The common Chinese greeting of “Ni chi le ma?” may soon be replaced by a new greeting: “Have you cleaned your plate?”
Over the Spring Festival holiday there was a big effort to get people to curb their habit of ordering too much food in restaurants because a lot of that food ended up being wasted. Holiday eaters were urged to “clean their plates” and were asked to take leftover food home in “doggy bags.”
The impetus behind the campaign was the startling government statistic that over 200 billion yuan is spent every year on food that ends up in the garbage bin. And in the midst of all this waste, statistics show that 128 million people are living below the poverty line and going hungry.
The “clean your plate” campaign is part of a worldwide effort to stop precious food from being wasted. The United Nations estimates that $1trillion (yes, that’s a very big number) worth of food is wasted each year. Most of that is lost during food production and transportation, but a significant percentage is attributed to waste by consumers. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has launched a campaign called “Think. Eat. Save.” to make people aware of the problem.
Chinese actress Fan Bingbing is an ambassador for UNEP and she encouraged people to upload pictures of their “clean plates” to show their support for the program. Thousands of people responded and demonstrated that they had a clear conscience to go along with their full stomachs.
Xi Jinping, the incoming Chinese president, is also urging people to be less wasteful and he told Party members to cut back on extravagant holiday banquets and to be more careful when spending the people’s money.
For some, though, Xi Jinping’s and Fan Bingbing’s admonitions don’t go far enough. Yuan Longping, an agricultural scientist, caused a stir by saying that wasting food should be treated as a crime. (Jail time for leftover chicken feet!?)
If not a crime, wasting food is certainly a sin and it goes against what Xi Jinping calls, “the Chinese tradition of being diligent and thrifty.” Having a “clean plate” is just a traditional and responsible thing to do. Which statement is NOT TRUE according to the passage?
| A．Over 200 billion yuan is wasted every year on food around China. |
| B．It’s quite common for Chinese people to order more food than they need in restaurants. |
| C．It’s universally acknowledged that wasting food is a crime. |
| D．Fan did something to promote people’s awareness of saving food. |
What’ the best title for the passage?
| A．Food is important. | B．Have you cleaned your plate? |
| C．Jail time for leftover chicken feet!? | D．Wasting food is crime. |
Climate change, pollution, overuse of water and development are killing some of the world’s most famous rivers including China’s Yangtze, India’s Ganges and Africa’s Nile, WWF said on Tuesday．At the global launch of its report “World’s Top 10 Rivers at Risk”, the group said many rivers could dry out, affecting hundreds of millions of people and killing unique aquatic life．
“If these rivers die, millions will lose their livelihoods, biodiversity will be destroyed on a massive scale, there will be less fresh water and agriculture, resulting in less food security,” said Rayi Singh, secretary-general of WWF-India．The report launched ahead of “World Water Day” today, also cited the Rio Grande in the United States, the Mekong and Indus in Asia, Europe’s Danube, La Plata in South America and Australia’s Murray-Darling as in need of greater protection．
Rivers are the world’s main source of fresh water and WWF says about half of the available supply is already being used up．Dams have destroyed habitats and cut rivers off from their flood plains while climate change could affect the seasonal water flows that feed them, the report said．Fish populations, the top source of protein and overall life support for hundreds of thousands of communities worldwide, are also being threatened, it found… The Yangtze basin is one of the most polluted rivers in the world because of decades of heavy industrialization, damming and huge influxes of sediment from land conversion．
Climate change, including higher temperatures, also means serious consequences for fishery productivity, water supply and political security in Africa’s arid Nile basin．Tributaries flowing into the Ganges are drying up because of irrigation, WWF said．What does the text mainly talk about?
A．Sav ing fresh water in our life． |
B．How to protect our rivers． |
| C．An important discovery． | D．World’s top 10 rivers are at risk． |
We can infer from the text that _____．
| A．rivers’ dying out could affect food security |
| B．there are four Asian rivers mentioned in the passage |
| C．the Yangtze is polluted thanks to the lack of enough tributaries |
| D．higher temperatures couldn’t affect fishery productivity |
The top 10 rivers are fast dying as a result of the following EXCEPT _____．
| A．climate change | B．wasting water |
| C．pollution | D．dams |
WWF is probably a name of _____．
| A．an organization | B．a newspaper | C．a magazine | D．a report |
A Day of Design
Saturday, April 11, 2009
9 a．m．—4 p．m．
Thomas College Student Center
Join us for a free day of fun, flowers and food! A Day of Design will encourage those interested in flowers and desig
n to get in touch with their creative side and get some tips from the experts—Jeff Karter and Scott O’Brien of Augusta Florist and Waterville Florist．Please see the schedule below for details about this wonderful opportunity!
