The Chinese new year begins on 22 January, 2023 and lasts until 9 February 2024.While most of Asia celebrates the year of the rabbit, Vietnam celebrates the year of the cat. In the Chinese zodiac (十二生肖), there are 12 animals, and the 4th animal is the rabbit; while in the Vietnamese zodiac, the 4th position is occupied by the cat. How the cat covered for the rabbit in Vietnam’s zodiac is still the subject of debate.
It was said the Jade Emperor organized a race across a river for all the animals in the world. The first 12 to reach the other side would appear in the zodiac. In the Chinese version of the story, the cat and the rat were riding across a river on an ox when the rat pushed the cat into the water. The rat won the race, turning the two animals into enemies. That is why cats have been hunting rats ever since. However, in the Vietnamese version — which did not have a rabbit — the cat could swim and ended up arriving.
One possible explanation for replacing rabbit with cat might have to do with language. In old Chinese, there is’ a word tied to the sign of the rabbit that is pronounced mao (卯). The pronunciation is similar to mèo, the Vietnamese word for cat.
Quyen Di, a lecturer at UCLA, said the custom has to do with the landscape of Vietnam. “Initially, the Chinese lived in the savanna (稀树草原) area, while the Vietnamese lived in the lowland area. The people of the savanna prefer a nomadic life, close to the wilderness, and they chose the rabbit as an animal that lived in the wild fields. In contrast, the lowland people of Vietnam consider rabbits as animals that are used for food and chose the cat because they believe cats are friends living in their house.
This year, many Vietnamese are buying new cat-themed cases for their mobile phones. And one of the top Google searches in Vietnam is “why there is no cat in the Chinese zodiac”.
1. What does the underlined phrase “covered for” in paragraph 1 refer to?| A．took charge of | B．fought for |
| C．took the place of | D．depended on |
| A．The Jade Emperor showed favor to the cat. |
| B．The rabbit fell into the river in the zodiac race. |
| C．The cat finished fourth by swimming across the river. |
| D．The rat and the rabbit were enemies in ancient times. |
| A．Their living environment. |
| B．Their language pronunciation. |
| C．Their lifestyle of raising cats as pets. |
| D．Their custom of hunting rabbits for food. |
| A．The History of the Chinese Zodiac |
| B．Ways of Celebrating the Year of the Rabbit |
| C．The Popularity of Chinese Traditional Culture |
| D．The Origin of the Year of the Cat in Vietnam |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】As we all know, behavior and words sometimes are interpreted differently in some countries or areas, which is generally called cultural differences. For example:
Shaking the head in a horizontal direction in most countries means "no", while in India it means "yes".
Showing the thumb held upwards means in Latin America, especially Brazil, and in many other countries, including China, everything is "OK", while it is understood in some Islamic countries as well as Sardinia and Greece as a rude sign.
Laughing is connected in most countries with happiness — in Japan it is often a sign of confusion, insecureness and embarrassment.
In the UK and Ireland, the word "compromise" has a positive meaning(an agreement where both parties win something); in the USA it may rather have negative meanings (both parties lose something).
In Mediterranean European countries, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, it is normal, or at least widely tolerated, to arrive half an hour late for a dinner invitation, but in Germany and Switzerland this would be extremely rude. If invited to dinner, in many Asian countries and Central America, it is well-mannered to leave right after the dinner: the ones who don’t leave may indicate they have not eaten enough. In the Indian subcontinent, European and North American countries this is considered rude, indicating that the guests only wanted to eat but wouldn’t enjoy the hosts’ company.
In Africa, saying to a female friend who you haven’t seen for a while that she has put on weight means she is physically healthier than before or had a nice holiday, while this would be considered as an insult(侮辱) in Europe, North America and Australia.
