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Oxford University
Oxford University is the oldest university in Britain and one of the world's most famous institutions of higher learning. Oxford University was established during the 1100's. It is located in Oxford, England, about 80 kilometers northwest of London.
The university has over 16,300 students (-), almost a quarter of these students are from overseas and more than 130 nationalities are represented. It consists of 35 colleges, plus five private halls established by various religious groups. Three of the five private halls are for men only. Of the colleges, St. Hilda's and Somerville are for women, and the rest are for men and women.
At Oxford, each college is a corporate body distinct from the university and is governed by itsown head and fellows. Most fellows are college instructors called tutors, and the rest are university professors and lecturers. Each college manages its own buildings and property, elects its own fellows, and selects and admits its own undergraduate students. The university provides some libraries, laboratories, and other facilities, but the colleges take primary responsibility for the teaching and well-being of their students.
Each student at Oxford is assigned to a tutor, who supervises the student's program of study, primarily through tutorials. Tutorials are weekly meetings of one or two students with their tutor. Students may see other tutors for specialized instruction. They may also attend lectures given by university teachers. Students choose which lectures to attend on the basis of their own special interests and on the advice of their tutors.
The university, not the individual colleges, grants degrees. The first degree in the arts or sciences is the Bachelor of Arts with honors. Oxford also grants higher degrees, diplomas, and certificates in a wide variety of subjects.
The Rhodes scholarship program enables students from the United States, Canada, and many other nations to study at Oxford for a minimum of two years. The British government grants Marshall scholarships to citizens of the United States for study at Oxford and other universities that are located in Britain.
The competition for scholarships and grants is, however, extremely strong and there are usually strict requirements. Students should check carefully that they are eligible to apply for a particular scholarship before making an application as most of the schemes are restricted to certain nationalities and/or programs.
The students and staff at Oxford are actively involved in over 55 initiatives , including visits to more than 3,700 schools and colleges, to encourage the brightest and best students to apply to Oxford, whatever their background.
The university has been named the UK's most innovative university in the Launchit 2001 competition, which aimed to discover which British university has demonstrated the greatest achievements in innovation and enterprise across the broadest range of activity. In the national Teaching Quality Assessment exercises for 2000, Oxford was awarded top marks in six out of ten subjects assessed.
Oxford, Stanford and Yale Universities have recently become partners in a joint 'distance learning' venture, the Alliance for Lifelong Learning, which will provide online courses in the arts and sciences.
The mission of Oxford is to aim at achieving and maintaining excellence in every area of its teaching and research, maintaining and developing its historical position as a world-class university, and enriching the international, national, and regional communities through the fruits of its research and the skills of its graduates.
In support of this aim the university will provide the facilities and support for its staff to pursue innovative research by responding to developments in the intellectual environment and society at large; and promote challenging and rigorous teaching which benefits from a fruitful interaction with the research environment, facilitating the exchange of ideas through tutorials and small-group learning and exploiting the University's resources in its libraries, museums, and scientific collections, to equip its graduates to play their part at a national and international level.
1
He Bin: Hello, David. What are you doing this af
ternoon?
David: Nothing special. Why?
He Bin: Would you like to go roller skating with me?
David: Oh, that's a terrific idea.
He Bin: Great, I'll pick you up at your house at 2 o'clock. OK?
David: OK. See you then.
He Bin: See you.
2
Zhou Ming: Hi, Dick. I was wondering if you'd like to come to a party on Saturday evening?
Dick: Wow, that sounds wonderful. I'd love to.
Zhou Ming: We're holding it at the Star Club, about 8 o'clock.
Dick: Ok. But what should I wear?
Zhou Ming: It's quite a formal party. I think you'd better dress up a little.
Dick: Fine. Thank you very much.
3
Zhou Ming: Are you free this evening.
Karen: I'm not sure. Why?
Zhou Ming: Well, I'm thinking of asking you to go to a movie with me.
Karen: Oh, thanks, but... I'm sorry to say I have a test tomorrow.
Zhou Ming: Never mind. I quite understand. Maybe some other time.
Karen: Yeah. How about this weekend?
4
Paul: Hi, Li Hong. How are you doing?
Li Hong: Pretty good.
aul: Do you feel like going out for dinner tonight?
Li Hong: Sure. I'd love to. Where do you want to meet?
Paul: How about meeting in front of the club?
Li Hong: Great! Why don't we go dancing after the dinner?
Paul: That's a great idea.
5
Dick: Li Hong, do you want to go to play tennis this Saturday afternoon?
Li Hong: I'd love to, but I have to visit my parents.
Dick: Well, how about Sunday, then?
Li Hong: Sunday? I'm really sorry. I can't make it either.
Dick: Oh, that's too bad.
Li Hong: But...I'm free this afternoon.
Dick: Wow, that's great!
大学体验英语3课文原文
大学英语是我们日常学习的延续，下面我们来看一下其中一些课文原文学习一些吧。
Unit1:Passage A:Care for Our Mother Earth
(Dr. McKinley of Awareness Magazine interviews a group of experts on environmental issues.) Dr. McKinley: What do you think is the biggest threat to the environment today? Aman Motwane: The biggest threat to our environment today is the way we, as human beings, see our environment. How we see our environment shapes our whole world. Most of us see everything as independent from one another. But the reality is that everything is part of one interconnected, interrelated whole. For example, a tree may appear isolated, but in fact it affects and is affected by everything in its environment - sunshine, rain, wind, birds, minerals, other plants and trees, you, me. The tree shapes the wind that blows around it; it is also shaped by that wind. Look at the relationship between the tree and its environment and you will see the future of the tree. Most of us are blind to this interconnectedness of everything. This is why we don't see the consequences of our actions. It is time for each of us to open our eyes and see the world as it really is - one complete whole where every cause has an effect. Dr. McKinley: Hello Dr. Semkiw. In your research, what environmental issues do you find most pressing? Walter Semkiw: Two environmental issues that we find most pressing are deforesting and global warming. Mankind has now cut down half of the trees that existed 10,000 years ago. The loss of trees upsets the ecosystem as trees are necessary to build topsoil, maintain rainfall in dry climates, purify underground water and to convert carbon dioxide to oxygen. Trees bring water up from the ground, allowing water to evaporate into the atmosphere. The evaporated water then returns as rain, which is vital to areas that are naturally dry. Areas downwind of deforested lands lose this source of rainfall and transform into deserts. Global warming results from the burning of fossil fuels, such as petroleum products, resulting in the release of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses then resulting in the trap heat, resulting in warming of our atmosphere. Dr. McKinley: Mr. Nacson, thanks for participating all the way from Australia! What do you suggest the readers of Awareness Magazine can do to help the environmental problem? Leon Nacson: The simplest way to help the environment is not to impact on it. Tread as lightly as you can, taking as little as possible, and putting back as much as you can. Dr. McKinley: What is your specific area of concern regarding the current and future state of the environment? Leon Nacson: Air and water pollution are our Number One priorities. It is hard to understand that we are polluting the air we breathe and the water we drink. These are two elements that are not inexhaustible, and we must realize that once we reach the point of no return, there will be nothing left for future generations. Dr. McKinley: Mr. Desai, what an honor it is to have this opportunity to interview you. Can you please share your wisdom with our readers and tell us where you see the environmental crisis heading? Amrit Desai: We are not separate from the problem. We are the problem. We live divided lives. On one hand, we ask industries to support our greed for more and more conveniences, comfort and possessions. We have become addicted consumers, which causes industrial waste. At the same time, we ignore our connection between our demands and the exploitation of Mother Earth. When we are greedy for more than what we need for our well being, we always abuse the resources of our body and the earth. We are nurtured by the healthy condition of Mother Earth. In humans, if the mother is ailing, the child suffers. We are the cause of the ailing planet and we are the victims. Dr. McKinley: In closing, I thank all of the participants. I have learned a great deal about what I can do as an individual to help the environment. I hope these interviews encourage the readers of Awareness Magazine to take action and develop your own strategy. Too many of us just sit back and say “I'll let the experts deal with it.” Meanwhile, we are killing the planet. My aim of this interview is to show how one person can make a difference. Thanks to all for offering your wisdom. trees play an important role in avoiding global warming most people hold a wrong view on the environment we would run out of air and water if we didn't stop polluting them We pollute Mother Earth in pursuing a better life, which, consequently, hurts ourselves. The attitude of human beings.
