For foreigners, entering a public toilet inChinacan be a horrifying experience. In the 1990s, a third of all complaints to tourism officials in Beijing concerned the design, and the bad smell of public toilets.

China has battled smelly toilets for at least 2 , 000 years. In the Kingdom of Wei (220—265AD) , visitors to the palace bathrooms would find boxes to cover their noses and ward off unpleasant smells. Both flushing (冲水)toilets and toilet paper were invented in China, however? only for the use of the emperor.

Today Chinese scientists have claimed victory in their battle to improve public restrooms, introducing a bacterial spray that can almost eliminate the bad smell. First, a set of six types of bacteria work to break down the smelly compounds and then a perfume made from or?ange skin lightly scents(使芳香)the air. The "smell-free toilet" study from the Chinese Academy of Sciences was declared the "ultimate" cure to an "urgent" national issue.

"Five scientists have worked on this from 2011 to the beginning of this year," said Dr Yan Zhiying, a bacteriolo?gist with the Academy's Chengdu Institute of Biology, adding that they had spent £140, 000 on the project.

"Some local government officials here visited a sew?age (污水 ) plant and saw that the treatment technology had come from Japan. They wanted a home-grown solu?tion so they asked us to work on it," he added. "We ob?tained bacteria from all types of waste from humans, pigs, chicken and ducks, and we tested our compounds one by one," he said. "The smells coming out of public toilets, or trash cans, are made up of more than 160 dif?ferent compounds," he explained, adding that their bac?teria spray can change and absorb many of them.

He boasted that the Chinese formula(配方),which costs only around £5 per litre, has no side effects and can be used to remove any bad smell.

1.The underlined words "ward off" in Paragraph 2 can be replaced by " ,,.

A. keep out     B.  take out

C. give out     D.  come out

2.The underlined phrase "an ' urgent' national issue"

in Paragraph 3 refers to  .

A. the treatment of sewage

B.a horrifying experience

C.the bad smell of public toilets

D.160 smelly compounds

3.Which has not been mentioned as an advantage of the bacteria spray?

A.Low price.

B.No side effects.

C.Removing bad smells.

D.Beautiful design.

4.Which can we infer after the spray is used in toilets inChina?

A.People needn't use flushing toilets.

B.A perfume is given off in the air.

C.Tourists' complaints will be reduced.

D.Bacteria break down smelly compounds.

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