1. Where does "showing the thumb held upwards" have a bad meaning?| A．In Greece. | B．In Mexico. |
| C．In China. | D．In Brazil. |
| A．Arrive half an hour late for dinner. |
| B．Have food left on the plate. |
| C．Leave right after the dinner. |
| D．Eat up the food immediately. |
| A．You can express your puzzlement by laughing. |
| B．You can praise women for their gaining weight. |
| C．"Compromise" has a positive meaning. |
| D．Shaking the head means "yes". |
| A．Strange behavior in some countries |
| B．Customs are different in different countries |
| C．Some typical examples of cultural differences |
| D．Cultural values should be paid much attention to |
【推荐2】The Silk Road is the name of different roads that long ago connected Europe, Africa and Asia. People reached these different places along these roads. Scientists believe people began to travel the Silk Road about 3000 years ago. By the time the Chinese silk trade became important in the world, the Silk Road covered almost 6500 kilometers. It spread from Rome to China, which is from the West to the Far East.
Traders travelling along the Silk Road carried silk, of course. They also carried and traded spices (香料), cloth, valuable stones and gold.
There is a famous old story along the old road. It is said that Roman soldiers travelled through central Asia. They started to live somewhere near the ancient Chinese village of Liqian. Sortie of these Romans married local Chinese women and the story of blue-eyed villages of China was started.
During its busiest period, the Silk Road allowed people from many different cultures and countries to meet each other and mix. The Silk Road allowed the sharing of valuable goods and new ideas. These included people and trading goods from the Mediterranean, Persian, Magyar, Armenian, Bactrian, Indian and Chinese areas. All these peoples travelled the Silk Road, and they shared goods, stories, languages, and cultures.
In modern times, the old Silk Road routes (路线) are still used, but now they are crossed by trains instead of camels and horses. There is even a Silk Route Museum in Jiuquan in China. It has over 35,000, objects from all along the Silk Road. In this way, China protects the history of many countries and peoples.
1. How many kilometers did the Silk Road cover?| A．About 3000. | B．Nearly 6500. | C．Almost 2000. | D．Over 35,000. |
| A．Silk. | B．Cloth. | C．Gold. | D．Tea. |
| A．Valuable things could not be sold along the Silk Road. |
| B．The Silk Road allowed people from different countries to mix. |
| C．Ancient Chinese along the Silk Road maybe able to speak different languages. |
| D．The objects in the museum in Jiuquan in China are from all along the Silk Road. |
| A．History and Geography. | B．Sports World. |
| C．Man and Animals. | D．Popular Science. |
【推荐3】In the eras before air-conditioning, southern China’s skywells played a key role in keeping people’s homes cool. Could they do it again today?
Ru Ling loves spending time in skywells. To her, these courtyards of old Chinese houses are the perfect place to be on a hot and humid day. “
From 2014 to 2021, Ru lived in a century-old home in the village of Guanlu in eastern China’s Anhui Province. She moved there for a change of life after living and working in air-conditioned buildings for many years. Ru says that the house’s skywell helped to create this cooling effect.
In today’s China, fewer and fewer people live in houses with skywells.
A skywell is a typical feature of a traditional home in southern and eastern China. Different from a northern Chinese courtyard, a skywell is smaller and less exposed to the outdoor environment.
| A．Skywells can help keep the houses cool. |
| B．Air-conditioned flats are the main form of homes. |
| C．Meanwhile, some architects are drawing inspiration from skywells and other traditional Chinese architectural features to help keep new buildings cooler. |
| D．Although a skywell’s size and design vary from region to region, it is almost always located in the core of a house. |
| E．While skywells are common in many regions, only the rich can afford to build houses with them. |
| F．And she’s not alone in praising the benefits of skywells, in hot weather. |
| G．They are airy, cool, and well-shaded. |
【推荐1】Lightning(闪电) strikes more than eight million times a day worldwide. That’s about 93 times per second. What a phenomenon!
