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Fable: 洗衣服 – Washing clothes

In this quick lesson about judging others, we learn that those who live in dirty glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. HSK 2-3.

Sorry for the wait, busy week, and I got wrapped up in trying to do an advanced post, which I just don’t have time to finish, so I’m doing a simpler one here to tide everyone over.

In this quick lesson about judging others, we learn that those who live in dirty glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. HSK 2-3.
Source here.

Some language stuff

Most of the nouns and verbs in this story are HSK 1-3, pretty basic, but there are a couple of more advanced grammar words. First off, if you’re new to Chinese measure words, you’ll learn some new ones in here. We’ve got:

一对 yī duì – A pair (in this case, of people – a husband and wife)
一户 yī hù – A household
一番 yī fān- The measure word for a conversation or a block of speech

We’ve also got three words here specifically related to washing clothes and cleaning:

干净 gān jìng – To be clean
洗衣粉 xǐ yī fěn – Detergent (washing powder)
晾衣绳 liàng yī shéng – Washing line (dry clothes rope)
悬挂 xuán guà – To hang
擦 cā – To wipe
清洗 qīng xǐ – To wash (something until it is clean)

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洗衣服

一对年轻的夫妇对面搬来一户新邻居。第二天早上，当他们吃早饭的时候，年轻的妻子看到了新搬来的邻居正在外面洗衣服。

妻子对丈夫说道：“那些衣服洗得不干净，也许那个邻居不知道如何清洗。也许她需要好一点的洗衣粉。”

丈夫看了看了妻子，沉默不语。

就这样每次邻居洗衣服，妻子都会这样评论对方一番。 大概一个月后，年轻的妻子惊奇地发现，邻居的晾衣绳上居然悬挂着一件干净的衣服，她大叫着对丈夫说：“快看！她学会洗衣服了。我想知道是谁教会她这个的呢？”

她的丈夫却回答到：“我今天早上一大早起来，然后我把玻璃悬擦干净了。”

在我们作出判断之前，首先要看一下你的“窗户”是否干净。

Show English translation »
A new neighbor moved in across from a young husband and wife. On the second morning, when they were eating breakfast, the young wife saw that the new neighbors were outside washing their clothes.

The wife said to the husband: “Those clothes haven’t been washed clean, perhaps the neighbor doesn’t know how to how clean them. Perhaps she needs better washing powder.”

The husband looked at his wife, and [sat] silent without speaking.

And so every time the neighbors washed their clothes, the wife would always comment in this way. About a month later, the young wife discovered to her surprise, an item of clean clothing was hung on the neighbors washing line, and she called loudly to her husband: “Quick, look! She learned how to wash clothes. I’d like to know who taught her this?”

Her husband, however, answered: “I got up early today, and washed the glass [on our windows].”

Before we make judgements, first we should look to see if our own “windows” are clean.

26 replies on “Fable: 洗衣服 – Washing clothes”

Thank you for continuing to post these stories. They are one of my most valued learning resources! Keep up the great work!

I absolutely loved learning and reading this!

Self learner, from NZ here. Been studying through apps and pirated (cough) audio books for approx 3 years. Casual hobby, haven’t been to anywhere in Asia yet.

But yes – I was able to read about 80% of this and the incredibly handy HTML plugins made this so much fun to navigate around.

Thanks for this 🙂

First off, thank you so much for these texts. They’re really helping me a great deal with my proficiency.

In the sentence where the man says he cleaned the windows, I am confused by the purpose of the character 悬. I tried asking my native Chinese friends, and they said they suspected it was a typo, and supposed to be 全. Is this correct, or have I misunderstood?

Thank you!

Thank you so much for making this! I live in a third world country so I can’t subscribe or buy apps to help me learn language because they’re so expensive. The exchange rate is rough.

It is good to have the definitions, but it is hard sometimes to understand the sentences. Is there some way to provide a translation of whole sentences? Thank you.

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