Chinese Level E: Fluent
The Chinese heard on the radio and between colleagues: arguing, qualifying, disagreeing, quoting a figure, joking. The pace is that of a real conversation.
- Artificial intelligence and jobs Three people have left Chen Hao's department and none replaced. He now proofreads what a machine writes, and is no better off for it.
- The falling birth rate A nursery class closes for want of children. Four neighbours look for the reason, and agree neither on the cause nor on the cure.
- The emptying towns Chen Hao is back from his home town: three shops open in the whole street, and new blocks almost dark at night.
- The price of education Tutoring for an eight-year-old costs his family an adult's annual salary. Nobody round the table can see a way out.
- The pressure on new graduates Chen Hao's cousin has sent a hundred applications for five interviews. The conversation turns to commentary, until he is pulled up for it.
- The environment and industry The chemical plant in the county town has closed for good. Two thousand people out of work, and a river running clear again.
- Mass tourism Seven hours on the road for a three-hour drive, and more people than stones at the other end. Xiaoyu tells of her May holiday.
- Saving the old quarter The lane where Auntie Wang was born is to be demolished. The two ancestral halls are listed; the houses behind them are not.
- The language and the dialects Auntie Wang's grandson no longer understands a word of his grandmother's speech. She wonders whether to go on using it with him.
- Social media and the news An alarming story goes round in the morning. It is three years old and from another city, but it has already been through every group.
- Professional sport A match turned round in the last three minutes, a teenager watching instead of playing, and a pitch taken over by the evening dancers.
- The national cinema A New Year film took five billion at the box office and left nothing behind. Art films, meanwhile, are shown at ten in the morning.
- Cooking and identity Auntie Wang's daughter, away for ten years, finds her mother's cooking too salty. Her mother sees a betrayal; the others see a trace.
- Coming home from abroad A classmate of Chen Hao's comes back after eight years abroad. The work was not the problem; what has changed in him is.
- What "success" means Zhang laoshi asks two people in their thirties whether they think they have arrived. The conversation moves from the reckoning to the word itself.