The fictional Chinese-American detective Charlie Chan was the subject of popular books and movies for many decades. In recent years, however, the character has been criticized as an ill image of Asian-Americans.

Yunte Huang, an English professor at the University of California, says that’s not the case. He has been exploring the character and real-life policeman who inspired him.

Charlie Chan has been a familiar character to readers and film-goers, beginning in the 1920s. The detective solved crimes around the world in more than 40 films through the 1940s, and with the invention of television, found a new audience in the 1950s and 1960s.

Huang discovered Charlie Chan through books by American author Earl Derr Biggers, who created the character.

“One day, I happened to find two Charlie Chan novels. At that point I thought I knew that he was a negative character against Asians, but when I read the book,” he says, “I was immediately attracted. Ever since then, I’ve been a fan of Charlie Chan.”

As a fan of the books and films, Huang was surprised to learn that Charlie Chan was based on a real detective named Chang Apana, who was born to Chinese parents in Hawaii around 1871. Apana worked as a cowboy, and joined the Honolulu police force in 1898.

“He almost immediately became a local legend because as a former cowboy,” says Huang, “he would walk the most dangerous areas in Chinatown carrying a bullwhip（皮鞭）instead of a gun. He didn’t need that.”

Although some say the image of Charlie Chan, with his broken English, is embarrassing for Asian-Americans, Huang believes Chan’s broken English and unusual ancient sayings were part of his charm（魅力）.

“Let me just quote（引用）a few – ‘Actions speak louder than French,’ or ‘Mind like parachute (降落伞). Only function when open.’ Charlie Chan always owes these instructive sayings to Confucius’ eastern wisdom.

For Huang, the fictional Charlie Chan is highly entertaining, while the real-life policeman, Chang Apana, is a Chinese-American success, whose story is worth telling.

1.The passage mainly talks about ______________.

2.According to the passage, we know that Charlie Chan __________.

3.Chang Apana didn’t need a gun as a weapon because__________.

4.It can be inferred from the passage that ________.

The quality of water supply in southern Beijing has been improving in recent years, an official said.

In addition to improvements in the network of pipes, the government has been upgrading three recycled water plants in the south of the capital, said Zhao Lei, spokesman for the Beijing Municipal Commission of Development and Reform.

"The transformation of the three plants has increased the recycled water processing capacity by 160,000 cubic meters per day," he said.

In addition, the city is also speeding up the construction of sewage treatment plants to further recycle the sewage, Zhao said.

Zhang Xiang, a researcher from Nature University, an environmental protection NGO in Beijing, said recycled water use should be promoted, especially in water-scarce cities such as Beijing.

Setting up more recycled water plants in the capital will not only promote efficient water use, but also reduce costs because recycling water is much cheaper than transferring it over long distances, he said.

According to the Beijing Water Authority, the capital will set up 46 more recycled water plants citywide in the next three years while upgrading 20 sewage treatment plants.

The treatment rate of domestic sewage in downtown Beijing will reach 98 percent by the end of 2015, it said.

The capital's recycled water is mainly used for industry, landscaping and cleaning, Zhang said.

Many new communities in southern Beijing are equipped with a network to recycle water.

In the past, people were not enthusiastic about using recycled water. However, as the government has boosted the quality of recycled water and set up more recycled water plants, more residents are gradually accepting it.

Residents in southern Beijing will also enjoy more clean energy, as the government will replace traditional coal-burning stoves with electric radiators as part of a three-year plan to develop southern Beijing from 2013 to 2015.

Since 2010, Beijing has taken measures to develop its southern areas. Earlier efforts have seen the region, which used to rely heavily on low-end industries such as cement factories and small coal mines, being turned into a bustling commercial center and home to many educational institutions.

1.This passage may appear in ________ section.

A．business          B．life               C．politics           D．forum

2.which statement is true according to the passage

A．Recycled water will be mainly used for drink.

B．As usual, recycled water is accepted by people.

C．Traditionally people in southern Beijing use coal-burning stove for cooking.

D．The water Transferred over long distance is cheaper than recycled water.

3. How many recycled water plants will the capital city have in about 3 years?

A．46.              B．20               C．3                D． 49

4. What does the last paragraph mainly tell us?

A．Southern area in Beijing has taken on a new look.

B．The southern area is hone to many educational institutions

C．Southern area in Beijing is more beautiful now.

D．Southern area in Beijing is a busy place now .

5. Which is the best title for the passage?

A．Beijing government has taken measures to improve its people`s life.

B．Recycled water flows to southern Beijing.

C．More recycled water plants will be built.

D．The southern Beijing residents will enjoy clean water

New York Times-The already crazed competition for admission to the nation’s most famous universities and colleges became even more intense (激烈的) this year, with many recording the lowest acceptance rates.

Harvard College, for example, offered admission to only 7.1 percent of the 27,462 high school seniors who applied — or, put another way, it rejected 93 of every 100 applicants, many with extraordinary achievements, like a perfect score on one of the SAT exams. Yale College accepted 8.3 percent of its 22,813 applicants. Both rates were records.

Columbia College admitted 8.7 percent of its applicants, Brown University and Dartmouth College about 13 percent, and Bowdoin College and Georgetown University 18 percent — also records.

“We love the people we admitted, but we also love a very large number of the people who we were not able to admit,” said William R. Fitzsimmons, dean (主任) of admissions and financial aid at Harvard College.

