Easy to make and cheap to buy, instant noodles have long been China’s, ultimate convenience food.
Since it was a snack for students, a meal on the train, or just the go-to choice for hungry workers, more than 46.2 billion packets were sold in China in 2013. But it seems this industry has gone off the boil. By 2016 those sales had declined to 38.5 billion, according to the World Instant Noodle Association, a drop of almost 17%.
“This phenomenon shows an unnoticeable while continuous change in China’s consumption (消费) patterns,” said Zhao Ping of the Academy of China Council for the Promotion of International Trade. He told the China Daily, “Consumers are more interested in life quality than just filling their bellies these days.”
About 730 million people in China now have access to the Internet according to government figures. And about 95% of those are using smart phones to connect. And apps that offer food delivery to your home, office or wherever you happen to be are a real fast-developing industry.
Their menus are undoubtedly more expensive than a pot of instant noodles. But these meals can still be inexpensive, and arguably more tasty, depending on your favor.
But put in the global background, China is still easily the biggest market for instant noodles. In fact, China’s consumption was roughly equal to Indonesia, Japan, Vietnam, India, the US, South Korea and the Philippines combined.
And that means global noodle manufacturers are unlikely to turn away from the Chinese market. Japan’s instant noodle business Nissin Foods, for example, is planning to land on the stock market, in Hong Kong, by which operation it hopes to raise about 145 million dollars. It is rare for a Japanese firm to list in Hong Kong, but Nissin is talking up its prospects in China, where it is already the fifth biggest brand.
“Some consumers stopped consuming instant noodles, but most consumers want to increase the quality (of food they consume),” chief executive Kiyotaka Ando told CNBC last week.
“We can supply high-quality products so we have more possibility to develop our business.”
1. The phrase “go off the boil” in Paragraph 2 is close in meaning to ________.| A．stop boiling | B．turn down |
| C．develop rapidly | D．get out of control |
| A．development of food manufacturing industry |
| B．fall of price in foods beyond instant noodles |
| C．technological development on communication |
| D．people’s doubt on instant noodles’ food safety |
| A．China consumes more instant noodle than any other country does. |
| B．China is beginning to lose its first place in instant noodle business. |
| C．Nissin is the fifth biggest brand of Japan’s instant noodle business. |
| D．Nissin is planning to build an instant noodle factory in Hong Kong. |
| A．China’s instant noodle consumption will continue to drop |
| B．Chinese people will favor cheaper instant noodles to save money |
| C．instant noodles will have a pessimistic prospect in the future |
| D．instant noodle manufacturers will focus more on its food quality |
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【推荐1】Craziest Food Festivals sounds like a joke topic, but once you start looking into it, you’ll realize they’re everywhere---the crazier, the better.
1. Bibimbap Festival
In the South Korean town of Jeonjuloves, their “mixed rice” dish is a hearty serve of rice topped with raw beef, a rainbow of vegetables, a raw egg and gochujang sauce (韩国的辣椒酱) so much. They take four days out of October to celebrate it.
Like any festival there’s music, entertainment and magic, but making it that little bit different is the bibimbap that’s whipped (搅拌) up in a big bowl by dozens of chefs and served to over 400 people.
2. Waikiki Spam Jam (怀基基午餐肉节)
Who knew this canned meat had so much love? Well, it turns out that a can of Spam is the go-to item in Hawaii, along with a grass skirt and garland (花环). The people of Hawaii love Spam so much that they even spend a day in May serving out the best Spam, a type of cheap canned meat made mainly from pork.
3. Bessieres Easter Egg Festival
At Easter time, for those in the French town of Bessieres it’s all about an egg far less sweet.
Here they celebrate the holiday by getting dozens of chefs to make one large omelette (煎蛋卷) - 15,000 eggs strong - for the townsfolk (市民).
4. Potato Days Festival
This festival actually takes place in Barnesville, Minnesota(明尼苏达州), the US. Over the last Friday and Saturday in August the town celebrates its potato-growing skills by hosting potato picking and peeling contests, as well as a Miss Tater Tot pageant (盛典) for five-and six-year-old girls.
1. Bibimbap is ______.| A．a kind of egg cake far less sweet |
| B．a can of meat made mainly from pork |
| C．a fried potato ball covered with sauce |
| D．a rice dish mixed up with vegetables, etc |
| A．from 22 to 25 October | B．in May in Hawaii |
| C．in Barnesville, Minnesota | D．in a French town |
| A．Bibimbap Festival | B．Waikiki Spam Jam |
| C．Bessieres Easter Egg Festival | D．Potato Days Festival |
【推荐2】Coca-Cola is probably the most famous brand in the world, and in some areas you can even access it easier than clean drinkable water. Although the company is trying to present itself as a health-conscious company, you can't really say that drinking cola is healthy for you. Still, we all drink cola, some more and some less, and we tell ourselves that it's all okay as long as we don't overdo it. However, Coca-Cola has other functions besides drinking.
