1 . Work starts early on White Gate Farm in East Lyme, Connecticut. By 7 a. m., farm manager Dan Wood was at the East Lyme Post Office dropping off a box of fresh produce that later in the day would be delivered by mail to Chelsea Gubbins, who lives across town.
White Gate Farm is a member of Farmers Post, a pilot programme that enables smallholder farms across eastern Connecticut to ship fresh produce and other farm products to local households through the United States Postal Service (USPS). Farmers Post takes advantage of a USPS programme called Connect Local that allows small businesses to offer same-day and next-day delivery at a fixed low cost.
Food remains in the fields because either market prices are too low or the cost of the workforce is too high, or because the size and shape of the produce make it unattractive to stores. Each year, around 10 million tons of crops never get harvested, causing about 16% of total US food loss and waste.
“Food that is wasted has a much larger influence than just the loss of the food itself,” says Julia Kurnik, senior director of Innovation Start-ups at WWF. “Everything that went into growing it goes out the window as well—the water, the land, and the energy. And as the food breaks down, it produces greenhouse gases. The bad effects amplify greatly.”
Besides reducing food waste, selling farm products directly to local customers cuts down on the cross-country shipping of food grown in California or elsewhere. This reduces the so-called food miles that researchers believe cause about 6% of the world’s greenhouse gases. Fruits and vegetables, which are often transported out of season and require refrigeration, produce lots of greenhouse gases between farms and people’s plates.
Wood understands that Farmers Post can help to end that waste. “Farming is kind of like cooking for a big group.” he says. “This is helping us get right on the money, using almost 100% of what we grow and harvest.”
1. Why was Farmers Post started?| A．To provide professional modern farming methods. |
| B．To create more delivery jobs for local people |
| C．To pick up and carry customers to different farms. |
| D．To make the delivery of produce easier and cheaper. |
| A．The limited need for farm products. | B．The shortage of workers and harvesting tool. |
| C．Their low value and poor quality. | D．Bad weather and road conditions. |
| A．Increase. | B．Slow. | C．Switch. | D．Weaken. |
| A．The Food Safety Movement Has Met Some Challenges |
| B．A Farm-to-Table Programme Helps Reduce Food Waste |
| C．Farmers Post Explores Ways to Make High-Quality Products |
| D．Small Farms Play a Leading Role in Serving Communities |
2 . The rate of childhood obesity in the U. S. has tripled over the past 50 years. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) made waves this year by recommending that doctors put obese kids as young as two years old on intensive, family-oriented lifestyle and behavior plans. It also suggested prescribing weight-loss drugs to children l2 and older and surgery to teens 13 and older. This advice reflects the organization’s adoption of a more active position on childhood obesity.
Yet the lifestyle programs the AAP recommends are expensive, inaccessible to most children and hard to maintain. Few weight-loss drugs have been approved for children. And surgery has potential risks and few long-term safety data. Furthermore, it’s not clear whether interventions in youngsters help to improve health or merely add to the psychological burden overweight kids face from the society.
Rather than paying close attention to numbers on a scale, the U. S. and countries with similar trends should focus on an underlying truth: we need to invest in more and safer places for children to play where they can move and run around, climb and jump, ride and skate.
Why is it so hard to get kids moving? Experts blame the problem on the privatization of sports — as public investment in school-based athletics dwindles, expensive private leagues have grown, leaving many kids out. In addition to fewer opportunities at school, researchers cite increased screen time and a lack of safe places for them to play outside the home. New York City, for example, had 2,067 public playgrounds as of 2019 — a very small amount for its large population. In Los Angeles in 2015, only 33 percent of youths lived within walking distance of a park.
Kids everywhere need more places to play. Public funding to build and keep up these areas is crucial, but other options such as shared-use agreements can make unused spaces available to the public. These opportunities aren’t primarily about changing children’s waistlines — they’re how we keep childhood healthy and fun.