Some colleges said they placed more students on their waiting lists than in recent years, in part because of uncertainty over how many admitted students would decide to enroll （登记入学）. Harvard and Princeton stopped accepting students through early admission this academic year; that meant that more than 1,500 students who would have been admitted in December were likely to have applied to many famous schools in the regular round.

Many factors contributed to the tightening of the competition at the most selective colleges, admissions deans said. The number of high school graduates in the nation has grown each year over the last decade and a half, experts estimate that the figure will reach the highest point this year or next, which might reduce the competition a little.

Other factors were the ease of online applications, expanded financial aid packages, an ambitious students’ applying to ever more colleges.

1．What’s the passage mainly about?

A．Harvard has the lowest admission rate this year.

B．Many factors have led to the intense competition.

C．Famous universities prefer to have more students on their waiting lists.

D．Admission to famous universities became even more difficult this year.

2．Which of the following has the highest acceptance rate this year?

A．Yale College.                 B．Georgetown University.  

C．Columbia College.         D．Dartmouth College.

3．How many of the 20,000 applicants would be rejected by Columbia College this year?

A．18,260     B．1,740        C．18,350         D．1,950

California, once regarded as a leader in the United States for its public higher education system, ranks next to the last in the U．S．for its number of adults with at least a high school diploma, according to the report, titled “California at the Edge of a Cliff,” released by the California Faculty Association．

       Meanwhile, the state’s investment（投资） in public higher education has dropped over the past three decades, and now ranks 22nd in the country．That’s despite having the country’s largest public higher education system, the report said．

       “It's a collapse（衰退）,” said Thomas Mortenson, author of the report, who is an independent analyst living in Iowa and a senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education in Washington,        D． C． “Ranking 49th out of 50 states is an indication that shows the quality of the state’s educational has become much worse in recent decades．” Mortenson said in the report．As of 2007, California ranked 14th in the United States in terms of college educated members of the workforce over 25 years of age, a drop from eighth place in 1981, the report showed．

       Mortenson said that California has never been the state of high status in education and economy while other states have made greater gains in building a college-educated workforce．

       The California Faculty Association is using the report’s findings to criticize Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed funding cuts for education．

       Struggling with a 14．8-billion-dollar state budget deficit（赤字）, Schwarzenegger has proposed a combination of sales tax increases, borrowing and major budget cuts, including cutting billions of dollars from the state’s education budget．

The passage is mainly about __________．

       A．California’s worse situation in higher education

       B．the dangerous situation in California

       C．California’s research on education and economy

       D．funding cuts for high education in California

From the passage we can infer that __________．

       A．investment in higher education has dropped in all states

       B．Thomas Mortenson works at California Faculty Association

       C．governor in California agreed to spend more money on education

       D．California had higher quality in higher education in the past

The reason why California has a lower rank in education is that________．

       A．the number of adults has decreased recently  

       B．the result of report has been published late

       C．the money to invest in education has been cut      

       D．the progress in other states has been made

According to the report’s findings, ________ is to blame for the drop in rank of education．

       A．Arnold Schwarzenegger  B．Thomas Mortenson

       C．the Pell Institute             D．California Faculty Association

D

The income gap between China's rural and urban residents(居民) has continued to widen during the past few years in spite of rapidly rising rural incomes, Agricultural Minister Sun Zhengcai said here on Wednesday.

The income ratio(比率) between urban and rural residents was 3.28:1 in 2006, against 3.23:1 in 2003, said Sun in his report on the promotion of building a new countryside in 2007. Sun also said the net income of rural residents in different regions also varied widely. The income gap is only one of several problems in rural areas, according to Sun's report. While listing the achievements in rural areas in recent years, Sun believed that rural development still followed behind urban development.

"We have bigger pressure to ensure the supply of major agricultural products such as grain," he said. "China's urbanization(都市化) has been speeded up and more rural residents have gone to urban areas," he said.

"In this case, more agricultural producers become farm produce consumers, which created more pressure for supply," he said.

Another problem facing China's agricultural development is inadequate application of science and technology.

"Only 30 percent of scientific and technological achievements have been applied to agricultural production, which is 40 percentage points lower than developed countries," he said.

Despite increased government spending in rural areas, the infrastructure(基础下部组织) is still poor and easily hit by disasters.

According to Sun, the government spent 431.8 billion yuan ($59.15 billion) on agriculture, rural areas and farmers this year, an increase of 80.1 billion yuan over the previous year.

China set aside 11.38 billion yuan to promote a new rural cooperative medical care system and 27.98 billion yuan to support the new compulsory education mechanism in rural area to ensure that all citizens shared the fruits of China's reform and opening-up, Sun said.

68．Which of the following is TRUE according to the text?

   A．Because of the rapidly rising rural incomes, the income gap between China's rural and urban residents will disappear this year.

   B．The net income of rural residents in different regions is the same.

   C．The government has taken measures to develop the economy in the rural areas.

   D．Because of the rapidly rising rural incomes, the supply of major agricultural products is enough.

69．Can you infer the meaning of the underlined words in paragraph 5?

   A．be made full use of        B．be made little use of

   C．be not made full use of          D．be made good use of

70． How much is spent on agriculture, rural areas and farmers the previous year?

   A．431.8 billion yuan          B．511.9 billion yuan 

   C．351.7 billion yuan          D．80.1 billion yuan

71． Which is NOT the problem in rural areas?

   A．The income gap

   B．The inadequate application of science and technology

   C．The supply of major agricultural products

   D．China's urbanization