 to 667 characters.
How long does a passage at HSK 4 take?
About 4 to 7 minutes.
What is in each HSK 4 reading?
Pinyin, a full English translation, narration, a new-word list and comprehension questions. This page shows titles and summaries; the full text opens in the study room.
Where should I start at HSK 4?
With Does It Still Smell Okay, the shortest. Then work up by length.
These readings are one step of a course that moves. GraphChinese teaches HSK 0 through HSK 6 on a mastery-gated knowledge graph: the reading arrives when the words in it are ones you have already met, and spaced review brings them back just before you would forget. From $49 once for lifetime access.
Start with your first unit, free