Unit1:Passage B:Frog Story
A couple of odd things have happened lately. I have a log cabin in those same woods of Northern Wisconsin. I built it by hand and also added a greenhouse to the front of it. It is a joy to live in. In fact, I work out of my home doing audio production and environmental work. As a tool of that trade I have a computer and a studio. I also have a tree frog that has taken up residence in my studio. How odd, I thought, last November when I first noticed him sitting atop my sound board over my computer. I figured that he (and I say he, though I really don't have a clue if she is a he or vice versa) would be more comfortable in the greenhouse. So I put him in the greenhouse. Back he came. And stayed. After a while I got quite used to the fact that as I would check my morning email and on-line news, he would be there with me surveying the world. Then, last week, as he was climbing around looking like a small gray/green human, I started to wonder about him. So, there I was, working in my studio and my computer was humming along. I had to stop when Tree Frog went across my view. He stopped and turned around and just sat there looking at me. Well, I sat back and looked at him. For five months now he had been riding there with me and I was suddenly overtaken by an urge to know why he was there and not in the greenhouse, where I figured he'd live a happier frog life.“Why are you here”, I found myself asking him. As I looked at him, dead on, his eyes looked directly at me and I heard a tone. The tone seemed to hit me right in the center of my mind. It sounded very nearly like the same one as my computer. In that tone I could hear him “say” to me, “Because I want you to understand”. Yo. That was weird. “Understand what?”, my mind jumped in. Then, after a moment of feeling this communication, I felt I understood why he was there. I came to understand that frogs simply want to hear other frogs and to communicate. Possibly the tone of my computer sounded to him like other tree frogs. Interesting. I kept working. I was working on a story about global climate change and had just received a fax from a friend. The fax said that the earth is warming at 1.9 degrees each decade. At that rate I knew that the maple trees that I love to tap each spring for syrup would not survive for my children. My beautiful Wisconsin would become a prairie by the next generation. At that moment Tree Frog leaped across my foot and sat on the floor in front of my computer. He then reached up his hand to his left ear and cupped it there. He sat before the computer and reached up his right hand to his other ear. He turned his head this way and that listening to that tone. Very focused. He then began to turn a very subtle, but brilliant shade of green and leaped full force onto the computer. And then I remembered the story about the frogs that I had heard last year on public radio. It said frogs were dying around the world. It said that because frog's skin is like a lung turned inside out their skin was being affected by pollution and global climate change. It said that frogs were being found whose skin was like paper. All dried up. It said that frogs are an “indicator species”. That frogs will die first because of the sensitivity. Then, I understood. The frogs have a message for us and it is the same message that some sober folks have had for us. “There are no more choices.” We have reached the time when we must be the adults for the planet, for the sake of the future generations of human and for frogs. Because we are related. Then I understood that there are no boundaries, that there is no more time. That we, for the sake of our relatives must act now. And then I understood, not only why the frog was there, but, also why I am here He wants to encourage readers to fight against pollution. he wanted to remind the author that it's time to take actions against pollution their skin is sensitive to environmental pollution and global climate change People who are aware of the environmental problem. B) human beings and frogs are connected in the ecosystem
Unit2:Passage A:Einstein's Compass
Young Albert was a quiet boy. “Perhaps too quiet”, thought Hermann and Pauline Einstein. He spoke hardly at all until age 3. They might have thought him slow, but there was something else evident. When he did speak, he'd say the most unusual things. At age 2, Pauline promised him a surprise. Albert was excited, thinking she was bringing him some new fascinating toy. But when his mother presented him with his new baby sister Maja, all Albert could do is stare with questioning eyes. Finally he responded, “where are the wheels?” When Albert was 5 years old and sick in bed, Hermann Einstein brought Albert a device that did stir his intellect. It was the first time he had seen a compass. He lay there shaking and twisting the odd thing, certain he could fool it into pointing off in a new direction. But try as he might, the compass needle would always find its way back to pointing in the direction of north. “A wonder,” he thought. The invisible force that guided the compass needle was evidence to Albert that there was more to our world that meets the eye. There was “something behind things, something deeply hidden.” So began Albert Einstein's journey down a road of exploration that he would follow the rest of his life. “I have no special gift,” he would say, “I am only passionately curious.” Albert Einstein was more than just curious though. He had the patience and determination that kept him at things longer than most others. Other children would build houses of card up to 4 stories tall before the cards would lose balance and the whole structure would come falling down. Maja watched in wonder as her brother Albert methodically built his card buildings to 14 stories. Later he would say, “It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.” One advantage Albert Einstein's developing mind enjoyed was the opportunity to communicate with adults in an intellectual way. His uncle, an engineer, would come to the house, and Albert would join in the discussions. His thinking was also stimulated by a medical student who came over once a week for dinner and lively chats. At age 12, Albert Einstein came upon a set of ideas that impressed him as “holy.” It was a little book on Euclidean plane geometry. The concept that one could prove theorems of angles and lines that were in no way obvious made an “indescribable impression” on the young student. He adopted mathematics as the tool he would use to pursue his curiosity and prove what he would discover about the behavior of the universe. He was convinced that beauty lies in the simplistic. Perhaps this insight was the real power of his genius. Albert Einstein looked for the beauty of simplicity in the apparently complex nature and saw truths that escaped others. While the expression of his mathematics might be accessible to only a few sharp minds in the science, Albert could condense the essence of his thoughts so anyone could understand. For instance, his theories of relativity revolutionized science and unseated the laws of Newton that were believed to be a complete description of nature for hundreds of years. Yet when pressed for an example that people could relate to, he came up with this: “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. THAT's relativity.” Albert Einstein's wealth of new ideas peaked while he was still a young man of 26. In 1905 he wrote 3 fundamental papers on the nature of light, a proof of atoms, the special theory of relativity and the famous equation of atomic power: E=mc2. For the next 20 years, the curiosity that was sparked by wanting to know what controlled the compass needle and his persistence to keep pushing for the simple answers led him to connect space and time and find a new state of matter. What was his ultimate quest?“I want to know how God created this world.... I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details.” sparked his curiosity in exploring the universe persistence, determination and curiosity communicating intellectually with adults he believed that beauty exists in simple things it helped uncover the mysteries of the universe
Unit2:Passage B:The Wake-up Call from Stockholm The Wake-up Call from Stockholm
