Beijing Imperial Court Food

Imperial Court Food（宫廷菜）is a style of food with origins in the Imperial Palace and it is well-known for the original features of the raw materials and carefully selected ingredients. In addition, the dishes are decorated with different colored vegetables and fruits in various shapes. Each dish has a special name, such as Yu Feng Huan Chao. And some of them even have short stories. Today, Imperial Court Food has become an important school of Chinese cooking with several places offering this special taste. While expensive, it is worth trying.

Restaurants of Imperial Court Food

Fangshan Restaurant

Fangshan Restaurant is the most famous one offering the first-class Imperial Court Food. The restaurant is made up of three parts and it can hold 500 people eating at the time. It is decorated in imperial style with the design of dragon and phoenix. Here is the best place to experience the life of the Chinese emperors in former days. Now, it serves nearly 800 kinds of Imperial Court Dishes. Among them, Man-Han Banquet is the most famous.

Li Jia Cai Restaurant

The dinner here is served by set menu starting at ¥298/ person. That is to say, a quest cannot order a dish but a set of dishes. There are no chemicals in the dishes and all tastes are natural. This restaurant has welcomed many famous people including Bill Gates, the former premier of Britain, John Major, and Chinese superstar Jackie Chan.

Yushan Restaurant

The layout of the restaurant follows the imperial palace. When eating in the restaurant, diners are served by waitresses in traditional imperial clothes.

Da Zhai Men

The dishes and snacks cooked in this restaurant are worthy to have a try. And, the traditional performances at night is one of the restaurant’s attractions.

Royal Palace

Both of the food and services of this restaurant are so good. You can also enjoy some wonderful performances in this large courtyard.

1. Imperial Court Food stands out because of the following EXCEPT ________.

A．pretty decorations	B．selective materials
C．pleasant names	D．reasonable prices

2. If you’d like to try Man-Han Banquet, which restaurant should you go to?

A．Fangshan Restaurant.	B．Li Jia Cai Restaurant.
C．Yushan Restaurant.	D．Da Zhai Men.

3. In which restaurant can you enjoy Chinese traditional performances?

A．Li Jia Cai Restaurant.	B．Da Zhai Men.
C．Yushan Restaurant.	D．Royal Palace.

One of the traditions which is now a necessary part of Christmas is that of Father Christmas, or Santa Claus. According to the modern legend, he is a magical figure who visits all the children of the world during the night before Christmas Day, leaving presents, which they find the next morning. He flies through the night sky in a sledge pulled by reindeer, and enters houses by climbing down chimneys. This strange legend is based on the life of a man called Nicholas, but in fact we know very little about him. Historians think he was a Christian bishop（主教）in Turkey in about 285-350 A.D. One of the stories about him is that he helped three poor girls. No one would marry them because they were so poor.

To provide them with money for their weddings, Nicholas secretly dropped some gold coins down the chimney of their house. After Nicholas died, he was made a saint（圣人）by the church. (The name Santa Claus thus comes from St Nicholas.) His feast day was celebrated in December, and parents started giving their children secret presents from St Nicholas. Over the years, this custom became part of our Christmas traditions.

Recently, a psychologist has claimed that Father Christmas is “the perfect fantasy” for children. According to Professor Anthony Clare, children love the character of Father Christmas because he is like an ideal father: he loves children and gives them presents, but he never criticizes them, is never angry and children do not even need to thank him for presents. Other writers, however, point out that Father Christmas can be a frightening character to some children. Jane Bidder says that some children are terrified of this fat, bearded old man. It can certainly confuse many children. As presents, we warn our children to be careful of strangers and never to let them into the house, and yet we tell children that a strange man will come into their bedroom at night! Some children can become very worried about this idea and fear that he is a kind of burglar.

Most children, however, understand from their parents and from the media that Father Christmas is basically a benign character, and look forward to his annual visit with joy and excitement.

4. The writer mentions details such as Father Christmas’s sledge, the reindeer and the way he climbs down chimney because he/ she ________.

A．wants to make it clear that these things are impossible

B．is describing the history of St Nicholas

C．wants everyone to believe that Father Christmas is real

D．is explaining the modern legend of Father Christmas

5. Why does the writer mention the story about St Nicholas helping three poor girls?

A．It shows us that historians know very little about him.

B．This story explains why parents give secret presents to children.

C．It supports the writer’s main point that Father Christmas is based on an untrue story.

D．This story explains why we celebrate Christmas in December.

6. In the last paragraph, the word “benign” means ________.

A．religious	B．friendly
C．frightening	D．unreal

7. The best title for this passage would be ________.

A．Is Father Christmas Dangerous?	B．The True History of St Nicholas
C．The Legend of Santa Claus	D．The Traditions of Christmas

As a Chinese saying goes, “Taste is actually a memory of childhood”. Local specialty food may not be popular among all people, but it offers outsiders a glimpse of local culture and history.

Gongcheng “oil tea” is such a kind of food that would be considered “weird” by many first-time visitors to the remote county in the north of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Many people dislike its bitter and astringent（涩的）flavor when they take a sip.