1. What can we learn from the first two paragraphs?| A．Childhood obesity is well under control in recent years. |
| B．Weight-loss surgery are recommended to children 12 and older. |
| C．AAP plays a more active role in fighting against childhood obesity. |
| D．Expensive as it is, lifestyle programs are practical for most children. |
| A．decline | B．quit | C．increase | D．develop |
| A．Prepare fitness equipment at home. |
| B．Live within walking distance of a park. |
| C．Promote investment in private athletics. |
| D．Open up playgrounds when school’s out. |
| A．Sports play an important role in children’s growth. |
| B．More safe areas for outdoor fun are in urgent need. |
| C．Family-oriented lifestyles are crucial to children’s health. |
| D．Medical intervention is important to ease psychological burden. |
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4 . In recent years American society has become increasingly dependent on its universities to find solutions to its major problems. It is the universities that have been to blame for developing the expertise to place men on the moon; for dealing with our urban problems and with our worsening environment; for developing the means to feed the world’s rapidly increasing population. The effort involved in meeting these demands presents its own problems. In addition, however, this concentration on the creation of new knowledge significantly impinges on the universities’ efforts to perform their other principal functions, the transmission and interpretation of knowledge-the imparting of the heritage of the past and the preparing of the next generation to carry it forward.
With regard to this, perhaps their most traditionally acknowledged task, college and universities today find themselves in a serious situation. On one hand, there is the American commitment, especially since World War Ⅱ, to provide higher education for all young people who can profit from it. The result of the commitment has been a dramatic rise in enrollments(登记入学) in our universities, coupled with a striking shift from the private to the public sector of higher education.
On the other hand, there are serious and continuing limitations on the resources available for higher education. While higher education has become a great ”growth industry“, it is also at the same time a tremendous drain(耗竭) on the resources of the nation. With the vast increase in enrollment and the shift in priorities away from education in state and federal(联邦的) budgets, there is in most of our public institutions a significant decrease in expenses for their students. One crucial aspect of this drain on resources lies in the persistent shortage of trained faculty(全体教师), which has led, in turn, to a declining standard of competence in instruction.
Intensifying these difficulties is, as indicated above, the concern with research, with its increasing claims on resources and the attention of the faculty. In addition, there is a strong tendency for the institutions’ organization and functioning to fulfill the demands of research rather than those of teaching.
1. According to Paragraph 1, what should be the most important function of American universities?| A．Sparing no effort to create new knowledge for students. |
| B．Enhancing students’ competence of tackling social problems. |
| C．Making experts on advanced industries out of their students. |
| D．Preparing their students to transmit the knowledge of the past. |
| A．more students and less investment | B．education quality and economic profit |
| C．low enrollment rate and high education demand | D．private ownership and American commitment |
| A．many public institutions have to cut down enrollments of students |
| B．teachers are not competent enough to perform satisfactorily in class |
| C．some institutions are forced to reduce the total expenses on research |
| D．there is keen competition for resources between public and private institutions |
| A．The improper distribution of American universities’ resources. |
| B．The increasing argument over American universities’ primary task. |
| C．The inability of American universities’ organization and fulfillment. |
| D．The growing focus on American universities’ function of research. |
5 . Released on Aug 30, a three-episode web series titled Escape From the British Museum has gone viral online for its touching and innovative narrative (叙事). The series follows the journey home of a Chinese jade teapot that has come to life as a girl. She runs away from the British Museum and comes across a Chinese journalist who helps the artifact return to China. The series, created by two Chinese vloggers, aims to raise broader awareness of Chinese artifacts that were stolen or looted (掠夺) from China and are displayed or stored in the British Museum.
The video series echoes the Chinese people’s call for the British Museum to return these Chinese artifacts. However, some UK media outlets said that the video series promotes nationalism (民族主义). In fact, every country whose artifacts are displayed or stored in the British Museum wants them back. These countries, such as Greece, Nigeria and Sudan, have already issued their demands for the return of artifacts. It’s fair enough to say these demands are shared. They can correct centuries-old wrongs by having the UK return artifacts to their rightful homes.
An opinion in the UK newspaper The Telegraph said that if the British Museum gives back its collection of artifacts, then nationalism will win over humanity’s common heritage. It also said that the artifacts were “lawfully acquired (合法取得)” by the UK. By “lawfully acquired”, does the writer mean the artifacts were acquired with the “help” of machine guns and warships? Or does he mean that the cultural artifacts of African, Asian and American countries should be kept in the hands of looters, rather than in their land of origin?