Cola removes the tarnish (暗锈) from old pennies. Got some old rusty pennies? Don`t worry! Put them inside a glass of cola and let them rest for a while. When you get them out, you'll have shiny pennies that will look as if they were coined a couple of days ago. If you couldn't clean those pennies with industrial acids, just buy a can of cola and let it do its magic!
You can remove gum from your hair with cola. If you've got gum stuck in your hair and don't know a better way to get it out, don't worry, you won't have to cut it. Just pour some cola into a bowl and dip the part of your hair with gum on it inside. Leave it for a couple of minutes and then simply wipe off the gum.
You can make an exploding fountain. You probably know about this one. You can make an exploding fountain by putting a mint (薄荷糖) inside a two-liter bottle. Then move away from the bottle and get ready for a Coca-Cola explosion. This is a fun thing to do, but it is also a warning — don't eat a mint and drink cola at the same time, because a similar thing could happen to your stomach.
1. What does the underlined part in Paragraph 1 imply?| A．Coca-Cola is easy and cheap to make. | B．Coca-Cola is popular with customers. |
| C．Coca-Cola is safe for people to drink. | D．Coca-Cola is harder to get than water. |
| A．Make pennies shiny. | B．strengthen the gum. |
| C．Improve people's hair. | D．Take the place of acids. |
| A．It can cause harm to our stomach. | B．It might make our stomach smaller. |
| C．Mints with cola will produce heat. | D．The mint will release poisonous gas. |
| A．Popularity of Coca-Cola | B．Special Functions of Coca-Cola |
| C．Major Benefits of Drinking Coca-Cola | D．Bad Influences of Drinking Coca-Cola |
【推荐3】We truly are what we eat—and what our ancestors ate. Food has changed who we are and how we developed for hundreds of thousands of years. From processing (加工) to preserving to cooking, what humans did and continue to do to food played a big role in shaping our evolution (进化).
“Processed food isn’t just a modern invention. It’s as old as human itself and may have helped create our species,” wrote Nicholas Temple, author of The Best Before: The Evolution and Future of Processed Food for the BBC.
Although processing is viewed negatively nowadays, it was important to our development as a species. Processing doesn’t necessarily mean adding chemicals. It also includes pounding or slicing or changing the food in anyway before eating. Compared to our ancestors, modern humans’ teeth, jaws and faces have gotten smaller because of making food easier to chew, especially from cooking.
Cooking food was one of the biggest changes in human history. Researchers believe it could have occurred between 1.8 million to 400,000 years ago. Without cooking, an average person would have to eat around five kilos of raw (未加工的) food to survive and will have to spend most of the day eating. Also, up to 50% of women who only eat raw foods develop a condition that signals that the body can’t support a pregnancy (怀孕) —a major problem for evolution, according to Science American. Processing food leads to a huge gain in leisure time. The less time people spent chewing, the more time they had to develop complex spoken language. Cooking food also breaks down its cells. So our stomachs need to work less to absorb the nutrients and save more energy, which could then be used to power a large brain.
Processed food actually shaped us as a species and made us human—the only species on earth who can cook.
1. Why are modern humans’ teeth and jaws smaller?| A．Because they look much more beautiful. |
| B．Because they are suitable for cooked food. |
| C．Because humans become small in size. |
| D．Because humans have to adapt to modern life. |
| A．It takes people much time and energy. |
| B．It stops the evolution of human beings. |
| C．It causes people’s stomach to work less. |
| D．Its lows the development of written language. |
| A．Only modern people process food. |
| B．Some animals can cook food as humans. |
| C．Processed food is of great value to humans. |
| D．People began to process food in recent years. |
| A．To introduce various ways to process food in human history. |
| B．To uncover the details about the development of human food. |
| C．To present the findings of a study about food in human history. |
| D．To explain the importance of processed food to human beings. |
【推荐1】Did you make financial decisions last New Year’s Eve? Did they fall by the wayside? If so, you are not alone.
▲Make a smart budget
Did you plan to make a budget and fail to do so? This is a perfect time to start, as you are heading into the new year. You may be able to stop yourself from overspending if you realize how overextended you are. If you’ve taken no other financial steps this year, start by setting a realistic budget.