How hot is a lightning bolt? About 50, 000°F-five times hotter than the surface of the sun. Yes, it really can rain frogs, fish, and other decidedly odd things. It’s a rare meteorological(气象学的) event, but scientists say strong winds from a tornado or from a storm can be powerful enough to drive animals and objects high into the air, and they have to comedown eventually.
It is a bad idea to take a shower during a thunderstorm. If lightning hits your house, it can travel through your plumbing(管道设备) and shock anyone who comes into contact with water flowing through it. People have been shocked or killed while bathing, washing dishes and clothes. This is also why indoor pools often close during storms. Rubber tires are not what protect you from lightning when you’re in your car. You’re protected because when lightning hits a car, it travels around the outside of the metal structure to get to the ground. Just be careful not to touch any metal areas inside.
Lightning can strike the same place twice—and it often does, especially objects that are tall, pointy, and separated. The Empire State Building, for example, is hit almost 100 times a year, according to the CDC.
You can be struck by lightning even when it’s no training. About 10 percent of lightning strikes take place when there’s no rainfall. In the 1980s, NASA flew one airplane through 1.496 thunderstorms. It was struck by lightning more than 700 times. Today, a commercial airplane will be hit by lightning about once a year on average, typically with no ill effects. It has been decades since a U.S. airliner has crashed as a result of a lightning strike.
To deal with such a frequent phenomenon, every day, twice a day, weather trackers, at the same time, launch giant balloons from almost 900 locations worldwide. The balloons measure above ground weather data such as temperature, humidity(湿气), and wind speed, and they provide vital information that meteorologists use to make forecasts and predict lightning.
1. What can lightning lead to according to the text?| A．Burning everything. | B．Raining animals. |
| C．Shocking everybody outdoors. | D．Hitting an object for once. |
| A．Take abath at home. | B．Swim in a pool. |
| C．Avoid metal things. | D．Stand under at all tree. |
| A．No sign of rainfall means no lightning. |
| B．Efforts have been made to keep aircraft safe. |
| C．Commercial planes can escape lightning hits. |
| D．The Empire State Building faces most lightning strikes. |
| A．Lightning location. | B．Measurement balloons. |
| C．Changing wind direction. | D．Weather forecast and prediction. |
【推荐2】IT’S A TYPICAL morning: you wake up, take a shower, brush your teeth, and then prick (刺; 扎) your arm with a tiny needle. Wait, what? Unless you have a serious disease such as diabetes, you probably haven’t ever tested your own blood. But in the future, that might change.
The company Cor already sells a system for home blood testing. You stick your arm using a supposedly painless, one-off , blood-drawing cartridge (针筒) about the size of a lipstick. Then you stick the cartridge into a device that looks like the base for an electric toothbrush. A few minutes later, an app on your phone buzzes with updated information, including your current health data and tips on what to eat and how to exercise during the day.
It’s true that blood contains a wealth of information about a person’s health. Blood tests can show if a person is infected with a disease or at risk for a variety of problems, including a heart attack or a stroke. But most people don’t test their own blood until a doctor says it’s time. Healthy young adults get regular blood tests about every five years. These tests happen at a lab, where a technician or a nurse sticks a long needle into the arm to draw out several tubes full of blood. Cor and similar companies, such as WellnessFX, are trying to change all that. They think people deserve access to more information about their own health.
But not everyone is convinced that regular blood testing for healthy people is a great idea. Cor’s system is expensive and may not offer much benefit. “The lightest result here is that you lose your money and then you’re reminded to get more sleep and to eat more fruits, vegetables, and fish,” Pieter Cohen of Harvard Medical School told the New York Times. “The worst result is that you end up getting frightened by probably abnormal results that are actually completely normal for you.”
Plus, the results of a home blood test might be wrong. It’s hard to get accurate results from a tiny amount of blood. So what do you think? Is monitoring your own health via pinpricks the way of the future? Or is it better to leave blood testing to medical professionals?