Schedule of Events
9:00 a．m．—10:30 a．m． Registration/Campus Tour
Registration for the day begins at 9 a．m．in the Student Center．Guests will meet there to register and take a tour of the Thomas College campus before the day’s events．
10:30 a．m．—12:00 p．m． Design and Auction （拍卖）
Jeff and Scott will design more than a dozen arrangements in a variety of sizes and colors．Following the demonstration, an auction will be held and guests will have the opportunity to bid on the flower arrangements．
12:00 p．m．—1:00 p．m． Lunch and Demonstration
A delightful boxed lunch will be served．During the lunch hour, Jeff and Scott will create centerpieces for the holiday table and give tips for creating beautiful centerpieces using items found in the home．
1:00 p．m．—3:00 p．m． Design Class
Guests will learn how to create a centerpiece in a beautiful basket using fresh flowers．Flowers, baskets, supplies and tools will be provided．Jeff and Scott will guide guests through the design process．By the end of the day, guests will have a wonderful centerpiece to take home and use on their table．
3:00 p．m．—4:00 p．m． Wine and Cheese Social
A fitting way to end the day—guests are invited to enjoy a wine and cheese social．Jeff and Scott will be available to answer questions or just talk flowers!
There is no charge for this eve
nt．
REGISTER NOW!
Space is limited to 45 guests．What are guests supposed to do from 1:00 p．m．to 3:00 p．m．?
| A．To design flower arrangements． |
| B．To enjoy a wine and cheese social． |
| C．To learn how to create a centerpiece． |
| D．To take a tour of the Thomas College campus． |
According to the text, when will an auction be held?
| A．3:00 p．m．—4:00 p．m． | B．12:00 p．m．—1:00 p．m． |
| C．9:00 a．m．—10:30 a．m． | D．10:30 a．m．—12:00 p．m． |
We can learn from the passage that A Day of Design _____．
| A．is free of charge | B．lasts for eight hours |
C．is held  annually in April |
D．is aimed at fashion designers |
According to the text, a centerpiece is probably _____．
| A．a work of art that is the best | B．a picture that has been auctioned |
| C．a flower that is carved out of stone | D．a decoration for the center of a table |
Would you eat a ready meal from the fridge rather than cook? Have you been doing internet shop
ping rather than going to the stores? What can’t you be bothered to do?
A study into how lazy British people are has found more than half of adults are so idle（闲散的）they’d catch the lift rather than climb two flights of stairs.
Just over 2,000 people were quizzed by independent researchers at Nuffield Health, Britain’s largest health charity. The results were shocking. About one in six people surveyed said if their remote control (遥控器)was broken, they would continue watching the same channel rather than get up. More than one third of those questioned said they would not run to catch a bus. Worryingly, of the 654 questioned people with children, 64% said they were often too tired to play with them. This led the report to conclude that it’s no wonder that one in six children in the UK are classifted as obese（肥胖）before they start school.
Dr Sarah Dauncey, medical director of Nuffield Health, said: “People need to get fitter, not just for their own sake, but f
or the sake of their families， too. 
If we don’t start to take control of this problem, a whole generation will become too unfit to perform even the simplest tasks.”
And Scotland’s largest city, Glasgow, was shamed as the laziest city in the UK, with 75% surveyed admitting they do not get enough exercise, followed closely by Birmingham and Southampton, both with 67%.