“These are the last 20 minutes of peace in your life,” the Swedish caller told Caltech professor Ahmed Zewail at 5:40 a.m. on October 12. Soon the world would hear of Zewail's award - the Nobel Prize in chemistry - and Zewail would hear from the world. Two thousand e-mails would zoom his way within a few days and three phone lines would start ringing with eager requests for interviews from the national and Egyptian press and with congratulations from friends and colleagues. But first, the 53-year-old man would share the news with his family. He kissed his wife, Dema, and young sons, Nabeel and Hani. His mother, whom Zewail reached in his native Egypt, cried and cried. His daughters, Maha and Amani, “were going crazy on the phone. I couldn't even speak,” said Zewail. “I was disappointed in Nabeel's reaction,” he added. “I told him I had won the prize. He said, 'Good.'” But when Zewail asked if he'd tell the kids at school, the six-year-old said, “No. These guys will say 'So what?'” But Nabeel did ask, “Are we going to see the king?” The Royal Swedish Academy honored Zewail for his groundbreaking work in viewing and studying chemical reactions at the atomic level as they occur. He has shown “that it is possible with rapid laser technique to see how atoms in a molecule move during a chemical reaction.” Zewail had brought the most powerful tools from the field of physics into the chemistry lab to create a revolution, and the field of femto-chemistry was born. It was “a revolution in chemistry and related sciences,” the Swedes announced, “since this type of investigation allows us to understand and predict important reactions,” to probe nature at its most fundamental level. Zewail is the 27th Caltech faculty member or alumnus to receive the Nobel Prize, and the third faculty member to be so honored in this decade. “In my experience,” said Zewail after a tumultuous week, “whenever you cross fields or bring in new ideas and tools, you find what you don't expect. You open new windows.” Zewail's path to the forefront of the international science arena has been elegant and swift, like the atoms he observes performing molecular dances. With a wealth of experience in home chemistry projects as a boy in Egypt, he sailed to the top of his class at Alexandria University. The classical science education he received there prepared him for a promised tenure-track position in the field of his choice: math, physics, chemistry, or geology, but he decided to get his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania - to “see the molecular world of chemistry.” He had heard of Caltech, but to this young Egyptian, “institute” sounded less prestigious than “university.” As it turned out, Penn provided the “ideal” transition from classical science studies to the postdoctoral work he did at UC Berkeley. He stayed at Berkeley for postdoctoral work for two reasons: to think more about research rather than about getting a PhD and “the secret reason - I wanted to buy a big American car to take back to Egypt with me.” At Berkeley, he published three papers “immediately” and was advised to apply to the top handful of American universities. “The most important reason why I decided on Caltech was, once the offer was made, I was well received by the staff, administration, and faculty.” He also felt he could make his own way specializing in dynamics in a department strong on structure. And the Mediterranean climate didn't hurt. That was 1976. Zewail was off and running, earning tenure in a year and a half, making full professorship by 1982, seated in the Pauling Chair by 1990. Now with a Nobel Prize under his belt, what's next? “First of all, I'm not retiring,” he said. “And I'm not going to Hollywood.” In the coming years, Zewail looks forward to more breakthroughs. He will remain active in research and in publishing papers, which he considers to be his babies (363 to date ). Tracking the progress of two papers within a week of receiving the prize, he reached a surprised editor who said, “You on the phone? Impossible! I thought you'd be out wining and dining.” He will continue to push the envelope of what is possible. he had little idea of the importance of the Nobel Prize chemistry and other sciences related the Alexandria University, the University of Pennsylvania and UC Berkeley he appreciated the hearty welcome presented by the people there Zewail should be occupied with dinner parties
Unit3:Passage A:Bathtub Battleships from Ivorydale
American mothers have long believed that when it comes to washing out the mouths of naughty children, nothing beats Ivory Soap (a registered trademark of the Proctor & Gamble Company). This is because its reputation for being safe, mild, and pure is as solid and spotless as the marble of the Lincoln Memorial. It doesn't even taste all that bad. And should you drop it into a tubful of cloudy, child-colored water, not to worry - it floats. Ivory Soap is an American institution, about as widely recognized as the Washington Monument and far more well respected than Congress. It had already attained this noble status when Theodore Roosevelt was still a rough-riding cowboy in North Dakota. Introduced in 1879 as an inexpensive white soap intended to rival the quality of imported soaps, it was mass marketed by means of one of the first nationwide advertising campaigns. People were told that Ivory was “so pure that it floats,” and the notion took hold. As a result, at least half a dozen generations of Americans have gotten themselves clean with Ivory. So many hands, faces, and baby bottoms have been washed with Ivory that their numbers beat the imagination. Not even Proctor & Gamble knows how many billions of bars of Ivory have been sold. The company keeps a precise count, however, of the billions of dollars it earns. Annual sales of Ivory Soap, Ivory Snow, Crest toothpaste, Folger's coffee, and the hundreds of other products now marketed under the Proctor & Gamble umbrella exceed thirty billion dollars. The company has grown a bit since it was founded in 1837 in Cincinnati, Ohio, by a pair of immigrants named William Proctor and James Gamble, each of whom pledged $3,596.47 to the enterprise. For decades Proctor & Gamble manufactured candles and soap in relatively modest quantities. It took more than twenty years for sales to top one million dollars, which they did shortly before the Civil War . The company's big break came with the introduction of its floating soap and the realization that an elaborate advertising campaign could turn a simple, though high-quality, product into a phenomenon. The soap's brand name was lifted from “out of ivory palaces,” a phrase found in the Bible. So successful was this new product and the marketing effort that placed it in the hands of nearly every American that the company soon built an enormous new factory in a place called Ivorydale. Proctor & Gamble never forgot the advertising lessons it learned with Ivory. For instance, it was among the first manufacturers to use radio to reach consumers nationwide. In 1933 Proctor & Gamble's Oxydol soap powder sponsored a radio serial called Ma Perkins, and daytime dramas were forever after known as “soap operas.” Over the years the company added dozens of new product lines such as Prell shampoo, Duncan Hines cake mixes, and the ever-present Tide, “new and improved” many a time. To this day, however, Ivory Soap remains a Proctor & Gamble backbone product. Ivory remains a favorite among consumers, too, and no wonder. With a bar of Ivory Soap in your hand, you are holding a chunk of American history. If you like, you can even wash your hands and face with it and be assured that it is “ninety-nine and forty-four-one-hundredths percent pure.” And it floats. The latter quality of Ivory Soap is especially attractive to children. Generations of little boys armed with toothpicks, miniature flags, or leftover parts from model ships - there are always a few - have converted bars of Ivory Soap into bathtub battleships. A note of warning for any small boys who may be reading this: Mothers tend to frown on the practice. Proctor & Gamble was not impressively successful in its first 20 years. its successful nationwide advertising campaign Ivory Soap is well-known to Americans compete with high-quality soaps coming from foreign countries Soap operas became known as a result of a P&G sponsored radio serial.
