1 . You may have seen them standing alone in a farmer’s field. With thin arms and a strange smile, they stand guard over the crops day and night.
Scarecrows have been around since at least the time of the ancient Egyptians. Back then, farmers covered wooden frames with nets to protect wheat fields.
Centuries after the Romans marched through Europe, people around the world were creating their own scarecrows. In Japan, scarecrows were shaped like people in raincoats and straw hats. In Germany, scarecrows were made to look like witches.
Then there is the most famous scarecrow. His name is simply “Scarecrow,” and he appears in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. In the children’s novel, Scarecrow joins Dorothy, Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion on an adventure to meet the wizard of the magical land of Oz.
Aside from these examples, scarecrows have featured in rock songs and as characters in comic books. On Halloween, they are brought out as scary decorations. Both practical and creepy, scarecrows continue to capture our imagination.
| A．Scarecrows appear everywhere in the world. |
| B．We can never ignore the influence of stories about scarecrow. |
| C．They are scarecrows, whose job has gone unchanged for thousands of years. |
| D．They would hide in the wheat, and then jump out to scare birds into their nets. |
| E．This was thought to be scary enough to keep birds away from their precious fields. |
| F．Throughout the years, scarecrows have made many appearances in popular culture. |
| G．Scarecrow has appeared in films and plays around the world since the release of the book. |
2 . Black Friday refers to the day after Thanksgiving. On this day, crowds of shoppers flood into stores all over the country to take advantage of the season’s biggest holiday bargains. But the real story behind Black Friday is a bit complicated.
The most commonly repeated story behind the post-Thanksgiving shopping-related Black Friday tradition links it to retailers (零售商). As the story goes, after an entire year of operating at a loss, recorded in red ink, stores would supposedly earn a profit, marked in black ink, on the day after Thanksgiving, because holiday shoppers blew so much money on discounted products. Though it’s true that retail companies used to record losses in red and profits in black when doing their accounting, this version of Black Friday’s origin is not an accurate story behind the tradition.
The true story behind Black Friday, however, is not as sunny as retailers might have you believe. Back in the 1950s, police in the city of Philadelphia used the term to describe the chaos that happened on the day after Thanksgiving, when tens of thousands of suburban shoppers and tourists flooded into the city in advance of the big Army-Navy football game held on that Saturday every year. Not only would the police not be able to take the day off, but also they would have to work extra-long shifts dealing with the additional crowds and traffic.
The term didn’t spread to the rest of the country until much later, however, and as recently as 1985 it wasn’t in common use nationwide. Sometime in the late 1980s, however, retailers found a way to reinvent Black Friday and turn it into something that reflected positively on them and their customers. The result was the “red to black” concept mentioned earlier. The Black Friday story stuck, and pretty soon the term’s darker roots in Philadelphia were largely forgotten.
1. What is usually believed to be the origin of Black Friday?| A．The great profit retailers may gain. | B．The way retailers do their accounting. |
| C．The much money shoppers spend. | D．The biggest bargains on this day. |
| A．They had to compete with more shoppers for bargains. |
| B．They had to give up the big Army-Navy football game. |
| C．They had to work more hours to deal with the chaos. |
| D．They had to advance to suburb to fight against floods. |
| A．to attract more customers to shop | B．to create the “red to black” concept |
| C．to make profits by this special event | D．to change people’s impression of it |
| A．To introduce the real history of Black Friday. |
| B．To explain a term with various meanings. |
| C．To show the biggest shopping holiday in US. |
| D．To remind readers of a forgotten truth of red and black. |
