泽熙美文[问答题]1. Practice 1
Puerto Rico, a Caribbean island rich in history and remarkable natural beauty, has a cuisine all its own. Immigration to the island has helped to shape its cuisine, with people from all over the world making various contributions to it. However, before the arrival of these immigrants, the Taino people lived on the island of Puerto Rico. Taino cuisine included such foods as rodents fresh shellfish and fish fried in corn oil.
Many aspects of Taino cuisine continue today in Puerto Rican cooking, but it has been heavily influenced by the Spanish, who invaded Puerto Rico in 1508, and Africans, who were initially brought to Puerto Rico to work as slaves. Taino cooking styles were mixed with ideas brought by the Spanish and Africans to create new dishes. The Spanish extended food choices by bringing cattle, pigs, goats, and sheep to the island. Africans also added to the island’s food culture by introducing powerful, contrasting tastes in dishes. In fact, much of the food Puerto Rico is now famous for—coffee, coconuts, and oranges—was actually imported by foreigners to the island.
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[问答题]2. Practice 2
Ballet is a dance form that has a long history. The fact that it survives to this day shows that it has adjusted as times have changed.
Ballet began in the royal courts during the Renaissance. At that time it became common for kings and queens, as well as other nobility, to participate in pageants that included music, poetry, and dance. As these entertainments moved from the Italian courts to the French ones, court ladies began participating in them. Though their long dresses prevented much movement, they were able to perform elaborate walking patterns. It was not until the 1600s that women dancers shortened their skirts, changed to flat shoes, and began doing some of the leaps and turns performed by men.
It was also in the 1600s that professional ballet began. King. Louis XIV of France, himself a de- voted dancer, founded the Royal Academy of Dance. The five basic feet positions from which all ballet steps begin were finalized. In the late 1700s another important change occurred. Ballet began to tell a story on its own. It was no longer simply dance to be performed between acts of plays. Elaborate wigs and costumes were eliminated. By the early 1800s dancers learned to rise on their toes to make it appear that they were floating.
Classical ballet as we know it today was influenced primarily by Russian dancing. The Russians remained interested in ballet when it declined in other European countries in the mid-1800s. One of the most influential figures of the early 20th century was Sergei Diaghilev. His dance company, the Ballets Russes, brought a new energy and excitement to ballet. One of his chief assistants, George Balanchine, went on to found the New York City Ballet in 1948 and to influence new generations of dancers.
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[问答题]3. Practice 3
A woman in Native American clothes is sitting in the sun, sewing a dress from skin. Inside a building, a colonist is making a wooden chair, using very simple tools. And all around, tourists are taking pictures with their digital (数码的) cameras. This is Jamestown Settlement today.
Jamestown, Virginia, was one of the first places in the world where people from Europe, America, and Africa came together in 1608. Today, it is a living history museum, where children and adults come to experience history. In a living history museum, actors wear clothes from the past and demonstrate many of the activities of daily life back then. The actors also talk to the visitors and explain everything they do.
At a Living History museum, there are always many things to touch, hear, and smell Visitors at Jamestown Settlement can walk through copies of the three small sailing ships that carried colonists to Virginia and even lie down in a colonist’s bed. The colonists stayed on the crowed, dangerous ships for more than four months. When they got to Virginia they built an area of houses with a high wall around it in today’s fort(堡垒)，you can see houses, a church, and even a garden with foods that the colonists ate. Women in long dresses work inside their homes, and visitors can help them with their sewing and cooking.
There is also an Indian Village at Jamestown Settlement, and it looks very different from the fort. It shows how the Indians lived in long houses and grew corn and other crops in large fields. Actors there make pottery(陶器) and teach visitors how to play Indian games. You can even help them make an Indian boat from a tree.
Today the living history museum of Jamestown is very popular, especially with children and families. People come here to have fun, but also to learn. Many school classes visit to experience old ways of getting things done. A living history museum is the best way to understand how people lived in the past.
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[问答题]4. Practice 4
“My dear Mr. Bennet,” said his lady to him one day, “have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?”
Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.
“But it is,” returned she; “for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it.”
Mr. Bennet made no answer.
“Do not you want to know who has taken it?” cried his wife impatiently. “You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.”
This was invitation enough.
“Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much delighted with it that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately; that he is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the house by the end of next week.”
“What is his name?”
“Bingley.”
“Is he married or single?”
“Oh! single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!”
“How so? How can it affect them?”
“My dear Mr. Bennet,” replied his wife, “how can you be so tiresome! You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them.”
“Is that his design in settling here?”
“Design! nonsense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely that he may fall in love with one of them, and therefore you must visit him as soon as he comes.”
“I see no occasion for that. You and the girls may go, or you may send them by themselves, which perhaps will be still better, for as you are as handsome as any of them, Mr. Bingley might like you the best of the party.”
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[问答题]5. Practice 5
Another legend is that of the two maiden sisters. A legend I am afraid it may be, in the most discreditable meaning of the term; or perhaps something worse—a mere yesterday’s fiction. But it is a story of some vitality, and is worthy of a place in the Edinburgh calendar. This pair inhabited a single room; from the facts, it must have been double-bedded; and it may have been of some dimensions: but when all is said, it was a single room. Here our two spinsters fell out—on some point of controversial divinity belike (也许): but fell out so bitterly that there was never a word spoken between them black or white from that day forward, foil would have thought they would separate: but no; whether from lack of means, or the Scottish fear of scandal, they continued to keep house together where they were. A chalk line drawn upon the floor separated their two domains; it bisected (切成两部分) the doorway and the fireplace, so that each could go out and in, and do her cooking, without violating the territory of the other.
So, for years, they coexisted in a hateful silence; their meals, their ablutions, their friendly visitors, exposed to an unfriendly scrutiny; and at night, in the dark watches, each could hear the breathing of her enemy. Never did four walls look down upon an uglier spectacle than these sisters rivalling in unsisterliness. Here is a canvas for Hawthorne to have turned into a cabinet picture—he had a Puritanic vein. which would have fitted him to treat this Puritanic horror; he could have shown them to us in their sicknesses and at their hideous twin devotions, thumbing a pair of great Bibles, or
