1 . I didn’t realize it, but during that short walk home I had lost a whole lot of weight and my eyes had grown dull and colorless. When my mom saw me she screamed out in surprise. Staring at me in disbelief, she asked, “Are you Fugui?”

Looking at my mom, I forced a smile and nodded my head. Shocked, she uttered something else, but I was no longer paying attention to her. I pushed the door open and went into my room. Jiazhen, in the middle of combing her hair, was also taken back when she saw me. She gazed at me with her mouth gaping. As soon as I thought of how I had beaten her when she came to persuade me to go home the night before, I fell to the ground and, kneeling before her, muttered, “Jiazhen, I’m finished.”

After speaking those words I began to cry out loud. Jiazhen rushed over to help me up, but being pregnant with Youqing, how could she support me? She called my mom over, and the two of them pulled me onto the bed. I looked like a corpse. They were scared to death and began patting me on the shoulder and rocking my head.

My mother appeared dumbstruck; she stared at me with a look of intensity and asked, “What did you say?”

“I’ve lost everything,” I repeated.

The look on my face convinced her. My mother sat down on the floor and, wiping her tears, said, “If the upper beam is no straight, the lower ones will not go straight either.”

Even then my mother still loved me. She didn’t blame me. Instead she blamed my father.

Jiazhen also cried. She patted me on the shoulder and tried to console me. “As long as you don’t gamble anymore, everything will be all right.”

I had nothing left. Even if I had wanted to gamble, I wouldn’t have had any money to stake a bet. I heard Dad in the next room shooting off his foul mouth. He still didn’t know that he was penniless — he was simply annoyed at being disturbed by the two women crying. As soon as she heard my father’s voice, Mom stopped crying. She stood up and walked out, with Jiazhen following her. I knew that they were going into my father’s room, and after a while I heard my dad begin screaming, “Bastard!”

It was just then that my daughter, Fengxia, pushed the door open and came in. She closed the door and in a shrill voice said, “Dad, hurry up and hide! Grandpa’s going to beat you.”

I just stared at her without moving a muscle. She then came over and tried pulling me away by the hand; when I wouldn’t budge she began to cry. Seeing Fengxia cry was like having a knife pierce my heart. Even at such a young age, Fengxia was trying to protect her dad. Just looking at her made me feel like I deserved to be cut to pieces.

Quoted from Yu Hua’s To Live

1. The underlined phrase “taken back” in paragraph 2 means ______.

A．regretful

B．astonished

C．shameful

D．concerned

2. Fugui kept saying “I’ve lost everything” to his mom and his wife because he ______.

A．wanted to gradually process the strong emotion and beg for their forgiveness

B．pretended to lose his mind and go crazy so as to get away with the punishment.

C．was afraid to face his father and wanted them to break the bad news to him

D．believed that they might still lend him some money to gamble again

3. According to the passage, what do the three female characters have in common?

A．Hard-work.

B．Bravery.

C．Self-discipline.

D．Compassion

4. What can be inferred from the passage?

A．Fugui’s father was also addicted to gambling when he was young.

B．Jiazhen would ask for a divorce from Fugui since he was penniless.

C．Fugui’s mother and his wife decided to hide the truth from his father.

D．Fengxia had more affection towards her father than her mother.

2 . Engaging in Family Meals

Engaging in family meals may be a matter of improving communication and support at home. A new study in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, published by Elsevier, connects less family discouragement and better family communication with a higher likelihood to eat evening family meals and family breakfasts together, and not in front of a television. The researchers surveyed 259 patients who participated in weight management and weight loss programs at the Ohio State University or Wake Forest University.     1    

“It’s important to note all family members in the home have influence,” lead study author Keeley J. Pratt, PhD, the Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA, said of the findings that any family member can influence the adoption and maintenance of healthy patterns and behaviors in the home.     2     The study also found parents who perceived their child to be overweight were more than four times as likely to talk to them about the kid’s weight, also called “weight talk.”

“While open communication with children about health is beneficial, it’s important to ensure communication directly about children’s weight is not harmful in their development of a healthy body image and behaviors. That includes older children and adolescents who are at greater risk of developing eating disorders and disordered eating behaviors,” Professor Pratt said.     3     Families with younger children, regardless of gender, were more likely to eat family dinners and breakfasts together, and parents of older children were more likely to talk about their own weight with the child. As kids grow up, the relationship between kids and their parents becomes better.

    4     “Understanding these associations will provide essential evidence needed to design future family-based interventions for these patients to help in their behavior change and weight loss, prevent the beginning of obesity in children, and enhance positive family meal practices and healthy communication about weight,” Professor Pratt said.

