5. How many children will be stopped from
smoking if we act now?
A.
one million.
B.
1.5 million.
C.
3 million.
D.
3,000.
Passage 30 Playing your heroes
When
she appeared on stage, singing a Japanese song, hundreds of excited teenagers
crowded around shouting, "Curarpikt (酷拉皮卡)!
It's Curarpikt!"
At the Beijing
Comic and Animation Expo last week, that's exactly who Shi Jia
was. The Senior 1 girl was cosplaying (角色扮演)
"Curarpikt", a character from the popular
Japanese comic book "Hunter X Hunter" (《猎人》)
by Yoshihiro Togashi (富坚义博).
“I cosplay Curarpikt because I like
him," said the pretty 15-year-old girl. "I'm moved by his sad story
and I'm attracted by his courage and personality (个性)."
In the adventure
comic story, Curarpikt, a handsome and kind-hearted boy,
struggles to become a hunter so he can capture (俘获)
the people who killed his tribe (部落).
Shi has read all
the comic books and is a big fan of the animated series (动画片)
of "Hunter X Hunter". Then last year she saw a real "Curarpikt" in a cosplay show.
"I had
watched cosplay shows before but only for fun,"
she explained. "It's really exciting to see young people wearing the
make-up and costumes (装束)
of characters that you've read about and are familiar with.
"But that
time I just fell in love with cosplaying, probably
because I like Curarpikt so much. I thought I could
play the character better, so I decided to have a go."
Shi bought some
cloth and asked a tailor to make a Curarpikt costume
for her. She was delighted to find out there was a cosplay
show in Beijing
in October.
"It's a
great way to spend the national holiday. Posing on the stage for all the comic
book fans, I knew I was doing something I had always wanted to do," she
said.
But she never talks
about this hobby with her parents.
"They think it will distract me from my studies. I don't want to upset
them So it's my secret hobby," she said. "It's also why I don't dye
my hair for cosplaying like all the others."
What's cosplay?
Cosplay
is a Japanese term for "Costume-Play". When cosplaying,
comic fans wear costumes and pretend to be their favourite
comic characters.
Shanghai was
the first Chinese city to discover cosplay in 1990s.
It soon spread to other big cities across the country. Nowadays, cosplaying is most popular among comic fans in their teens
or early twenties.