44. The underlined part “the two” in the reading above
refers to (指的是) ______.
A. Kirstie
and Lewis.
B. Lewis and Crusoe.
C. Angus
and Kirstie.
D. Angus and Cruso.
C
YANG Nan, 17, was happy to move
to her new home in a northern area of Beijing.
She was told that her neighborhood used to be farmland planted with vegetables, corn and wheat.But looking
at the new road, beautiful park and supermarkets, Yang couldn't see any sign
that food was once grown there.
Yang is not alone. In recent
years, many Chinese people have moved into new houses in country areas. Tall
buildings have been built everywhere in the suburbs. The crops and fruit trees
are no more. But these changes have caused problems too, warns Gan Zang
chun, an official (官员) at the Ministry of Land and Resources (国土资源部).
"Chinese cities are growing
fast. This has made the area for farmland much smaller. This is really bad for
the country's ability to grow food, not to mention the lives of farmers,"
said Gan last Monday.
The country needs farmland to
grow food for the people of China.
But the recent rise in house prices has made selling land a good business. A
lot of land has been used to build new houses for sale.
Pollution, which makes land
useless, is another reason for the big drop in China's farmland. About 2.67
million square kilometers of land in China have been polluted and turned into desert.
The government wants China to
have at least 120 million hectares (公顷) of farmland. But there are only about 121.8 million
hectares left. "It will be really difficult to reach the goal", Gan said. He said that the
government would fight illegal (非法的) land use and stop farmland
from becoming desert.