1. Why does the author mention the typical morning in the first paragraph?| A．To explain a scene. | B．To introduce the topic. |
| C．To make a comparison. | D．To provide an example. |
| A．It is painless and cheap to use. |
| B．It has won popularity among people. |
| C．It offers accurate health information about our body. |
| D．It may give advice on our diet according to the health data. |
| A．Objective. | B．Subjective. | C．Supportive. | D．Negative. |
| A．Home blood tests: yes or no? | B．Should blood tests be allowed at home? |
| C．A new system of improving your health. | D．Home blood testing: your health monitor! |
【推荐3】No poem should ever be discussed or “analyzed”, until it has been read aloud by someone, teacher or student. Better still, perhaps, is the practice of reading it twice, once at the beginning of the discussion and once at the end, so the sound of the poem is the last thing one hears of it.
All discussions of poetry are, in fact, preparations for reading it aloud, and the reading of the poem is, finally, the most telling “interpretation” of it, suggesting tone, rhythm, and meaning all at once. Hearing a poet read the work in his or her own voice, on records or on film, is obviously a special reward. But even those aids to teaching can not replace the student and teacher reading it or, best of all, reciting it.
I have come to think, in fact, that time spent reading a poem aloud is much more important than “analyzing” it, if there isn’t time for both. I think one of our goals as teachers of English is to have students love poetry. Poetry is “a criticism of life”, and “a heightening (提升) of life”. It is“an approach to the truth of feeling”, and it “can save your life”. It also deserves (值得) a place in the teaching of language and literature more central than it presently occupies.
I am not saying that every English teacher must teach poetry. Those who don’t like it should not be forced to put that dislike on anyone else. But those who do teach poetry must keep in mind a few things about its essential (基本的) nature, about its sound as well as its sense, and they must make room in the classroom for hearing poetry as well as thinking about it.
1. To have a better understanding of a poem, one should _____| A．discuss it with others | B．analyze it by oneself |
| C．copy it down in a notebook | D．practise reading it aloud |
| A．Extending your life. | B．Saving your life. |
| C．Criticizing life. | D．Heightening life. |
| A．understand life | B．enjoy poetry |
| C．become teachers | D．become poets |
| A．More stress should be laid on the teaching of poetry. |
| B．Poetry is more important than any other subject. |
| C．One cannot enjoy life fully without an understanding of poetry. |
| D．Poetry is the foundation of all language and literature courses. |
【推荐1】Cultural Differences of Teenagers
Knowing the cultural differences between yourself and others of your age can help you understand friends who are of a different race or culture.
Family
Family comes first in the Asian culture.
Friendship
Some Asian teens generally prefer having a small group of life-long friends. They are committed and loyal to their friends. Americans often prefer a larger group of friends. There might be less commitment to keeping friends for life because of their bigger pool of possible friendships.
Working Relationships
If you are working on a group project with teens from China or other Asian countries, they might focus on developing a good relationship with you.
In China and many other Asian countries, making direct eye contact is considered rude and disrespectful. However, in America and some European countries, it is not only seen as appropriate but also necessary because it means the person is paying attention. In Asian culture people are usually more comfortable with less personal space than Americans arc. A touch on the shoulder or an arm is common for Asians even if you don’t know one another.
It’s important to keep in mind that when learning about cultural differences, you should not generalize those differences.| A．Eye Contact |
| B．Body Language |
| C．In this way, you’ll experience cultural differences. |
| D．Teenagers have a strong attachment to their parents. |
| E．With this understanding, you won’t be thought impolite. |
| F．However, American teens tend to first focus on the task. |
| G．The key to understanding them with your friends is to ask them for advice. |
【推荐2】If a business wants to sell its products internationally, it had better do some market research first. This is a lesson that some large American corporations have learned the hard way.
What’s in the name?
Sometimes the problem is the name. When General Motors introduced its Chevy Nova into Latin America, it overlooked the fact that Nova in Spanish means “It doesn’t go”. Sure enough the Chevy Nova never went anywhere in Latin America.