Unit3:Passage B: Haier Seeks Cool U.S. Image
NEW YORK, Aug 2 (Reuters) - For most American shoppers, “Made in China” may still suggest cheap toys, but China's largest household appliance maker has ambitious plans to change that with its sales of a growing range of sleek minibars.
Haier Group Co., which according to some industry estimates is the world's second-biggest maker of refrigerators, is seeking to outflank America's three major appliance makers by competing on image rather than price, and by targeting students in the hope that they will remain loyal as they get older.
And so far the strategy, which may signal the way for future campaign in the U.S. market by other Chinese consumer products companies, may be working - at least according to two arms of the world's largest retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
“It's not about whether they're made in China,” said Melissa Berryhill, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart's Sam's Club, whose last holiday season catalog featured a black Haier cooler with smoked glass doors that is big enough to chill 30 bottles of wine.
“They're an exceptional value,” she said of the $300 luxury machine, sold along with the more ordinary Haier chest freezer that costs about $160.
Wal-Mart's main discount operation in April began selling the chest freezers in half of its 2,600 stores, while most of its stores sell at least one of two versions of compact refrigerators made by Haier.
“They're popular and beating our expectations on sales,” said Wal-Mart spokesman Rob Phillips, who added that the Haier 4.6 cubic feet and 5 cubic feet freezers cost about the same as General Electric Co.'s comparable products, selling for around $169. COLLEGE TOEHOLD GE, Whirlpool Corp. and Maytag Corp. currently dominate the U.S. marketplace for household appliances but they tend to focus most of their attention on mainstream areas such as large refrigerators and freezers.
Haier, which says it currently sells $200 million worth of appliances in the U.S. annually, now claims more than a 35 percent share of the U.S. market for refrigerators 4 cubic feet and smaller - the minibars found in hotels and college dormitories.
“When those college kids using our little refrigerators grow up and marry, we want them to be thinking of us for their first fridge,” said Michael Jemal, Haier America's president, who was Haier's first U.S. distributor before setting up the unit in 1999.
Haier may need to depend less on the Chinese market because it is likely to face an increasing challenge on its own turf. China's entry into the World Trade Organization will open up Chinese manufacturers to greater foreign competition at home.
Haier, which had global revenues of $5 billion last year, spent $30 million setting up a plant late last year in Camden, South Carolina that will make large Haier brand refrigerators. Company officials say they hope initiatives like that will grow U.S. sales to $1 billion by .
“They're building up their learning curve in the U.S., and then picking up niche markets,” said Ming-Jer Chen, a professor at the Darden School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia and the author of a new book, Inside Chinese Business.
BROADWAY HEADQUARTERS The company, whose Chief Executive Zhang Ruimin is famous in China for being filmed smashing sub-standard products with a hammer, last week bought a historical bank building on Broadway in Manhattan for $14 million.
“Buying a New York building for $14 million is not what's going to make us,” said Jemal. “It's about offering the customers the products the competition doesn't have.”
In the third quarter of , for example, the company plans to launch stainless steel Internet-linked appliances with Flash Gordon stylings, such as a home clothes washing machine that can be started via the Internet, he said.
To grow its brand in the U.S., the company has taken out ad space on a case-by-case basis on trolley cars at JFK International Airport in New York and on billboards in Miami and Chicago, but has not yet contracted with any of the big advertising firms. And Haier America is not only battling rival appliance makers in the U.S. - it is also manufacturing for some of them. Haier America does about 20 to 25 percent of its manufacturing on a contract basis for other companies, including big U.S. competitors, who sell its products under their own brand names.
Using its own strategies, Haier is gradually building its brand name in the American market.
Haier focuses on U.S. college students for the purpose of keeping them as future customers.
Haier won't succeed only by the purchase of that building
Haier finds a suitable position in the U.S. market through exploration
a refrigerator with an American brand may be a product of Haier's
Unit4:Passage A:Not Now, Dr. Miracle
Severino Antinori is a rich Italian doctor with a string of private fertility clinics to his name. He likes watching football and claims the Catholic faith. Yet the Vatican is no fan of his science. In his clinics, Antinori already offers every IVF treatment under the sun, but still there are couples he cannot help. So now the man Italians call Dr Miracle is offering to clone his patients to create the babies they so desperately want.
