Welcome to 听故事说中文, the podcast where stories come alive to help you improve your Chinese language proficiency and cultural competency.

Today's story is about a word that's been quietly spreading across the Chinese internet — 登. It's a slang term that's hard to translate directly, but you'll recognize the type of person it describes: someone who leans on their experience or status to tell others what to do, who'd rather lecture than listen, and who turns a conversation into a one-way street.

It's not really about age. Plenty of young people get teased for having 登味 too — those moments when we catch ourselves being a little too rigid, or judging others by our own standards without realizing it.

At its heart, this story is about how people communicate — and what it looks like when respect and curiosity replace authority and judgment. Swap "I want" for "what do you think," and "let me test you" for "teach me something" — and the world, as the author puts it, becomes a little bit better.

- Rui & Simeng

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Support Our Podcast

Support Our Podcast → https://www.patreon.com/learningchinesethroughstories

If our podcast brings value to your life and you'd like to help us keep creating great content, consider becoming a patron for as little as $9 a month. As a patron, you'll enjoy:

* ✨ Ad-free episodes for an uninterrupted listening experience

* 📜 Access to all story and story walkthrough transcripts

* 📚 Comprehensive vocabulary lists

* 📖 Our LCTS Favorites ebook + RealLife Chinese for Beginners podcast

* 💬 Our members' Discord community + a monthly study challenge

* 🎥 Monthly live meetup with us (一份火锅 tier)

Not ready to join? Our free Discord is open to every listener — come say hi!

💬 Join our free community on Discord → https://discord.gg/km3GgzCe3J

Your support means the world to us and lets us keep delivering the content you love. Thank you for being part of our community! 💖 — LCTS

************************************************************

Check out our playlists on Spotify

Chinese for Intermediate-Playlist

Chinese for Intermediate High-Playlist

Chinese for Advanced-Playlist

Chinese for Superior- Playlist

Chinese for Beginners-Playlist

Welcome to 听故事说中文, the podcast where stories come alive to help you improve your Chinese language proficiency and cultural competency.

Today's story is about a word that's been quietly spreading across the Chinese internet — 登. It's a slang term that's hard to translate directly, but you'll recognize the type of person it describes: someone who leans on their experience or status to tell others what to do, who'd rather lecture than listen, and who turns a conversation into a one-way street.

It's not really about age. Plenty of young people get teased for having 登味 too — those moments when we catch ourselves being a little too rigid, or judging others by our own standards without realizing it.

At its heart, this story is about how people communicate — and what it looks like when respect and curiosity replace authority and judgment. Swap "I want" for "what do you think," and "let me test you" for "teach me something" — and the world, as the author puts it, becomes a little bit better.

- Rui & Simeng

************************************************************

Support Our Podcast

Support Our Podcast → https://www.patreon.com/learningchinesethroughstories

If our podcast brings value to your life and you'd like to help us keep creating great content, consider becoming a patron for as little as $9 a month. As a patron, you'll enjoy:

* ✨ Ad-free episodes for an uninterrupted listening experience

* 📜 Access to all story and story walkthrough transcripts

* 📚 Comprehensive vocabulary lists

* 📖 Our LCTS Favorites ebook + RealLife Chinese for Beginners podcast

* 💬 Our members' Discord community + a monthly study challenge

* 🎥 Monthly live meetup with us (一份火锅 tier)

Not ready to join? Our free Discord is open to every listener — come say hi!

💬 Join our free community on Discord → https://discord.gg/km3GgzCe3J

Your support means the world to us and lets us keep delivering the content you love. Thank you for being part of our community! 💖 — LCTS

************************************************************

Check out our playlists on Spotify

Chinese for Intermediate-Playlist

Chinese for Intermediate High-Playlist

Chinese for Advanced-Playlist

Chinese for Superior- Playlist

Chinese for Beginners-Playlist

Welcome to 听故事说中文, the podcast where stories come alive to help you improve your Chinese language proficiency and cultural competency.

Today's story is about Cai Lei, a man who was diagnosed with ALS — known in Chinese as 渐冻症(jiàn dòng zhèng), literally "the freezing disease" — and chose not to quietly disappear. Before his diagnosis, he was a successful businessman. Afterward, he became something harder to define: a patient who threw himself into funding research, building platforms, pushing policy, and demanding that the world pay attention to a disease it had largely ignored.

It's a story about what it looks like to face the unfaceable — not with grace, but with grit.
- Rui & Simeng

************************************************************

Support Our Podcast

Support Our Podcast → https://www.patreon.com/learningchinesethroughstories

If our podcast brings value to your life and you'd like to help us keep creating great content, consider becoming a patron for as little as $9 a month. As a patron, you'll enjoy:

* ✨ Ad-free episodes for an uninterrupted listening experience

* 📜 Access to all story and story walkthrough transcripts

* 📚 Comprehensive vocabulary lists

* 📖 Our LCTS Favorites ebook + RealLife Chinese for Beginners podcast

* 💬 Our members' Discord community + a monthly study challenge

* 🎥 Monthly live meetup with us (一份火锅 tier)

Not ready to join? Our free Discord is open to every listener — come say hi!

💬 Join our free community on Discord → https://discord.gg/km3GgzCe3J

Your support means the world to us and lets us keep delivering the content you love. Thank you for being part of our community! 💖 — LCTS

************************************************************

Check out our playlists on Spotify

Chinese for Intermediate-Playlist

Chinese for Intermediate High-Playlist

Chinese for Advanced-Playlist

Chinese for Superior- Playlist

Chinese for Beginners-Playlist