▲Control your spending
Even if you had a budget, were you able to stick to it?
▲
You had a savings goal, didn’t you? If you didn’t have a specific goal, it may be why your savings effort failed. Set a smaller savings goal now, and use that to build a larger savings goal for the upcoming year. Make sure that you equate（使等同）your savings with a specific goal.
▲Reduce your debt
Debt reduction is an important goal, especially in the case of high-interest debt such as credit cards. It’s easy to get into an unrecoverable increase of debt if you have no plan to keep debt in check. It is a longer-term goal, but one you need to start right away.
| A．Increase your savings |
| B．Have a clear goal for your debt |
| C．You will go on with your new decisions |
| D．Most other financial improvements will follow |
| E．Start small by setting a spending budget for your shopping |
| F．But this year, you can make some progress on your financial goals |
| G．Attack the debt with the highest interest rate, and control your spending |
【推荐2】BEIJING — Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that China will launch the Global Artificial Intelligence (AI) Governance Initiative, which presents a constructive approach to addressing universal concerns over AI development and governance and drew up blueprints for relevant international discussions and rule-making, a foreign ministry spokesperson said on Wednesday.
Xi made the announcement in his keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (BRF) in Beijing on Wednesday.
“It is part of China’s active effort to advance the vision of a community with a shared future for mankind and the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative and the Global Civilization Initiative,” the spokesperson said.
AI is a new frontier of human development, and it comes with major opportunities and hard-to-predict risks and challenges that require global response, the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said the Initiative systematically outlines China’s proposals on AI governance from three aspects, namely, the development, security and governance of AI. The core components of the Initiative are: We should uphold a people-centered approach in developing AI and adhere to the principle of developing AI for the good of humanity, so that AI is developed in a way that is beneficial to human progress; We should uphold the principles of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit in AI development, and oppose drawing ideological lines or forming exclusive groups to obstruct other countries from developing AI; We should promote the establishment of a testing and assessment system based on AI risk levels, so as to make AI technologies more secure, reliable, controllable and equitable; We support efforts to develop AI governance frameworks, norms and standards based on broad consensus and with full respect for policies and practices among countries, and support discussions within the United Nations framework to establish an international institution to govern AI; Efforts should be made to conduct international cooperation with and provide assistance to developing countries, to bridge the gap in AI and its governance capacity.
“China stands ready to have exchanges and practical cooperation with all sides on global AI governance and deliver benefit for all human beings through AI technology,” the spokesperson added.
1. What announcement was made according to Paragraph 1?| A．Rules about AI control in China. |
| B．A initiative about governing AI globally. |
| C．Universal concerns about AI development. |
| D．Domestic plans for AI rule-making. |
| A．AI development needs global concerns |
| B．China has made every effort to develop AI |
| C．The initiative was launched related to four aspects |
| D．AI should advance based on the needs of robots |
| A．Supportive if it’s for human-kind. |
| B．Indifferent if it’s for some people’s benefit. |
| C．Disapproved if it is not for education. |
| D．Neutral whatever it is. |
Transport
☆Three stations for the suburbs have been added to the western train service.
☆20 new buses for the southern line were purchased in January.
☆50 per cent of city busstops have been upgraded.
Communication
☆Broadband cable is now available to all parts of the city.
☆All of the new Government buildings are smartwired for better computer service!
Medical Facilities
☆The new stateoftheart Nightingale Hospital was opened in June.
☆To overcome a shortage of trained medical staff at Dover Hospital, 10 doctors have been employed from overseas.
☆Some facilities at Station Street Hospital have been upgraded.
Education
☆Textbooks will be free to all primary students in 2014!
☆Rental for private schools has been reduced.
Protection and Security
☆Extra police now patrol（巡逻）the tourist areas.
☆50 new police officers graduated in July and have taken up duties in the city area.
Entertainment / Recreation
☆The new Central Community Building opened in May.
☆5,000 new fiction books were bought for the Silver City Library.
1. What is the purpose of the changes in Silver City?
| A．To satisfy all the needs of the citizens. |
| B．To make public service improved. |
| C．To better the citizens’life. |
| D．To meet the needs of the Silver City Council. |
| A．Travel books are provided in the new library. |
| B．More bus lines and stops are bought in Silver City. |
| C．Free medical treatment is available at Station Street Hospital. |
| D．There are more police officers on duty now. |
| A．the community | B．the local government |
| C．the Silver City Library | D．a travel agency |
