A café in Beijing, four o'clock on a Saturday. You stand up and the table is empty.
手机不见了
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星期六下午，我在咖啡店看书。
Saturday afternoon. I'm reading in a coffee shop.
我的手机就放在桌子上。
My phone is sitting right there on the table.
四点了，我要去朋友家吃饭。
It's four o'clock — I'm going to a friend's place for dinner.
我站起来的时候，手机不见了。
When I stand up, the phone is gone.
服务员是一个很年轻的女孩。
The waiter is a very young woman.
我问她：“你看见我的手机了吗？”
I ask her: "Have you seen my phone?"
她说：“没有。你等一下，我去问问。”
She says: "No. Wait a moment, I'll go and ask."
她走到后面去了，两分钟还没回来。
She goes into the back. Two minutes later she still isn't back.
椅子下面没有手机，桌子下面也没有。
Nothing under the chair. Nothing under the table either.
我想起来了：刚才我旁边坐着一个人。
Then I remember: someone was sitting next to me a minute ago.
现在那个位子上是一个女孩，她一直看着我。
A girl is in that seat now, and she keeps looking at me.
我跟旁边的客人借了电话，打我自己的号码。
I borrow a phone from the customer next to me and call my own number.
一，二，三……有声音！我的手机在响。
One, two, three… there's a sound! My phone is ringing.
声音很小，可是很近。
It's faint. But it's close.
女孩说：“刚才有个男的坐在这里。”
The girl says: "There was a man sitting here a minute ago."
“他拿了一个手机，往门口走了。”
"He picked up a phone and walked towards the door."
她说话的时候，手一直指着门。
The whole time she's talking, she's pointing at the door.
门口站着一个男人，他在打电话。
There's a man standing at the door, on a call.
他手上有两个手机：一个黑色的，一个白色的。
He has two phones in his hand: one black, one white.
我的手机是白色的。
Mine is white.
🏆
Best ending
The white one is mine
（白色的是我的）
他看了看手上的两个手机，脸红了。
He looks down at the two phones in his hand and goes red.
“对不起，”他说，“我拿错了。”
"Sorry," he says. "I picked up the wrong one."
他把白色的手机给我，我说了谢谢。
He hands me the white one. I say thank you.
五点，我到了朋友家。晚了一个小时，可是手机在我的口袋里。
I get to my friend's at five — an hour late, with my phone in my pocket.
What that branch was about: One polite sentence is almost always the fastest way through a small problem in Chinese. 对不起，那是我的 lets the other person be wrong without losing face, which is exactly why it works.
The waiter listens, then calls the manager straight away.
他们一起看了店里的录像。
The two of them go and look at the shop's cameras.
二十分钟以后，那个男人回来了，把手机放在桌子上，一句话也没说。
Twenty minutes later the man comes back, puts the phone on the table and says nothing at all.
我晚了半个小时，可是我不用自己去跟他说话。
I'm half an hour late — and I never had to speak to him myself.
What that branch was about: Slower than doing it yourself, and much more normal in China: a problem inside a shop is the shop's problem. Asking staff first is rarely the wrong move.
I go and find the waiter, and we walk to the door together.
那个人已经不在了。
The man is already gone.
我们去了派出所。三天以后，警察给我打电话：手机找到了。
We go to the police station. Three days later the police ring me: they have the phone.
手机回来了，可是我等了三天。
I got it back. It took three days.
What that branch was about: It does work — lost phones really are returned — but three days without a phone in China is three days unable to pay for anything, because the phone is the wallet.
I grab his bag. He is furious: "What are you doing?"
咖啡店里的人都在看我们。
Everyone in the café is watching us.
他的两个手机都在响，因为他是送外卖的。
Both his phones are ringing, because he delivers food for a living.
后来我打开我的书……我的手机在书里面。刚才我自己把书放在上面了。
Later I open my book… my phone is inside it. I had put the book down on top of it myself.
What that branch was about: The funniest ending, and the one worth remembering a phrase for: 不好意思 (bù hǎoyìsi) — "how embarrassing" — is the sentence this moment was invented for.
I walk out of the café. The street is full of people.
我在街上找了一个小时。
I look for an hour.
天黑了，我还是没有找到我的手机。
It gets dark, and I still haven't found my phone.
第二天，我买了一个新的。
The next day I buy a new one.
What that branch was about: Going outside was the single move that made the phone unfindable. Inside the café there were people who had watched it happen; on the street there was nobody.
One reading shows you about a third of what is written here. The endings you have
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This is a graded reader that goes different ways depending on what you decide. Every few
sentences you are asked what to do next, and the question is written in Chinese — so
choosing is itself the comprehension check, and there is no way to pick without reading.
There are 14 decisions in the story and 5 endings across
560 characters of Chinese, which is why one reading only shows you part of
it. It is written for HSK 2, roughly CEFR A1. Short sentences, one clause each, in the present. If you know the first 300 words you can read every branch of this one.
Every word carries its pinyin, and tapping one gives you the reading, the English and a
link to its full dictionary entry — the same dictionary behind the translators on this
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of the same sentence. The play button beside a line reads it aloud in Mandarin.
Making it harder, and reading it again
The two switches at the top of the reader are the difficulty setting. With the English on
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mode turns off the pinyin as well, which is the version worth working towards —
and because the story branches, you can re-read it that way without already knowing what
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The endings are the reason to come back. Each one carries a short note about what that
branch was actually about — the cost of the decision, or the thing a Chinese speaker would
have known to do — and those notes are the half a plain story cannot give you. When you
have all 5, try the story at the next level up, or read the
linear graded readers, which cover HSK 1 to HSK 4 with a
comprehension quiz at the end of each.
