读一读 · HSK 4 阅读 · history
The Thousand-Year Exam
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 than a thousand years, to the imperial exam system…
This reading is part of the course. Inside, it comes with pinyin you can toggle a character at a time, a native recording that highlights each word as it is spoken, and the comprehension check as a real graded quiz — alongside every other passage, the lessons that build up to them, and the flashcards that keep them.
See what full access costs
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