Going to Mount Huangshan reminds me of the popular Beatles’ song “The Long and Winding Road”.
The hot spring at the foot of the mountain is something you must try after the climb. It will
What comes next is the endless series of steps. You can’t help wondering how hard it
As the song goes, this long and winding road “will never disappear”, and it will always stick in the visitor’s memory. It sure does in
Henry Tyler made the catch of the year on the weekend. When he saw a young child hanging from a sixth-floor apartment balcony (阳台), Henry ran one hundred metres, jumped over a 1.2-metre fence, and held out his arms to catch the
Eric Brown, only three years old, knocked Henry down when he fell. The boy is in the hospital and doctors say he'll be OK.
Eric woke up a little later when he heard children playing outside. He pushed a chair onto the balcony, and climbed up
Henry
"He saved my
"I just didn't want the boy to be hurt," said Henry.
3 . The Government’s sugar tax on soft drinks has brought in half as much money as Ministers first predicted it would generate, the first official data on the policy has shown.
First announced in April, 2016, the tax which applies to soft drinks containing more than 5g of sugar per 100ml, was introduced to help reduce childhood obesity (肥胖). It is believed that today’s children and teenagers are consuming three times the recommended level of sugar, putting them at a higher risk of the disease.
Initially the sugar tax was expected to make £520m a year for the Treasury. However, data of the first six months showed it would make less than half this amount. At present it is expected to generate £240m for the year ending in April 2019, which will go to school sports.
It comes after more than half of soft drinks sold in shops have had their sugar levels cut by manufacturers (制造商) so they can avoid paying the tax. Drinks now contain 45 million fewer kilos of sugar as a result of manufacturers’ efforts to avoid the charge, according to Treasury figures. Since April drinks companies have been forced to pay between 18p and 24p for every litre of sugary drink they produce or import, depending on the sugar content.
However, some high sugar brands, like Classic Coca Cola, have accepted the sugar tax and are refusing to change for fear of upsetting consumers. Fruit juices, milk-based drinks and most alcoholic drinks are free of the tax, as are small companies manufacturing fewer than 1m litres per year.
Today’s figures, according to one government official, show the positive influence the sugar tax is having by raising millions of pounds for sports facilities (设施) and healthier eating in schools. Helping the next generation to have a healthy and active childhood is of great importance, and the industry is playing its part.
1. Why was the sugar tax introduced?| A．To collect money for schools. | B．To improve the quality of drinks. |
| C．To protect children’s health. | D．To encourage research in education. |
| A．They turned to overseas markets. | B．They raised the prices of their products. |
| C．They cut down on their production. | D．They reduced their products’ sugar content. |
| A．Most alcoholic drinks. | B．Milk-based drinks. | C．Fruit juices. | D．Classic Coke. |
| A．It is a short-sighted decision. | B．It is a success story. |
| C．It benefits manufacturers. | D．It upsets customers. |
4 . By day, Robert Titterton is a lawyer. In his spare time though he goes on stage beside pianist Maria Raspopova — not as a musician but as her page turner. “I’m not a trained musician, but I’ve learnt to read music so I can help Maria in her performance.”
Mr Titterton is chairman of the Omega Ensemble but has been the group’s official page turner for the past four years. His job is to sit beside the pianist and turn the pages of the score so the musician doesn’t have to break the flow of sound by doing it themselves. He said he became just as nervous as those playing instruments on stage.
“A lot of skills are needed for the job. You have to make sure you don’t turn two pages at once and make sure you find the repeats in the music when you have to go back to the right spot.” Mr Titterton explained.
Being a page turner requires plenty of practice. Some pieces of music can go for 40 minutes and require up to 50 page turns, including back turns for repeat passages. Silent onstage communication is key, and each pianist has their own style of “nodding” to indicate a page turn which they need to practise with their page turner.
But like all performances, there are moments when things go wrong. “I was turning the page to get ready for the next page, but the draft wind from the turn caused the spare pages to fall off the stand,” Mr Titterton said, “Luckily I was able to catch them and put them back.”
Most page turners are piano students or up-and-coming concert pianists, although Ms Raspopova has once asked her husband to help her out on stage.
“My husband is the worst page turner,” she laughed. “He’s interested in the music, feeling every note, and I have to say: ‘Turn, turn!’ Robert is the best page turner I’ve had in my entire life.”