“It felt like drinking Chinese herbal medicine. I never expected that I would gradually accept it afterwards, and even become addicted to it,” said a traveler surnamed Zhang who comes from Shijiazhuang in northern China’s Hebei province.

Langshan village is said to be birthplace of Gongcheng “oil tea” whose ideal ingredients are green tea and fermented（发酵）tea. The village has preserved well its buildings and roads dating back to late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), as well as its traditional way of making the special tea.

Lin Fengyou, 60, introduced the cooking process. She looks younger than her age, and attributes this to the benefits of drinking “oil tea” throughout the year.

The first procedure is to use a wooden hammer to pound the tea while heating it in an iron pot, and then add edible（可食用的）oil and boiled water afterwards. She filters off the solid residues（余渣）, and pours the glue-like green tea soup into bowls. Then, she adds salt, caraway seed（葛缕子籽）, green onion, dried rice, fried groundnuts, sliced taro（芋头）and fried beans.

The taste of the “oil tea” is a mixture of the distinctive（特有的）flavors of all its ingredients. Local people usually eat it together with glutinous rice（糯米）balls, rice dumplings and glutinous rice cake.

The villagers consume “oil tea” three times a day. The tea soup is a healthy and refreshing food. “The tea soup to us is coffee to Westerners”, said Lin. “But it is tastier.”

8. Many first-time visitors may find “oil tea” ________ when taking a sip.

A．popular	B．beneficial
C．addicted	D．strange

9. What can we learn about Lin Fengyou according to the passage?

A．She thinks drinking “oil tea” throughout the year makes her look younger.

B．She is one of the reasons why the special tea has been preserved.

C．She never expected that she would gradually accept “oil tea”.

D．She drinks “oil tea” three times every day and considers coffee tastier.

10. Which is the correct order of cooking “oil tea” according to Lin Fengyou?
a. pour the glue-like green tea soup into bowls
b. heat the tea in an iron pot and pound the tea
c. add salt, caraway seed, green onion, dried rice, etc
d. add edible oil and boiled water
e. filter off the solid residues

A．acebd	B．dbace
C．bdeac	D．beadc

11. Which column is this passage probably taken from?

A．Culture & Education	B．Entertainment
C．Health	D．Travel

Film has properties that set it apart from painting, sculpture, novels and plays. It is also, in its most popular and powerful form, a story telling medium that shares many elements with the short story and the novel. And since film presents its stories in dramatic form, it has even more in common with the stage play: Both plays and movies act out or dramatize（使戏剧化）, show rather than tell, what happens.

Unlike the novel, short story, or play, however, film is not handy（日语做的）to study; it cannot be effectively frozen on the printed page. The novel and short story are relatively easy to study because they are written to be read. The stage play is slightly more difficult to study because it is written to be performed. But plays are printed, and because they rely heavily on the spoken word, imaginative readers can bring t mind at least a pale imitation of the experience they might have been watching a performance on stage. This cannot be said of the screenplay（电影剧本）, for a film depends greatly on visual（视觉的）and other non-visual elements that are not easily expressed in writing. The screenplay requires so much “filling in” by our imagination that we cannot really obtain the experience of a film by reading a screenplay, and reading a screenplay is worthwhile only if we have already seen the film. Thus, most screenplays are published not to read but rather to be remembered.

Still, film should not be ignored because studying it requires extra effort. And the fact that we do not generally “read” films does not mean we should ignore the principles of literary of dramatic analysis when see a film. Literature and films do share many elements and communicate many things in similar ways. Perceptive（精辟的）film analysis rests on the principles used in literary analysis, and if we apply what we have learned in the study of literature to our analysis of films, we will be far ahead of those who do not. Therefore, before we turn to the unique elements of film, we need to look into the elements that film shares with any good story.

Dividing film into its various elements for analysis is a somewhat artificial process, for the elements of any art form never exist in isolation. It is impossible, for example, to isolate plot（情节）from character. Events influence people, and people influence events; the two are always closely interwoven in any fictional（虚构的）, dramatic, or cinematic（电影的）work. Nevertheless, the analytical method uses such a fragmenting（碎片）technique for convenience. It does so with the assumption（假设）that we can study these elements in isolation without losing sight of their interdependence or their relationship to the whole.

12. In the writer’s opinion, the reason why it is not handy to study film lies in ________.

A．screenplay is not as well written as literary works

B．publishers prefer to publish literary works

C．a film is too complicated

D．a film cannot be effectively represented by a printed screenplay

13. From the 3^rd paragraph we learn that ________.

A．the means by which we analyze a literary work cannot be applied to analysis of the film

B．we should not pay extra effort to study films

C．a good film and a good story have many elements in common

D．using the principles of literary analysis makes no difference in film analysis

14. The underlined word “It” in the last sentence of the passage refers to ________.

A．Film.	B．The fragmenting technique.
C．The analytical method.	D．Convenience

15. What is mainly discussed in the passage?

A．The unique charm of film.

B．The importance of film analysis.

C．The relationship between film analysis and literary analysis.

D．How to identify the techniques a film uses.