And of course it's created quite a stir, with other scientists rounding on Antinori as religious leaders line up to attack his cloning plan as an insult to human dignity. Yet it's an ambition Antinori has expressed many times before. What's new is that finally it seems to be building a head of steam. Like-minded scientists from the US have joined Antinori in his cloning adventure. At a conference in Rome last week they claimed hundreds of couples have already volunteered for the experiments. Antinori shot to fame seven years ago helping grandmothers give birth using donor eggs. Later he pioneered the use of mice to nurture the sperm of men with poor fertility. He is clearly no ordinary scientist but a showman who thrives on controversy and pushing reproductive biology to the limits. And that of course is one reason why he's seen as being so dangerous. However, his idea of using cloning to combat infertility is not as mad as it sounds. Many people have a hard job seeing the point of reproductive cloning. But for some couples, cloning represents the only hope of having a child carrying their genes, and scientists like Antinori are probably right to say that much of our opposition to cloning as a fertility treatment is irrational. In future we may want to change our minds and allow it in special circumstances. But only when the science is ready. And that's the real problem. Five years on from Dolly, the science of cloning is still stuck in the dark ages. The failure rate is a shocking 97 per cent and deformed babies all too common. Even when cloning works, nobody understands why. So forget the complex moral arguments. To begin cloning people now, before even the most basic questions have been answered, is simply a waste of time and energy. This is not to say that Antinori will fail, only that if he succeeds it is likely to be at an unacceptably high price. Hundreds of eggs and embryos will be wasted and lots of women will go through difficult pregnancies resulting in miscarriages or abortions. A few years from now techniques will have improved and the wasteful loss won't be as excessive. But right now there seems to be little anyone can do to keep the cloners at bay. And it's not just Antinori and his team who are eager to go. A religious group called the Raelians believes cloning is the key to achieving immortality, and it, too, claims to have the necessary egg donors and volunteers willing to be implanted with cloned embryos. So what about tougher laws? Implanting cloned human embryos is already illegal in many countries but it will never be prohibited everywhere. In any case, the prohibition of cloning is more likely to drive it underground than stamp it out. Secrecy is already a problem. Antinori and his team are refusing to name the country they'll be using as their base. Like it or not, the research is going ahead. Sooner or later we are going to have to decide whether regulation is safer than prohibition. Antinori would go for regulation, of course. He believes it is only a matter of time before we lose our hang-ups about reproductive cloning and accept it as just another IVF technique. Once the first baby is born and it cries, he said last week, the world will embrace it. But the world will never embrace the first cloned baby if it is unhealthy or deformed or the sole survivor of hundreds of pregnancies. In jumping the gun, Dr Miracle and his colleagues are taking one hell of a risk. If their instincts are wrong, the backlash against cloning - and indeed science as a whole - could be catastrophic. the research on cloning humans should not be conducted so recklessly Vatican is against Antinori's cloning plan Criticizing cloning science is not advanced enough he tries to challenge the biological limits to combat infertility
Unit4:Passage B:I Have His Genes But Not His Genius
It's Christmas Eve 2040, and I'm the only bartender still working that afternoon, and the house is practically empty. I see this guy down at the end of the bar, sitting by himself. I bring him a fresh drink, and wish him greetings of the season. He looks at me, sort of funny, and says: “Do you know who I am?” I admit I don't. “Here, maybe this will help,” he says, and he pulls a little picture out of his wallet. An old portrait, really old, like centuries old. It's a young man in profile: sharp nose, weak chin, definite resemblance to my friend here. At the bottom, there's a caption: “W. A. Mozart.” Now it's my turn to look at him funny. Then it hits me like a brick. “You're that clone guy,” I say. “The guy in the papers back in the '20s.” “In the flesh. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. I have his brain, his heart, his DNA. He's my father and my mother and my brother. He's my identical twin, except I was born 247 years later.” So he starts talking. It takes him a long time to explain, and I didn't get it all, but I got a lot. In , Congress passed a ban on cloning humans, but of course mad scientists went ahead with secret cloning. And then, there was this software billionaire who was nuts about Mozart, and was especially nuts about Mozart's Requiem. He set up a secret institute in Switzerland and hired some top biologists and told them they'd get $1 million each for every baby they cloned from Mozart's DNA. In , the institute managed to bring four babies to term. Two died shortly after birth. Two survived. But then this software billionaire died, and his company collapsed, and so did his cloning institute. One baby Mozart was put up for adoption anonymously. No one knows what happened to that one. The other baby was adopted by one of the scientists, who was a big Mozart fan herself. “And that's me,” he says. His mother, of course, didn't tell him or anyone else who he was, but she told the boy how special he was, how he was a genius, what a great composer he could be, trying to push her little Mozart toward music. But the s weren't the 1760s. The boy may have had talent, but he also had his own priorities, and they didn't include violin sonatas. He liked rock music and he liked it loud, and then as he got older he liked beer and girls. The harder his mother pushed him to be a great composer, the less he wanted to be one. After a while his mother gave up. By the time he was 20, he had a decent job working in a frame shop. And that's when the roof fell in. Some reporter got wind of the institute and the cloning experiment and tracked him down. But no one could prove he was a clone of Mozart without digging up the original, so the media treated him as a joke. It just crushed him. He tried running away. He joined a Buddhist monastery in Japan. One day, while he was there, he heard the Requiem. Not for the first time, but this time it was different. “My God, it was beautiful!” he says. “I felt a realization explode inside my head. I just felt it somehow: It rang inside of me. I'd finish it, or die trying.” He knew that if he could finish the Requiem, he'd be famous for real, a genius instead of a fool. He immersed himself in Mozart's music. Nights, weekends, all the time, he drove himself, working on the Requiem. “And? What happened?” “I turned 37 four months ago. I've been working on the Requiem for 15 years. Mozart died when he was 35. I should have finished the Requiem two years ago.” “And you haven't.” He looks at me for a while and shakes his head, “You don't understand. I have his genes but not his genius.” And with that he drops a tip on the bar and is gone. I never saw him again. If the Requiem was ever finished, I never heard about it.
Unit5:Passage A:Tongue-tied
Several weeks ago I was riding in a cab when the driver's eyes caught mine in the rear view mirror and he said, “Excuse me, Miss? Can you help me?” As any hard-bitten city dweller knows, the correct answer to a question like “Can you help me?” should always be some version of “It depends.” I chirped, “Sure.” “Thank you,” he said. He passed a slip of yellow paper into the back seat. I stared at the paper, wondering. Was this a joke? A threat? Hand-printed on the paper in tiny block letters was this: proverb peculiar idiomatic “Please,” he said. “What is the meaning of these words?” I stared at the words in the distressed way you might stare at party guests whose faces you've seen somewhere before but whose names have escaped your mind. Proverb? Peculiar? Idiomatic? How on earth should I know? It's one thing to use a word, it's another to explain it. I resorted to shifting the topic. “Where did you get these words?” The driver explained that he was Pakistani. He listened to the radio as he drove and often jotted down unfamiliar, fascinating words whose meanings and spellings he then sought from his passengers. “Peculiar,” he said. “What does this mean?”