The results pose serious challenges for the National Health Service, where obesity-related illnesses such as heart disease and cancer have been on a steady increase for the past 40 years and are costing billions o
f pounds every year. According to the researchers at Nuffield Health, about ________ people who were surveyed would not run to catch a bus.
| A．10 | B．150 | C．330 | D．660 |
One in six children in the UK are classified as obese before they start school because ________.
| A．they stay too long a time with their pets | B．they spend too much time watching TV |
| C．their parents don’t play with them much | D．they suffer from obesity-related illnesses |
________ is the second laziest city in the UK.
| A．Scotland | B．Glasgow | C．Birmingham | D．Nuffield |
What’s the writer trying to tell us?
| A．Parents have much to do with their children’s obesity-related illnesses. |
| B．British people are getting lazier, which can cause serious social problems. |
| C．The National Health Service has to face a lot of serious challenges every year. |
| D．A study into how lazy British people are has been carried out at Nuffield Health. |
Modern inventions have speeded up people’s loves amazingly. Motor-cars cover a hundred miles in little more than an hour, aircraft cross the world inside a day, while computers operate at lightning speed. Indeed, this love of speed seems never-ending. Every year motor-cars are produced which go even faster and each new computer boats (吹嘘) of saving precious seconds in handling tasks.
All this saves time, but at a price. When we lose or gain half a day in speeding across the world in an airplane, our bodies tell us so. We get the uncomfortable feeling known as jet-lag; our bodies feel that they have been left behind on another time zone. Again, spending too long at computers results in painful wrists and fingers. Mobile phones also have their dangers, according to some scientist; too much use may transmit harmful radiation into our brains, a consequence we do not like to think about.
However, what do we do with the time we have saved? Certainly not relax, or so it seems. We are so accustomed to constant activity that we find it difficult to sit and do nothing or even just one thing at a time. Perhaps the days are long gone when we 
might listen quietly to a story on the radio, letting imagination take us into another world.
There was a time when some people’s lives were devoted simply to the cultivation of the land or the care of cattle. No multi-tasking there; their lives went on at a much gentler pace, and in a familiar pattern. There is much that we might envy about a way of life like this. Yet before we do so, we must think of the hard tasks our ancestor faced: they farmed with bare hands, often lived close to hunger, and had to fashion tools from wood and stone. Modern machinery has freed people from that primitive existence. The new products become more and more time-saving because.
| A．our love of speed seems never-ending | B．time is limited. |
| C．the prices are increasingly high. | D．the manufactures boast a lot. |
What does “the days” in Paragraph 3 refer to ?
| A．Imaginary life | B．Simple life in the past. |
| C．Times of inventions | D．Time for constant activity. |
What is the author’s attitude towards the modern technology?
| A．Critical | B．Objective. | C．Optimistic. | D．Negative. |
What does the passage mainly discuss?
| A．The present and past times. | B．Machinery and human beings. |
| C．Imaginations and inventions. | D．Modern technology and its influence. |
As societies develop, their members start to see things not so much according to what they need, but according to what they want. When people have enough money, these wants become demands.
Now, it' s important for the managers in a company to understand what their customers want if they are going to develop effective marketing strategies (策略). There are various ways of doing this. One way at supermarkets ( 超市), for example, is to interview(采访) customers while they're doing their shopping. They can be asked what they prefer to buy and then the results of the research can be studied. This provides information on which to base future marketing strategies. It' s also quite normal for top managers from department stores to spend a day or two each month visiting stores and mixing freely with the public, as if they were ordinary customers, to get an idea of how customers act.
Another way to get information from customers is to give them something. For example, some fast food restaurants give away tickets in magazines or on the street that permit customers to get part of their meal for nothing. As well as being a good way of attracting customers into the restaurants to spend their money, it also allows the managers to get a feel for where to attract customers and which age-groups to attract.
Another strategy used at some well-known parks such as Disneyland is for top managers to spend at least one day in their work, touring the park dressed as Mickey Mouse or something like that. This provides them with a perfect chance to examine the scene and watch the customers without being noticed.The text is designed for _______
| A．managers | B．salesmen | C．researchers | D．customers |
Which of the following can help managers get useful information?
| A．Visiting customers themselves. | B．Giving customers free food on the street. |
| C．Visiting parks as ordinary customers. | D．Asking customers questions at supermarkets. |
What does the word "this" underlined in the last sentence refer to?
| A．Visiting Disneyland. | B．Wearing attractive clothes. |
| C．Acting Mickey Mouse. | D．Dressing up and walking around. |
The main idea of the text is _________.
| A．how to do market research | B．how to develop marketing strategies |
| C．how to find out customers' social needs | D．how to encourage customers to spend more money |