1. What should Titterton be able to do to be a page turner?| A．Read music. | B．Play the piano. |
| C．Sing songs. | D．Fix the instruments. |
| A．Boring. | B．Well-paid. |
| C．Demanding. | D．Dangerous. |
| A．Counting the pages. | B．Recognizing the “nodding”. |
| C．Catching falling objects. | D．Performing in his own style. |
| A．He has very poor eyesight. | B．He ignores the audience. |
| C．He has no interest in music. | D．He forgets to do his job. |
5 . Sometime in the early 1960s, a significant thing happened in Sydney, Australia. The city discovered its harbor. Then, one after another, Sydney discovered lots of things that were just sort of there — broad parks, superb beaches, and a culturally diverse population. But it is the harbor that makes the city.
Andrew Reynolds, a cheerful fellow in his early 30s, pilots Sydney ferryboats for a living. I spent the whole morning shuttling back and forth across the harbor. After our third run Andrew shut down the engine, and we went our separate ways — he for a lunch break, I to explore the city.
“I’ll miss these old boats,” he said as we parted.
“How do you mean?” I asked.
“Oh, they’re replacing them with catamarans. Catamarans are faster, but they’re not so elegant, and they’re not fun to pilot. But that’s progress, I guess.”
Everywhere in Sydney these days, change and progress are the watchwords (口号), and traditions are increasingly rare. Shirley Fitzgerald, the city’s official historian, told me that in its rush to modernity in the 1970s, Sydney swept aside much of its past, including many of its finest buildings. “Sydney is confused about itself,” she said. “We can’t seem to make up our minds whether we want a modern city or a traditional one. It’s a conflict that we aren’t getting any better at resolving (解决).”
On the other hand, being young and old at the same time has its attractions. I considered this when I met a thoughtful young businessman named Anthony. “Many people say that we lack culture in this country,” he told me. “What people forget is that the Italians, when they came to Australia, brought 2000 years of their culture, the Greeks some 3000 years, and the Chinese more still. We’ve got a foundation built on ancient cultures but with a drive and dynamism of a young country. It’s a pretty hard combination to beat.”
He is right, but I can’t help wishing they would keep those old ferries.
1. What is the first paragraph mainly about?| A．Sydney’s striking architecture. | B．The cultural diversity of Sydney. |
| C．The key to Sydney’s development. | D．Sydney’s tourist attractions in the 1960s. |
| A．He goes to work by boat. | B．He looks forward to a new life. |
| C．He pilots catamarans well. | D．He is attached to the old ferries. |
| A．It is losing its traditions. | B．It should speed up its progress. |
| C．It should expand its population. | D．It is becoming more international. |
| A．A city can be young and old at the same time. |
| B．A city built on ancient cultures is more dynamic. |
| C．Modernity is usually achieved at the cost of elegance. |
| D．Compromise should be made between the local and the foreign. |
Ecotourism is commonly regarded as low impact (影响) travel to undisturbed places. It is different from traditional tourism because it allows the traveler to become
Ecotourism has
Due to
·Minimize the impact of
·Build respect for and awareness of the environment and cultural practices.
·Provide
·Make sure that the tourism provides experiences for both the visitors and the hosts.
Komodo National Park, officially recognized in 1980, is popular for ecotourism because of its unique biodiversity.
The Xi’an City Wall is the most complete city wall that has survived China’s long history. It
We accessed the wall through the South Gate. The wall is 12 meters high and from here you can see streams of people moving inside and outside the City Wall.
After
We
8 . You’ve heard that plastic is polluting the oceans — between 4.8 and 12.7 million tonnes enter ocean ecosystems every year. But does one plastic straw or cup really make a difference? Artist Benjamin Von Wong wants you to know that it does. He builds massive sculptures out of plastic garbage, forcing viewers to re-examine their relationship to single-use plastic products.
At the beginning of the year, the artist built a piece called “Strawpocalypse,” a pair of 10-foot-tall plastic waves, frozen mid-crash. Made of 168,000 plastic straws collected from several volunteer beach cleanups, the sculpture made its first appearance at the Estella Place shopping center in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Just 9% of global plastic waste is recycled. Plastic straws are by no means the biggest source (来源) of plastic pollution, but they’ve recently come under fire because most people don’t need them to drink with and, because of their small size and weight, they cannot be recycled. Every straw that’s part of Von Wong’s artwork likely came from a drink that someone used for only a few minutes. Once the drink is gone, the straw will take centuries to disappear.
In a piece from 2018, Von Wong wanted to illustrate (说明) a specific statistic: Every 60 seconds, a truckload’s worth of plastic enters the ocean. For this work, titled “Truckload of Plastic,” Von Wong and a group of volunteers collected more than 10,000 pieces of plastic, which were then tied together to look like they’d been dumped (倾倒) from a truck all at once.