I could manage that one. “Strange,” I said. “Odd. Often with a hint of something suspicious.” “Thank you, Miss. And idiomatic?” I cleared my throat. “Um, it's a, well, um. It involves a peculiar use of the language.” I thought my use of peculiar was kind of clever. He looked confused, a reminder that clever's not clever if it doesn't communicate. “Uh, let's see. 'Idiomatic' is related to the word 'idiom'. An idiom's something that's used in, say, a particular part of the country or by a particular group of people. People who aren't part of that group aren't likely to use it and might not understand it.” Watching his puzzled look, I did what a person often does when at a loss for the right words: I went on talking, as if a thousand vague words would add up to one accurate definition. “Can you give me an example?” I racked my brains. “Gapers block,” I said. A peculiarly Chicago phrase. But did it really qualify as idiomatic? I had no idea because the longer I thought about idioms the less sure I was what they were. “And proverb?” I should have told the poor man right then that I might be misleading him down the proverbial path, whatever that really means, but instead I said, “I think a proverb is kind of like an aphorism. But not quite.” “A what?” “Never mind. A proverb is a condensed saying that teaches you a lesson.” “An example?” The meter clicked off a full 20 cents while I searched madly through my mind. “Haste makes waste?” I finally whimpered. But was that a proverb? Wait. Weren't proverbs actually stories, not just phrases? While I was convincing myself they were, he said, “Can an idiom be a proverb?” I could answer that. Just not right now, now when it mattered, now when the fate of a curious, intelligent immigrant hung on the answers he assumed would fall from a native speaker's tongue as naturally as leaves from an October tree. So I retreated. “Do most of your passengers give you answers when you ask for definitions?” “Oh, yes, Miss. Very interesting definitions.” Until that moment, I'd been so inspired by the driver's determination to learn English, so enthralled by the chance to indulge my curiosity about words with another curious soul, that I didn't fully grasp the potential for linguistic fraud committed in this man's cab. Now I could barely allow myself to imagine what kind of deformed English he was being fed by cowards like me who couldn't simply say, “I don't really know my own language.” I can only trust that someone as curious as he is also owns a dictionary. And that he figures out that, no matter what his passengers may say, haste doesn't always make waste at the gapers block. They are not so willing to help others. It is easier to use a word than to explain it. She didn't really know a lot of her own language. To use it as an example to explain a proverb.
The driver impressed the author with his eagerness to learn English.
Unit5:Passage B:Returning to College
If I thought I'd live to be a hundred, I'd go back to college next fall. I was drafted into the Army at the end of my junior year and, after four years in the service, had no inclination to return to finish. By then, it seemed, I knew everything. Well, as it turns out, I don't know everything, and I'm ready to spend some time learning. I wouldn't want to pick up where I left off. I'd like to start all over again as a freshman. You see, it isn't just the education that appeals to me. I've visited a dozen colleges in the last two years, and college life looks extraordinarily pleasant. The young people on campus are all gung ho to get out and get at life. They don't seem to understand they're having one of its best parts. Here they are with no responsibility to anyone but themselves, a hundred or a thousand ready-made friends, teachers trying to help them, families at home waiting for them to return for Christmas to tell all about their triumphs, three meals a day - so it isn't gourmet food - but you can't have everything. Too many students don't really have much patience with the process of being educated. They think half the teachers are idiots, and I wouldn't deny this. They think the system stinks sometimes. I wouldn't deny that. They think there aren't any nice girls/boys around. I'd deny that. They just won't know what an idyllic time of life college can be until it's over. The students are anxious to acquire the knowledge they think they need to make a buck, but they aren't really interested in education for education's sake. That's where they're wrong, and that's why I'd like to go back to college. I know now what a joy knowledge can be, independent of anything you do with it. I'd take several courses in philosophy. I like the thinking process that goes with it. Philosophers are fairer than is absolutely necessary, but I like them, even the ones that I think are wrong. Too much of what I know of the great philosophers comes secondhand or from condensations. I'd like to take a course in which I actually had to read Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Spinoza, Locke, John Dewey and the other great thinkers. I'd like to take some calculus, too. I have absolutely no ability in that direction and not much interest, either, but there's something going on in mathematics that I don't understand, and I'd like to find out what it is. My report cards won't be mailed to my father and mother, so I won't have to worry about marks. I bet I'l1 do better than when they were mailed. There are some literary classics I ought to read and I never will, unless I'm forced to by a good professor, so I'll take a few courses in English literature. I took a course that featured George Gordon Byron, usually referred to now as “Lord Byron,” and I'd like to take that over again. I did very well in it the first time. I actually read all of Don Juan and have never gotten over how great it was. I know I could get an A in that if I took it over. I'd like to have a few easy courses. My history is very weak, and I'd want several history courses. I'm not going to break my back over them, but I'd like to be refreshed about the broad outline of history. When someone says sixteenth century to me, I'd like to be able to it with some names and events. This is just a little conversational conceit, but that's life. If I can find a good teacher, I'd certainly want to go back over English grammar and usage. He'd have to be good, because you might not think so sometimes, but I know a lot about using the language. Still, there are times when I'm stumped. I was wondering the other day what part of speech the word “please” is in the sentence, “Please don't take me seriously.” I've been asked to speak at several college graduation ceremonies. Maybe if I graduate, they'll ask me to speak at my own. They fail to realize that college life is precious. A friend who is easily and immediately available. Unfair He finds it is a joy to get better educated. he is curious about mathematics
Unit6:Passage A:The Woman Taxi Driver In Cairo
Her name is Nagat. I first saw her outside Cairo's airport terminal. A woman taxi driver - the only woman, for that matter, among a large crowd of her male counterparts. Do you know what it is like to arrive in a strange city in the middle of the night? Nobody, not even a ray of sunshine is here to greet you. When I walk out of the terminal, I am facing the crowd of taxi drivers milling about in front of every airport the world over. Here in Cairo, it is large and noisy. “Taxi!” “You want taxi?” I hear all round me. I feel a firm hand holding my left arm. “You want taxi, follow me,” the woman says. She doesn't ask, she simply pulls me through the crowd. I follow her willingly. There is this moment when a tourist, particularly a woman, simply has to trust someone. We stop at a worn car. It has seen a better day, there are quite a few scrapes on its body, the tires are bald and there is a crack in the windshield. But it is a car for hire, and the woman will personally drive me. I breathe a sigh of relief when she puts my bag into the trunk, locks it and gets behind the wheel. “I will drive you, don't worry,” she says. Nagat, as she now explains to me, works as a taxi driver several days and nights a week. She has another job, working in an office, but details of it remain vague. The little old car is not hers; it belongs to a boss from whom she in turn rents it whenever she can. She has been a driver ever since her husband died some ten years earlier and left her with two teenage kids and her parents to support. She knows every nook and cranny in and around Cairo - no easy feat. Cairo with its complex system of streets and lanes, its quarters and markets is like a labyrinth invented by ancient storytellers. Hundreds of mosques - many of which are masterpieces of Islamic architecture, old neighborhoods with houses boxed together, huge apartment buildings on the outskirts and the Nile calmly running through it; all are part of this overcrowded city. With a mild sense of humor around a deep core of understanding of human nature, Nagat takes control of my sightseeing schedule. Every morning punctually at nine o'clock, I can depend on seeing her short, solid frame outside the hotel lobby, her round face turning into a big smile as soon as she sees me coming down the stairs. Most every day, she wears an earth tone-colored Jellaba. Her movements are energetic and she doesn't waste any time. Her determined approach seems to have grown on a bed of economy, on the necessity to get as much done as she possibly can.