1. What is the video series Escape from the British Museum mainly about?| A．Cultural artifacts looted by the UK. |
| B．Hidden dangers in the British Museum. |
| C．The arguments about the British museum. |
| D．The journey of a Chinese artifact coming home. |
| A．Protests against UK’s nationalism. |
| B．The beauty of Chinese cultural artifacts. |
| C．The desire of stolen artifacts to be returned. |
| D．Efforts made by Chinese activists to get artifacts back. |
| A．To show the UK did something wrong in the past. |
| B．To stress China’s demands are shared by many countries. |
| C．To emphasize former colonized countries have grown stronger. |
| D．To highlight diverse artifacts are housed in the British Museum. |
| A．It’s totally unacceptable. | B．It’s a little bit reasonable. |
| C．It lacks enough evidence. | D．It shows the writer’s ignorance. |
| A．A policeman. | B．A driver. | C．A passenger. |
7 . Travel is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you’re going to get, especially when using a mystery box plane ticket. Earlier this year, mystery box travel purchases increased and became trendy among China’s young people. In normal trips, people often plan their vacations well in advance. After buying a mystery box at a low price — usually 100 or 200 yuan — however, the travelers using this method will select their departure airport and receive several destination options to choose from. After the destination is decided, their trip begins.
Liao Liangyu, 16, has turned his eagerness to go on a mystery box trip into reality. He took a mystery box trip to Changsha with a couple of friends months ago. Right before their departure, a friend told Liao that Changsha was a super hyped-up (被炒作的) Internet sensation (网红). But he still decided to go and see it for himself.
“My biggest discovery is that Changsha is a city full of contrasts,” Liao explained to China Daily. “You can see skyscraper (摩天大楼) and old houses in the same view.”
Since the destination options include many less popular cities, travel mystery boxes also bring energy and economic benefits to these destinations. For example, Dehong city is a beautiful city in Yunnan province, yet has few visitors due to a lack of promotion. Following its inclusion as a mystery box travel destination, however, it has gained a lot of attention and is now thought of as a solid location for tourism.
But even so, a large number of people feel disappointed with travel mystery boxes because they can encounter many problems after purchasing one, such as inappropriate travel time, sudden flight cancellations, or even challenges with refunds. Su Weili from Ctrip suggested in an interview with Haibao News that visitors should choose reliable platforms and sign contracts to guarantee their interests.
1. What is the appeal of mystery box travel?| A．Traveling with like-minded strangers. |
| B．Unplanned traveling at a low cost. |
| C．Fixed routes to choose from. |
| D．Popular destinations to visit. |
| A．He regretted traveling with his friends. |
| B．He felt Changsha didn’t deserve its fame. |
| C．He disliked the unpredictability. |
| D．He discovered something unexpected. |
| A．They help these places better known. |
| B．They often cause overcrowding. |
| C．They lead to environmental problems. |
| D．They enrich local people’s lives. |
| A．Reliable platforms to buy travel mystery boxes. |
| B．Various mystery box travel options available. |
| C．Potential issues related to travel mystery boxes. |
| D．Mystery box travel regulations and policies. |
8 . Younger generations of Chinese citizens have developed new methods to relieve stress, which include raising unconventional “pets”, hugging trees, watching stress relief videos and so on.
On social media platforms, a new toy called “mango dog” recently emerged.
Tree hugging has also become a new stress relief for young people. “You may think you are hugging the tree, but in fact, the tree is embracing you,” this is a feeling shared by a netizen. Many netizens with such experiences have expressed that their anxiety has been reduced, and they feel a sense of communication with nature.
“I came across the idea online. I tried it and felt truly relaxed,” said a young office worker. “In those brief seconds, it felt like the tree released a lot of pressure and stress from me.”
| A．Various “pets” are made to cater to different people. |
| B．It is claimed to bring a sense of calmness and give a healing effect. |
| C．This is not the first time that young people have raised novel “pets”. |
| D．A young media worker also finds the relief in watching short videos. |
| E．In some cities people have even organized “tree hugging interest groups”. |
| F．Other toys such as squeeze balls have also gained popularity as a way to relieve stress. |
| G．The popularity of these methods reflects an increasing need to release people’s pressure. |
9 . Many Chinese sports fans last month felt frustrated when the China women’s national football team failed to qualify for the Paris Olympic Games. There was the typical roller coaster of emotional reactions with the usual talking heads on social media shouting for the chief coach Shui Qingxia to be fired. Similarly, at the Hangzhou Asian Games, Chinese national team athlete Wu Yanni came under attack for having been disqualified because of a false start. Facing pressure, she had to post an open letter to deeply apologize to all her “friends.”
