What's On

Stage

An acrobatic(杂技) soul: To celebrate its 50th anniversary, the China Acrobatic Troupe will present "The Soul of China", where the seemingly impossible is made real. Chills(寒战) will run down your spine (脊柱) as you watch breathlessly as performers take their art and their bodies to the edge

Time: 7:30p. m,Septemberl3—19

Place: Capital Theatre,22 Wangfujing Dajie, Dongcheng District

Exhibitions

Joint show: A group ink painting exhibition is running at the Huangshicheng Art Gallery in Beijing.

About 50 works by 25 young artists including Ge Yun and Yu Yang are on display.

Time: 9 a.m. —5 p.m.until September 10

Place: Huangshicheng Gallery, 136 Nanchizi Dajie, Dongcheng Distirct

Oil paintings: The Wanfung Art Gallery will host a joint show of oil paintings by 10 young and middle — aged artists. On display are more than 30 of their latest works, which capture(捕捉) he wonderous variety of life in unique(独特的) styles.

Time: 9 a.m. —4 p.m.until September 15

Place: 136 Nanchizi Street, Dongcheng District

Literature (文学) museum: The National Museum of Modern Chinese Literature offers an in —depth study of the evolution of Chinese contemporary literature from 1919 to 1949.

Time: 9 a.m. — 4 p.m, daily

Place: 45 Anyuan Donglu, Chaoyang District(Shaoyaoju area)

Conarts

Beijing rocks: "The Fashionow Night of Chinese Rock" is set to bring rock fans out by the thousands next month. Nine Chinese rock bands will perform at the concert, including older generation bands, middle generation and some recent arrivals. The audience(听众) will be given a chance to decide what songs they want to hear, which is sure to bring a storm.

Time: September 16

Place: The Olympic Center

Belgium Orchestra (管弦乐队): La Petite Bande, the Baroque Orchestra of Belgium, will perform in Beijing at the Grand Theatre of the Cultural Palace of Nationalities as part of activities across the world to commemorate(纪念) the 250th anniversary of Bach' s death.

Time: 7:30 p.m. September l1—14

Place: Grand Theatre of the Cultural Palace of Nationalities

What do you think of the acrobatic show mentioned here?

A．When you watch it, you will certainly feel cold.

B．Something strange will puzzle everyone, including scientists.

C．Unexpected things will make you excited and surprised.

D．Even the bravest ones will be too frightened to go on watching.

The most characteristic thing about the Fashionow Night of Chinese Rock is that_________.

A．it will let the audience choose the performers and the music

B．it is to bring thousands of rock fans out of their homes

C．it will certainly cause a rock storm throughout China

D．it is to be held in memory of one of the greatest musicians

Suppose it is September 14 today, how marry activities can people choose to attend?

A．2　　　　　　　 B．3　　　　　　　　 C．4　　　　　　　　D．5

On the whole, we can conclude__________.

A．people in Beijing prefer modem culture to something traditional

B．there are usually more cultural activities in September than in any other month

C．most of the cultural activities in Beijing are for foreign visitors only

D．we can enjoy a large variety of cultural activities in Beijing

Electric cars are dirty. In fact, not only are they dirty, they might even be more dirty than their gasoline-powered cousins.
People in California love to talk about “zero-emissions（排放）vehicles”, but people in California seem to be clueless about where electricity comes from. Power plants most all use fire to make it. Apart from the few people who have their roofs covered with solar cells, we get our electricity from generators（发电机）. Generators are fueled by something--usually coal, oil, but also by heat generated in nuclear power plants. There are a few wind farms and geothermal（地热） plants as well, but by far we get electricity mainly by burning something.
In other words, those "zero-emissions" cars are likely coal-burning cars. Because the coal is burned somewhere else, it looks clean. It is not true. It's as if the California Greens are covering their eyes—“If I can't see it, it's not happening.”  Gasoline is an incredibly efficient way to power a vehicle; a gallon of gas has a lot of energy in it. But when you take that gas（or another fuel）and first use it to make electricity, you waste a nice part of that energy, mostly in the form of wasted heat--at the generator, through the transmission lines, etc.
A gallon of gas may drive your car 25 miles. But the electricity you get from that gallon of gas won't get you nearly as far -- so electric cars burn more fuel than gasoline-powered ones. If our electricity came mostly from wind or geothermal, or solar, then an electric car truly would be clean. But for political, technical, and economic reasons, we don't use much of those energy sources.
　　In addition, electric cars' batteries which are poisonous for a long time will eventually end up in a landfill. And finally, when cars are the polluters, the pollution is spread across all the roads. When it's a power plant, though，all the junk is in one place. Nature is very good at cleaning up when things are not too concentrated, but it takes a lot longer when all the garbage is in one spot.
【小题1】What’s the main idea of the passages?