What becomes clear to me soon as she drives me from museum to pyramid, from one part of town to the opposite, is this: she is a true exception here. Wherever we stop, be it for a cup of tea during a break or upon arriving at a historical site where her male colleagues gather in the parking area - everywhere, she is being noticed. Men walk up to her in the car with questioning faces. As she tells me, they all have one question first of all: “Are you a taxi driver?” She then explains in a few short sentences, and I see the men's faces soften, smile and respectfully and kindly chat with her. This scene repeats itself over and over again. I get the sense that she invites goodwill from the people she meets. Nagat is proud and independent. One day, as I find her waiting outside a museum, she is just taking a spare tire out of the trunk of the taxi. One of the bald tires had finally gone flat, and she was going to change it herself. Several curious people gather around her and she receives offers of help - but no, she wants no part of that. In her efficient, deliberate manner, she changes the tire, and having done so, washes her hands with bottled water, gets in the taxi and asks “Where to now?” Should you find yourself at Cairo's airport, look for Nagat outside the international arrival hall. If you are lucky, you will have a chance to see Cairo through the eyes of a woman taxi driver. she instinctively felt she should trust Nagat she asked for low fares it was unusual for a woman to work as a taxi driver in Cairo capable and independent her appreciation of the dignity of a woman
Unit6:Passage B:A Russian Experience
It was almost midnight, yet the streets were bathed in a soft, shimmering light. The sun had just gone down and twilight would soon give way to night. We were strolling along the Nevsky Prospekt, a wide avenue stretching four kilometres and filled with people, music and street entertainers. This was St Petersburg in August and it seemed the city was out to celebrate the long summer nights. We had just left the home of newly found Russian friends and after a wonderful traditional dinner decided to have some exercise before going to bed. It has always been my dream to visit St Petersburg. Absorbed by Russian history since childhood, I wanted to see it all for myself. Now, thanks to Perestroika, tourists are welcomed into Russia and St Petersburg with its rich, cultural history is a popular choice. We flew in from Stockholm and from the air immediately noticed a well-planned city with apartment blocks built in semi-circles with central courtyards and gardens. Not only did this seem practical, but the idea behind the design was to shelter residents from the fierce winter winds. The city was built by European architects in the 18th and 19th centuries and remains one of Europe's most beautiful cities. Straddling the wide River Neva, the city is made up of almost 50 islands connected by some 310 bridges. No wonder the sight of elegant buildings along the canals reminded me of Paris, Amsterdam and Venice. I hadn't met many Russian people but I had an intense love for their country and traditions and was passionate about art and literature. Russian writers such as Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky reach the very soul of ordinary Russians, and this I find intriguing. It was no different when I finally found myself in Russia. People were openly friendly and eager to discuss any aspect of their lives in their beloved Motherland. No matter how bad the economy, somehow these people have the ability to see the positive aspects of their lives, whatever their circumstances. We met an attractive woman from Moscow, and we fast became friends and it was she who invited us into the home of some dear friends of hers. The apartment block was in an elegant area of St Petersburg and was probably a palace in the past but now converted into apartments of four floors. The entrance through a narrow hallway was dark and dull and there was an old fashioned lift on the ground floor with steel folding gates that clanged shut, after which the lift moved very slowly upwards. It was quicker to walk up the staircase. Our host, Yuri Petrochenkov, himself an artist, warmly greeted us at the door. He was tall with gray hair pulled into a tail. His open, friendly manner and twinkling eyes showed a sense of humor and his English with a thick accent made him an entertaining host. Nelly, his wife, spoke little English but understood a great deal more. We were ushered into their main room, which served as a living-room, dining room and TV area. There was an air of intimacy in the room, as though it was the core part of this family. Many parties, social and political discussions and family gatherings take place here. We were honored to be there and I felt ashamed that I had absolutely no Russian language to attempt to communicate in. Why is it that people of the English-speaking world take for granted that the rest of the world should speak English? I had always meant to learn Russian and had enrolled for courses in the past but they never started because of lack of numbers. Our meal was a feast in itself. We weren't offered wine, just vodka in little shot glasses and before drinking there is always a toast. Some nine vodkas later, Yuri was in fine form and had found a drinking partner in my husband! Wandering along the river, we agreed that not only had we found new friends, but we had just spent probably the most enjoyable experience of our trip to Russia. This is what travel is all about - to get to the heart and soul of the people and to try to understand and experience a little of what makes others tick. cultural history understanding people and sharing their life experiences it was also a city with a crisscross network of canals they have the ability to handle whatever circumstances they are in not many people in the author's country are interested in Russian
Unit7:Passage A:Agony from Ecstasy
I hear a lot of people talking about Ecstasy, calling it a fun, harmless drug. All I can think is, “if they only knew.” I grew up in a small, rural town in Pennsylvania. It's one of those places where everyone knows your name, what you did, what you ate and so on. I was a straight-A student and one of the popular kids, liked by all the different crowds. Drugs never played a part in my life. They were never a question - I was too involved and focused on other things. I always dreamed of moving to New York City to study acting and pursue a career in theater. My dream came true when my mom brought me to the city to attend acting school. As you can imagine, it was quite a change from home. I was exposed to new people, new ideas and a completely new way of life - a way of life that exposed me to drugs. Most of the people that I met in the acting school had already been doing drugs for years. I felt that by using drugs, I would become a part of their world and it would deepen my friendships with them to new levels. I tried pot, even a little xxxxxxx, but it was Ecstasy that changed my life forever. I remember the feeling I had the first time I did Ecstasy: complete and utter bliss. I could feel the pulse of the universe. It was as if I had unlocked some sort of secret world; it was as if I'd found heaven. And I wondered how anything that made you feel so good could possibly be bad. As time went by, things changed. I graduated, and began to use drugs, especially Ecstasy, more frequently. As I did, I actually started to look down on those who did not. I surrounded myself only with those who did. I had gone from a girl who never used drugs to a woman who couldn't imagine life without them. In five months, I went from a person living somewhat responsibly while pursuing my dream to a person who didn't care about a thing - and the higher I got, the deeper I sank into a dark, lonely place. When I did sleep, I had nightmares and the shakes. I had pasty skin, a throbbing head and the beginnings of paranoia, but I ignored it all, thinking it was normal until the night I thought I was dying. On this night, I was sitting on the couch with my friends, watching a movie and feeling normal when suddenly, I felt as if I needed to jump out of my skin. Racing thoughts, horrible images and illusions crept through my mind. I thought I was seeing the devil, and I repeatedly asked my friends if I was dead. On top of all this, I felt as if I was having a heart attack. Somehow, I managed to pick up the telephone and call my mom in the middle of the night, telling her to come get me. She did, pulling me out of my apartment the next morning. I didn't know who I was or where I was as my mom drove me back to my family's hospital in Pennsylvania. I spent most of the drive curled up in the back seat while my younger sister tried to keep me calm. I spent the next 14 days in the hospital in a state of extreme confusion. This is what Ecstasy gave me - but it didn't stop there. My doctors performed a scan of my brain. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the results. The scan showed several dark marks on the image of my brain, and my doctors told me those were areas - areas that carry out memory functions - where the activity of my brain had been changed in some way. Since I saw that scan, my life has been an uphill crawl. I hear people say Ecstasy is a harmless, happy drug. There's nothing happy about the way that “harmless” drug chipped away at my life. Ecstasy took my strength, my motivation, my dreams, my friends, my apartment, my money and most of all, my sanity. I worry about my future and my health every day. I have many mountains ahead of me, but I plan to keep climbing because I'm one of the lucky ones. I've been given a second chance, and that's not something that everyone gets. Drugs never came into her life when she was a child. Because she wanted to have a closer tie with her new friends.
