Guide
Chinese Story for Beginners
Read a free Chinese story for beginners: eight short illustrated HSK 1 pages with pinyin, audio, tap-to-translate words, English translations and a quiz.
On this page
小猫的新床
The Kitten’s New Bed
Check your understanding#
Five quick questions, all answered in the story. Go back to the pages if you need to: finding the sentence again is good practice too.
Quick check
Words from the story#
These six words carry the whole plot. Listen to each one, then find it again in the story: the second meeting is the one that makes a word stick.
Useful phrases from the story#
Short stories are a good place to collect phrases you can use the same day. These three work with people too, not only with kittens.
这是你的床！
你的床在那儿！
好吧，好吧。
The first one is a pattern you can reuse with anything: swap 你 (nǐ, you) for 我 (wǒ, I) and you get 这是我的床 (zhè shì wǒ de chuáng), “this is my bed”, exactly what Xiaomei says on page six.
How to read a Chinese story and remember it#
Reading a story once is pleasant. Reading it three or four times, each time a little differently, is how its words move into your long-term memory. Here is a simple routine for a short story like this one.
- Listen first, without reading. Press play on page one and just follow the pictures. You will catch the names, the melody of the sentences and the general situation.
- Read with pinyin, and guess before you tap. Try to understand each sentence from the words you know and the picture. Tap a word only when the sentence still makes no sense without it.
- Read again with pinyin hidden. Characters are what you will see on signs, menus and phones. Turn pinyin back on only for the words you cannot recall.
- Shadow the slow audio. Switch to slow speed and repeat each sentence right after the voice. It is the fastest way to practise the Chinese tones in real sentences.
- Check the translation last. Open the English only for the sentences you are unsure about, and compare it with what you guessed.
- Come back tomorrow. Memory research calls it the spacing effect: words you review after a pause are remembered better than words you repeat many times in a row.
How to choose a Chinese story at your level#
A widely cited estimate from reading research is that most learners need to know about 98% of the words in a text, about one unknown word in 50, to understand it comfortably on their own. Below that, reading turns into decoding. That is why stories written for your level, often called graded readers, work better than a novel you have to look up line by line.
In Chinese, levels usually follow the HSK, the official proficiency exam, from HSK 1 for complete beginners to HSK 6:
| HSK level | What a story feels like | Stories in Tuni |
|---|---|---|
| HSK 1 | Everyday scenes, short sentences, lots of repetition | 12 |
| HSK 2 | Plans, food and small problems with a twist | 9 |
| HSK 3 | Longer scenes, feelings and reasons | 9 |
| HSK 4 | Work, opinions and misunderstandings | 7 |
| HSK 5 | Richer descriptions and a more written style | 7 |
| HSK 6 | Nuanced dialogue and social situations | 6 |
A good rule: if you need to tap more than one word in every sentence, try a story one level lower. If you never tap anything, move up. Found a Chinese text somewhere else? Paste it into the Chinese word counter to see how many of its words belong to each HSK level before you start.
Printed series such as Mandarin Companion and Chinese Breeze (汉语风) follow the same idea in book form. Tuni turns it into short illustrated stories with audio, so you can read them anywhere on your phone.
Famous Chinese stories everyone knows#
Searching for “Chinese story” often means the classics: the legends and fables that Chinese children grow up with. They are usually retold in simple language, and knowing them helps you understand festivals, films and everyday idioms.
- 西游记 (Xīyóujì), Journey to the West. The 16th-century novel in which the Monkey King, 孙悟空 (Sūn Wùkōng), protects a monk on his long journey to India to bring back Buddhist scriptures. It is one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature.
- 嫦娥奔月 (Cháng'é bēn yuè), Chang'e flies to the moon. Chang'e drinks an elixir of immortality and floats up to the moon, where she lives with a jade rabbit, 玉兔 (yùtù). The story is told at the Mid-Autumn Festival, 中秋节 (Zhōngqiū Jié). Tuni approves of the rabbit.
- 后羿射日 (Hòu Yì shè rì), Hou Yi shoots the suns. When ten suns rise at once and burn the earth, the archer Hou Yi shoots down nine of them. He is often presented as Chang'e's husband.
- 牛郎织女 (Niúláng Zhīnǚ), the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl. Two lovers separated by the Milky Way meet once a year on a bridge of magpies. Their meeting is celebrated on 七夕 (Qīxī), the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, often called Chinese Valentine’s Day.
- 花木兰 (Huā Mùlán), Mulan. A young woman takes her father’s place in the army, disguised as a man. Her story comes from the Ballad of Mulan, a folk poem first written down around the 6th century.
- 愚公移山 (Yúgōng yí shān), the Foolish Old Man who moved the mountains. An old man starts digging away the two mountains in front of his house, and his determination finally convinces the gods to move them. The title is now an idiom for patient effort.
- 守株待兔 (shǒu zhū dài tù), waiting for a rabbit by a tree stump. A farmer sees a rabbit run into a stump and die, then gives up farming to wait for the next one. The idiom mocks waiting for luck instead of working.
- 画蛇添足 (huà shé tiān zú), drawing legs on a snake. In a contest to draw a snake, the fastest artist adds feet to his drawing and loses the prize. It means spoiling something by doing too much.
The last three are 成语 (chéngyǔ), four-character idioms that each carry a whole story. Native speakers use hundreds of them, so a short story is often the easiest way to remember one.
Your next Chinese story#
A Chinese story at your level is the shortest path from knowing words to understanding real sentences. You have just read a whole story in Mandarin, with pinyin and audio to help, and that is exactly how reading gets easier: one short story, read well, then another one tomorrow.
If you want to keep going, the free Tuni app has 50 illustrated stories, from HSK 1 to HSK 6. To learn the words first, start with our basic Chinese words and phrases.
Frequently asked questions
How do you say “story” in Chinese?
Story is 故事 (gùshi). A short story is 小故事 (xiǎo gùshi), a fairy tale is 童话 (tónghuà) and a myth or legend is 神话 (shénhuà).
Can beginners read stories in Chinese?
Yes. A story written for HSK 1 is built mostly from the 500 most common words, and pinyin, audio and word-by-word help cover the rest. “The Kitten’s New Bed” has 121 characters over eight pages, with one or two short sentences on each.
Should I read Chinese stories with or without pinyin?
Use both. Read the first time with pinyin so you can sound out every word, then read again with pinyin hidden, because characters are what you see on signs, menus and phones. Turn pinyin back on only for the words you cannot recall.
What are Chinese graded readers?
Graded readers are stories written with a limited vocabulary for one level, so learners can read for meaning instead of looking up every word. Chinese graded readers are usually organised by HSK level or by the number of different characters they use.
What is the most famous Chinese story?
Journey to the West (西游记, Xīyóujì), the 16th-century novel about the Monkey King, is probably the best known in China and abroad. Folk legends such as Chang'e flying to the moon, the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, and Mulan are among the most retold.
Are Chinese stories written in simplified or traditional characters?
Both exist. Mainland China, Singapore and Malaysia use simplified characters; Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau use traditional ones. This story, like every Tuni story, uses simplified characters with pinyin.
Where can I read more Chinese stories like this one?
In the Tuni app for iPhone and iPad, which has 50 illustrated stories from HSK 1 to HSK 6. Each one comes with audio, pinyin, help on every word and a short quiz, and the app is free.