Strangely enough, many of these armchair en tics and “friends” were the very people who had sung the praises of Shui’s and Wu’s performance not long ago. Unfortunately, this phenomenon of polarized thinking, also referred to as black-and-white thinking, is by no means unique to the world of competitive sports, where successes and failures can happen in an instant.
Polarized thinking occurs when emotions run high and people use the lower part of their brain. This was very useful in the early stages of human development when, back in the Stone Age, our ancestors were forced to categorize everything into either good or bad because they lived in constant fear of being attacked by larger animals. Their lives were always on the line. There was no time to consider the nuanced (微妙的) middle ground or to put themselves in other people’s shoes.
Since those old days are long gone, why do we still need to be so extreme in our thinking? The consequences of giving into polarized thinking are dangerous. Adopting extreme positions can distort (歪曲) yourself-image and worldview (like judging yourself or other individuals based on a single event), both of which will lead to failure in life.
What if you were verbally (口头上地) attacked by those polarized types? An effective way to deal with it is to apply the technique of summarization: “So what you’re saying is...Is that correct? Could you be more specific?” This is a type of mental jujitsu (柔术), where you use the attacker’s energy and strength against themselves. Emotional people are not good at being specific, so if you calmly ask them for a detailed explanation of their position, their argument will often reach a dead end. By that time, just smile and tell them, “Thank you for sharing.”
1. Why are Shui and Wu mentioned in the first paragraph?
| A．To give examples of polarized thinking. |
| B．To show the harm of polarized thinking. |
| C．To present the topic of polarized thinking. |
| D．To describe the signs of polarized thinking. |
| A．Ask them to summarize your arguments. |
| B．Understand them and stay calm and polite. |
| C．Argue back using their energy and strength. |
| D．Request extra specifics to support their points. |
| A．The Origin of Polarized Thinking. |
| B．How to Think Beyond Black and White? |
| C．Is the World Either Black or White? |
| D．Polarized Thinking on Social Media. |
10 . Mark Bertram lost the tips of two fingers at work in 2018 when his hand became trapped in a fan belt. “It’s life-changing but it’s not life-ending,” he says. “Doing work is harder now. Everything is just a little different.”
After two surgeries and occupational therapy, Bertram decided to make light of his condition by asking Eric Catalano, a tattoo (纹身) artist, to create fingernail (手指甲) tattoos. The idea made everyone in the studio laugh — until they saw the final result. “The mood changed,” Catalano recalls from his Eternal Ink Tattoo Studio in Hecker, Illinois. “Everything turned from ridiculous to wow.”
When Catalano posted a photo of the tattoos, a pair of fingernails looking so real that no one could believe their eyes, he had no idea the image would eventually be viewed by millions of people around the world.
The photo pushed Catalano, 40, further into the world of paramedical tattooing. Now people with life-altering scars come from as far away as Ireland to visit his shop. Using flesh-toned inks and a needle, Catalano transforms his clients’ view of themselves.
Leslie Pollan, 32, a dog breeder in Oxford, Mississippi, was bitten on the face by a puppy in 2014. After undergoing countless surgeries to correct a scar on her lip but in vain, she ultimately turned to Catalano, who covered her lip scar, giving her back a piece of her confidence. Pollan says, “It made me have a different outlook on life.”
“Every time I see that emotion from my customers, I’m 100 percent sure this is something that I can’t stop doing.”
1. At first, what did people think of the idea of creating the first fingernail tattoos?| A．Inspiring. | B．Life-changing. | C．Funny. | D．Amazing. |
| A．No one believed it was real. |
| B．It enjoyed great popularity. |
| C．It brought Catalano fame and money overnight. |
| D．It discouraged Catalano from furthering on in that field. |
| A．To warn people to stay away from puppies. |
| B．To prove that plastic surgeries are not so effective. |
| C．To show Catalano helps change clients’ view of themselves. |
| D．To highlight that tattooing is very important in our daily life. |
| A．Magical Tattoos | B．A Tattoo Artist | C．Popularity of Tattoos | D．Development of Tattoos |