One of the most difficult questions to answer is how much a job is worth. We naturally expect that a doctor’s salary will be higher than a bus conductor’s wages. But the question becomes much more difficult to answer when we compare a miner with an engineer, or an unskilled man working on an oil-rig（钻探平台）with a teacher in a secondary school. What the doctor, the engineer and the teacher have in common is that they have devoted several years to studying in order to obtain the necessary qualifications for their professions. We feel instinctively that these skills and these years should be rewarded. At the same time we recognize that the work of the miner and the oil-rig laborer is both hard and dangerous, and that they must be highly paid for the risks they take.
　　Another aspect we must take into consideration is how socially useful a man’s work is. Most people would agree that looking after the sick or teaching children is more important than, say, selling second-hand cars. Yet it is almost certain that the used-car salesman earns more than the nurse and the schoolteacher.
　　Indeed, this whole question of just rewards can be turned on its head. You can argue that a man who does a job which brings him personal satisfaction is already receiving part of his reward in the form of a so-called “psychic（精神的）wage”, and that it is the man with the boring, repetitive job who needs more money to make up for the soul-destroying repetitiveness of his work. It is significant that the jobs like nursing and teaching continue to be poorly paid, while others, such as those in the world of sport or entertainment, carry financial rewards out of all proportion to their social worth.
Although the amount of money that people earn is largely determined by market forces, this should not prevent us from seeking some way to decide what is the right pay for the job. A starting point would be to try to decide the ratio（比率）which ought to exist between the highest and the lowest paid. The picture is made more complicated by two factors: firstly by the welfare benefits which every citizen receives, and secondly by the taxation system which is often used as an instrument of social justice by taxing high incomes at a very high rate indeed. Most countries now regard a ratio of 7:1 as socially acceptable. If it is less, the highly-qualified people carrying heavy responsibilities will become disappointed, and might even end up by leaving for another country. If it is more, the difference between rich and poor will be so great that it will lead to social unrest.
【小题1】Why do people naturally expect that doctors should be well-paid?

There was one thought that air pollution affected only the area immediately around large cities with factories and heavy automobile traffic. At present, we realize that although these are the areas with the worst air pollution, the problem is literally worldwide. On several occasions over the past decade, a heavy cloud of air pollution has covered the east of the United States and brought health warnings in rural areas away from any major concentration of manufacturing and automobile traffic. In fact, the very climate of the entire earth may be infected by air pollution. Some scientists consider that the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the air resulting from the burning of fossil fuels (coal and oil) is creating a “greenhouse effect”— conserving heat reflected from the earth and raising the world’s average temperature. If this view is correct and the world’s temperature is raised only a few degrees, much of the polar ice cap will melt and cities such as New York, Boston, Miami, and New Orleans will be in water.

Another view, less widely held, is that increasing particular matter in the atmosphere is blocking sunlight and lowering the earth’s temperature — a result that would be equally disastrous. A drop of just a few degrees could create something close to a new ice age, and would make agriculture difficult or impossible in many of our top farming areas. Today we do not know for sure that either of these conditions will happen (though one recent government report drafted by experts in the field concluded that the greenhouse effect is very possible). Perhaps, if we are lucky enough, the two tendencies will offset each other and the world’s temperature will stay about the same as it is now. Driven by economic profits, people neglect the damage on our environment caused by the “advanced civilization”. Maybe the air pollution is the price the human beings have to pay for their development. But is it really worthwhile?

As pointed out at the beginning of the passage, people used to think that air pollution _______.

A. cause widespread damage in the countryside

B. affected the entire eastern half of the United States

C. had damaged effect on health

D. existed merely in urban and industries areas

As to the greenhouse effect, the author __________.

A. share the same view with the scientist.

B. is uncertain of its occurrence

C. rejects it as being ungrounded

D. thinks that it will destroy the world soon

The word “offset” in the second paragraph could be replaced by _________.

A. slip into   B. make up for　　 C. set up    D. catch up with

It can be concluded that ____________.

A. raising the world’s temperature only a few degrees would not do much harm to life on earth

B. lowering the world’s temperature merely a few degrees would lead major farming areas to disaster 

C. almost no temperature variations have occurred over the past decade

D. the world’s temperature will remain constant in the years to come

This passage is primarily about __________.

A. the greenhouse effect        　    B. the burning of fossil fuels

C. the potential effect of air pollution  　D. the likelihood of a new ice age