A．The study shows parents of older children were more likely to talk about their own weight with the child.

B．They found parents with better family communication were more likely to participate in family meals.

C．There was no significant difference between male and female children in this study.

D．This was the first study specifically to examine the home eating habits of adult patients.

E．Previous study has shown parental obesity (肥胖) is the strongest risk for children’s obesity.

F．Someone has no power to influence the family, but they are influencing each other.

3 . Like many parents working from home while their kids are learning remotely, we’ve been looking for creative ways to connect with our children — and nowhere has this been truer than in the kitchen.

Kitchen science, as Liz Heinecke, author of Kitchen Science Lab for Kids calls it doesn’t require any fancy equipment or ingredients (配料)—and, best of all in the era of remote education, we can combine science lessons with everyday meal preparations. By helping with cooking, kids can engage in lively, project-based lessons. Actually, even the easiest recipes include both simple and complex scientific concepts.

Kitchen science isn’t just about what we’re cooking: it’s also about understanding why It’s worth taking the time to figure out how ingredients and temperature interact and why substances behave the way they do. Everyone involved will learn something.

For example, we all know oil and water don’t mix easily, but we can change this by adding mustard (芥末) to the oil and water to make a salad dressing. This is an opportunity to teach kids about the science of emulsions (乳化). Adding lemon juice to a vegetable stops that vegetable from turning brown: cabbage changes color when you add vinegar to it. Both of those phenomena are the result of chemical reactions. In the classroom, it can be hard to see how scientific concepts will apply outside the lab. But when kids see these concepts play out in the real world, that sparks curiosity and learning.

“Every time you step into your kitchen to cook, you put science to work. In fact, physics and chemistry come into play whenever you steam, bake, freeze or boil. Thus, every time you step into the kitchen, it’s an opportunity for everyone to learn more about science,” Liz Heinecke said.

1. What are parents expected to do in the kitchen?

A．Ask kids to cook a meal on their own.	B．Do science experiments in the kitchen.
C．Pay attention to cooking ingredients.	D．Combine scientific concepts with recipes.

2. What does the fourth paragraph indicate?

A．Raw materials are important in the kitchen.

B．Procedures to cook dinner must be followed.

C．Cooking can inspire kids’ interest in studying science.

D．Family education is more important than school education.

3. What can we learn from Liz Heinecke’s words?

A．Cooking can benefit both kids and parents.

B．Parents need to master different cooking skills.

C．Lab experiments can be repeated at home.

D．Schools should offer cooking courses.

4. What does the author intend to tell us in the text?

A．To practice healthy eating habits.

B．To learn food science out of the lab.

C．To turn meal preparations into family learning.

D．To teach kids some recipes for cooking in the kitchen.

4 . What Does Food Mean to you?

My whole relationship with food has become consumed by the after-effects of my illness and dealing with them. As a result, I’ve forgotten that there’s more to food than this. And I don’t think I’m the only one.     1     While it is fantastic that there are so many inspiring books that encourage healthy eating this simply can’t be the extent of our relationship with food. What about our experiences with food? Putting aside the other stuff, what does food mean to you?

When I think about my experience with food, my thoughts immediately go to my family. For me, food is family. Every evening, my dad would make it home by 6pm so that we could all sit down and have dinner together. We would share the highs and lows of our days and on a Sunday we would chat about our plans for the week. We never ate dinner in front of the television and very rarely was it ever just my brother and me.     2     Now, despite the fact my brother and I have long since left home, whenever we return, it’s always about the food. Our parents plan the meals, sharing new recipes and dishing out family favourites, so that ultimately the food enhances our trip and creates new memories. Food truly is family.

    3    . Children who eat regularly with their families are at a lower risk of developing poor eating habits, weight problems or substance addictions. It also gives families a chance to reflect on their days together and forges stronger bonds between parents and children.

Everyone has a different attitude to food, and it will mean different things to different people. For me, though, good quality, healthy food is important, but without the socio-familial aspect, there is something sorely lacking from my relationship with food.     4    . So while I will continue watching what I eat (because I have to), I’ll remember this is not food’s main attraction, but only a part of what food really means to me.

A．Studies have shown the importance of eating together.

B．This is certainly not true for me, and the relationships that were built over the kitchen table with my family are very important to me.

C．The social importance of food, and eating together, should not be downplayed or replaced by a focus on purely what we are eating.

D．Many recipe books on sale have got caught up in an obsession with ‘clean eating’, dieting, watching what we eat and generally eating healthily.

E．It’s common knowledge that you are what you eat and this reflected in the ideas behind eating healthy, clean and unprocessed food.

F．Food and meal times were, and still are, the glue that brought us together and keeps us together.