Translation problems
Sometimes it is the slogan that doesn’t work. No company knows this better than Pepsi-Cola with its “Come alive with Pepsi!” campaign. The campaign was so successful in the United States that Pepsi translated its slogan literally for its international campaign. As it turned out, the translations weren’t quite right. Pepsi was begging Germans to “Come out of the grave (坟墓)” and telling the Chinese that “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave.”
A picture’s worth a thousand words
Other times, the problem involves packaging. A picture of a smiling baby has helped sell countless jars of Gerber baby food. When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as in the US, with the smiling baby on the label. Later they learned that in African countries, the picture on the jar shows what the jar has in it for many people there can’t read.
Twist of fate
Even the culture and religious factors and pure coincidence can be involved. Thorn McAn shoes have a Thorn McAn “signature” inside. To people in Bangladesh, which is a Muslim country, this signature looked like Arabic script for the word Allah. In that country feet are considered unclean and Muslims felt the company was offending God’s name by having people walk on it.
1. From the text we learned that _________.| A．Chevy Nova was a hit in Latin America |
| B．General Motors did the best market research of all companies |
| C．Pepsi still sold well in China owing to the translation problems |
| D．the “Come alive with Pepsi” campaign worked well in the US |
| A．The picture on the jar | B．A translation problem |
| C．Cultural factor | D．Religious factor |
| A．They are not designed attractively |
| B．Their advertisements are not persuasive |
| C．A signature looking like the word Allah was in the shoes |
| D．Problem for Thorn McAn was the company’s name |
| A．Lessons from some large corporations. | B．How to make use of advertisements |
| C．The importance of market research | D．The importance of packaging |
| A．product advertisers | B．market researchers |
| C．managers of Sales Department | D．businesses to promote products abroad |
【推荐3】Getting married can be one of the happiest moments in a person's life. Across the globe, weddings are very important events. Let's look at some interesting wedding customs from different countries.
For African Americans, it is a tradition for the married couple to jump over a broom covered with flowers. This represents the beginning of family life. It is interesting to note that African slaves who were brought to the USA started this tradition. African-American couples were not allowed to have a legal marriage, so instead they had a ceremony (仪式) where the bride (新娘) and groom (新郎) jumped over a broom 'into marriage'. Today, some African-American weddings still include the old tradition of 'jumping the broom'.
Making jokes about the bride and groom is a wedding tradition in both France and Germany. In France, this includes making loud noises with pots; in Germany, wedding guests break dishes. Weddings in Germany often last three days. On Thursday, there is a simple ceremony at a government office noting the official marriage of the couple. Then the couple will have a dinner with family and close friends. On Friday there is a party. This is when guests break dishes to represent the start of a new life. Then on Saturday, there is a ceremony in a church, followed by another party when the bride and groom celebrate the wedding with friends and relatives again.
In Greece, couples tie a doll to their wedding car if they want to have a daughter, or a toy bear if they want to have a son.
The USA also has some interesting wedding customs. The bride usually carries flowers during the wedding ceremony. After the ceremony, the single women get together and the bride throws the flowers. The woman who catches the flowers is supposed to be the next person to get married.
In England, it is a tradition for little girls to throw flowers on the ground on the way to the wedding ceremony. The bride and groom walk on the flowers. This represents the hope that the couple will follow the path that leads to a happy life.
1. What is the article mainly about?| A．Weddings and their origins. | B．Funny stories to do with weddings. |
| C．Different wedding customs. | D．Special weddings across the globe. |
| A．wealth | B．history | C．location | D．religion |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Reserved. | C．Serious. | D．Negative. |
| A．Greek weddings | B．German weddings |
| C．British weddings | D．American weddings |
| A．Loud noises. | B．Good wishes. |
| C．New brooms. | D．Teddy bears. |