Von Wong hopes that his work will also help pressure big companies to reduce their plastic footprint.
1. What are Von Wong’s artworks intended for?| A．Beautifying the city he lives in. | B．Introducing eco-friendly products. |
| C．Drawing public attention to plastic waste. | D．Reducing garbage on the beach. |
| A．To show the difficulty of their recycling. |
| B．To explain why they are useful. |
| C．To voice his views on modern art. |
| D．To find a substitute for them. |
| A．Calming. | B．Disturbing. |
| C．Refreshing. | D．Challenging. |
| A．Artists’ Opinions on Plastic Safety |
| B．Media Interest in Contemporary Art |
| C．Responsibility Demanded of Big Companies |
| D．Ocean Plastics Transformed into Sculptures |
9 . When almost everyone has a mobile phone, why are more than half of Australian homes still paying for a landline (座机)?
These days you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in Australia over the age of 15 who doesn’t own a mobile phone. In fact plenty of younger kids have one in their pocket. Practically everyone can make and receive calls anywhere, anytime.
Still, 55 percent of Australians have a landline phone at home and only just over a quarter (29%) rely only on their smartphones according to a survey (调查). Of those Australians who still have a landline, a third concede that it’s not really necessary and they’re keeping it as a security blanket — 19 percent say they never use it while a further 13 percent keep it in case of emergencies. I think my home falls into that category.
More than half of Australian homes are still choosing to stick with their home phone. Age is naturally a factor (因素)— only 58 percent of Generation Ys still use landlines now and then, compared to 84 percent of Baby Boomers who’ve perhaps had the same home number for 50 years. Age isn’t the only factor; I’d say it’s also to do with the makeup of your household.
Generation Xers with young families, like my wife and I, can still find it convenient to have a home phone rather than providing a mobile phone for every family member. That said, to be honest the only people who ever ring our home phone are our Baby Boomers parents, to the point where we play a game and guess who is calling before we pick up the phone (using Caller ID would take the fun out of it).
How attached are you to your landline? How long until they go the way of gas street lamps and morning milk deliveries?
1. What does paragraph 2 mainly tell us about mobile phones?| A．Their target users. | B．Their wide popularity. |
| C．Their major functions. | D．Their complex design. |
| A．Admit. | B．Argue. |
| C．Remember. | D．Remark. |
| A．They like smartphone games. | B．They enjoy guessing callers’ identity. |
| C．They keep using landline phones. | D．They are attached to their family. |
| A．It remains a family necessity. |
| B．It will fall out of use some day. |
| C．It may increase daily expenses. |
| D．It is as important as the gas light. |
10 . The Biggest Stadiums in the World
People have been pouring into stadiums since the days of ancient Greece. In around 80 A.D., the Romans built the Colosseum, which remains the world’s best known stadium and continues to inform contemporary design. Rome’s Colosseum was 157 feet tall and had 80 entrances, seating 50,000 people. However, that was small fry compared with the city’s Circus Maximus, which accommodated around 250,000 people.
These days, safety regulations-not to mention the modern sports fan’s desire for a good view and comfortable seat — tend to keep stadium capacities (容量) slightly lower. Even soccer fans tend to have a seat each; gone are the days of thousands standing to watch the match.
For the biggest stadiums in the world, we have used data supplied by the World Atlas list so far, which ranks them by their stated permanent capacity, as well as updated information from official stadium websites.
All these stadiums are still functional, still open and still hosting the biggest events in world sport.
·Rungrado 1st of May Stadium, Pyongyang D.P.R. Korea. Capacity: 150,000. Opened: May 1,1989.
·Michigan Stadium, Ann Arbor, Michigan, U. S. Capacity: 107,601. Opened: October 1, 1927.
·Beaver Stadium, State College, Pennsylvania, U. S. Capacity: 106,572. Opened: September 17, 1960.
·Ohio Stadium, Columbus, Ohio, U. S. Capacity: 104,944. Opened: October 7,1922.
·Kyle Field, College Station, Texas, U. S. Capacity: 102,512. Opened: September 24, 1927.
1. How many people could the Circus Maximus hold?| A．104,944. | B．107,601. | C．About 150,000. | D．About 250,000. |
| A．Michigan Stadium. | B．Beaver Stadium. | C．Ohio Stadium. | D．Kyle Field. |
| A．They host big games. | B．They have become tourist attractions. |
| C．They were built by Americans. | D．They are favored by architects. |
