23. What do Rickshaw Boy and The Teahouse have in common?
A. Both dramas are sad stories.
B. Both plays are written by Lao She.
C. Both stories are set in the same place.
D. Both stories are made up of three scenes.
B
In 1931, Americans were suffering through the Great Depression. It was The Good Earth by Pearl Buck that brought
comfort, the top-selling book that year.
Born into a religious workers’ family in 1892, Pearl Buck left the United States and moved to China with her parents.
Her education began at home with her mother teaching her American school things while a Chinese tutor taught her other
subjects, including writings of Confucius. In 1910, she went back to America to study philosophy. After graduation, she
returned to China and married John Lossing Buck, an agriculture expert, eventually settling down in a small village in the
north of China.
Had it not been for their first child Carol, who had an unusual disease causing her to have trouble learning, Pearl Buck
might never have become a famous writer. The reason was money. She needed it to pay for her daughter’s care. She recalled
why she chose China and its people as the subjects, “If none of you want to write these wonderful farmers. I will write
about them. So, I wrote The Good Earth.”
The Good Earth tells the story of a poor Chinese man named Wang Lung and his wife O-Lan. It recounts how they
work hard and finally make enough money to purchase some land for a farm. They stick to the land even in times of
starvation, themselves begging on the streets. Experiencing ups and downs, Wang finds happiness in owning land and
raising crops. He even forbids his sons to sell the land after his death.
Pearl Buck told her China stories with honesty and Americans were impressed by the new images of the Chinese
totally different from those in Hollywood movies. The book earned Pearl Buck the Pulitzer Prize and was later adapted into
an Oscar-winning movie. In 1938, she became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
24. How did Pearl Buck benefit from her education?
A. She thought the best education lay in home.
B. She highly appreciated education in the countryside.
C. She preferred Chinese education to Western education.
D. She gained a lot from a combination of different styles of education.
25. Why did Pearl Buck decide to write books?
A. Some Chinese advised her to do it. B. She was in desperate need of money.
C. She couldn’t bear the boring rural life. D. She desired a good education for her kid.
26. What can we infer from Paragraph 4?
A. Good fortune always favors the characters.
B. Owning land is the lifeline for Chinese farmers.
C. Chinese farmers lead a terribly miserable life.
D. The characters make a fortune by buying and selling land.
27. What is the text mainly about?
A. The moral values of The Good Earth.
B. The fighting spirit of Chinese farmers.
C. A woman writer’s sacrifice to save her ill child.
D. A woman’s great China-themed literary achievements.
C
For some people, nothing beats a long walk on a sandy beach. But there’s no denying that it’s not as easy or as fast to
get around on the beach as it is on a road or a sidewalk. But why is it so hard to walk on sand?
The problem with sand is that it’s soft; you “sink in” at each step. This forces you to use 2.1 to 2. 7 times more energy
with every step you take. Another idea is that people walk more difficultly on soft than they do on hard surfaces, a study
found. The researchers compared how people walked on foam ( 沫) and hard surfaces by analyzing the forces under their
feet and how much oxygen each person consumed. They found that walking on soft surfaces, such as sand, mud and snow,