Totally fascinated. she has started a life which will be very difficult to keep up many drug abusers never had the opportunity to return to normal
Unit7:Passage B:Drug Warriors
Billy White was wearing a jacket with the word “POLICE” printed on the back, and jeans. His piece was a Glock, a nine-millimeter pistol - New Haven Police Department standard issue. Around him, White recognized state cops, special agents from the DEA, officers from the U.S. Marshal's office, FBI special agents, and other police detectives like himself. There were anti-drug case agents from the ATF, and intelligence officers from the police departments of nearby cities. White looked around. These were his people, his soldiers, the ones who would be by his side on the front lines. This was the New Haven Drug Gang Task Force, and Lieutenant Billy White was in charge of it. It was 3 a.m., and most of the men had been up since the morning before. But none of them would sleep that night either. They had a big day ahead of them. Hours earlier, White had been in his office, preparing warrants. Meanwhile, the New Haven Airport had quietly filled with federal agents, flying in from New York and Washington, DC. They had then gathered at the western corner of the city. The team's field headquarters that night would be an empty building on the very edge of town. The 300-man team of federal agents, state police, and local police had gathered to discuss the next step in the war on drugs. White listened as his friend Kevin Kline, an FBI special agent and one of the original members of the task force, was speaking to the law enforcement army. Kline laid out the battle plan for the morning's drug bust: the agents were to organize themselves into squads, forming arrest teams and back-up crews. The teams assigned to carry out raids received arrest packets containing the names, addresses, and photographs of each suspect, as well as search warrants issued by the federal court. At 5:30 a.m., the teams were to split up, each reporting to their designated sites to prepare for the final stage of the operation: making the arrests. As he listened, White asked himself the same question that everyone else in the room must have been thinking. Could the team pull off a successful bust? Born and raised in New Haven, White still remembered a time when New Haven was considered a peaceful town. In 1960, only six murders, four rapes, and 16 robberies were reported. But soon, the drug gangs set up shop, and the turf wars began. With the gangs came gang violence: drive-by shootings, innocent victims killed, murders in broad daylight. In 1990, there were 31 murders, 168 rapes, and 1 784 robberies. “Back then it was hell,” White recalls. “I thought, 'What are we doing?'” At exactly 6 a.m., the task force executed a coordinated sweep, arresting 29 out of the 32 people on the list. The arrests in the New Haven area all proceeded without incident. Afterwards, FBI special agent Robert Grispino was struck by the cops' intense emotion. “It was quite a sight,” he told reporters. “With some of the New Haven cops, there were tears in their eyes.” Billy White, of course, was among them. “We got some big fish, too, guys that handled multi, multi, multi kilos,” says White. Of the 29 arrested, about 13 were Colombian citizens. The task force had successfully arrested many of the importers and distributors that had connections with source companies. “The core organization that they arrested here in New Haven had direct connections with Miami, San Juan, and Cali,” says Grispino.
Meanwhile, the entire Cali cartel leadership has been arrested by a Colombian police squad. Eight of the top nine Cali drug lords have given themselves up to Colombian authorities or been killed in gunfights with police. Today, New Haven residents are once again venturing out into the streets. The neighborhoods feel safer. In fact, the task force's operations have proven to be so successful that they have attracted national attention. As for Billy White and his team, they continue to do what they have always done. “I think we can win the war on drugs,” says White. “I'll probably be gone by then. But I think someday, we'll work our way out of a job, and there won't be any more gangs left in this city.”
大学英语精读2课文原文
Beneathmy clenched fingers the alder waswrigglinglike a small, frightened snake. My father saw that I was about to drop it.
“Hang on to it!”
“The branch issquirming,“ I repeated. ”And I hear something that sounds like a river!“
”Open your eyes,“ my father ordered.
I was stunned, as though he'd awakened me while I was dreaming.
”What does it mean?“ I asked my father.
”It means that underneath us, right here, there's a little freshwater spring. If we dig, we could drink from it. I've just taught you how to find a spring. It's something my own father taught me. It isn't something you learn in school. And it isn't useless: a man can get along without writing andarithmetic, but he can never get along without water.“
Much later, I discovered that my father was famous in the region because of what the people called his ”gift“: before digging a well they always consulted him; they would watch himprospectingthe fields or the hills, eyes closed, hands clenched on the fork of an alderbough. Wherever my father stopped, they marked the ground; there they would dig; and there water wouldgushforth.
Years passed; I went to other schools, saw other countries, I had children, I wrote some books and my poor father is lying in the earth where so many times he had found fresh water.
One day someone began to make a film about my village and itsinhabitants, from whom I've stolen so many of the stories that I tell. With the film crew we went to see a farmer to capture the image of a sad man: his children didn't want to receive theinheritancehe'd spent his whole life preparing for them—the finest farm in the area. While the technicians were getting cameras and microphones ready the farmer put his arm around my shoulders, saying:
”I knew your father well.“
”Ah! I know. Everybody in the village knows each other... No one feels like an outsider.“
”You know what's under your feet?“
”Hell?“ I asked, laughing.
”Under your feet there's a well. Before I dug I called in specialists from the Department of Agriculture; they did research, they analyzedshovelfulsof dirt; and they made a report where they said there wasn't any water on my land. With the family, the animals, the crops, I need water. When I saw that those specialists hadn't found any. I thought of your father and I asked him to come over. He didn't want to; I think hewasprettyfed up withme because I'd asked those specialists instead of him. But finally came; he went and cut off a little branch, then he walked around for a while with his eyes shut; he stopped, he listened to something we couldn't hear and then he said to me: “Dig right here, there's enough water to get your whole flock drunk and drown your specialist besides.” We dug and found water. Fine water that's never heard of pollution.
The film people were ready; they called to me to take my place.
“I'm gonna show you something,” said the farmer, keeping me back.“ You wait right here.”
He disappeared into a shack which he must have used to store things, then came back with a branch which he held out to me.
“I never throw nothing away; I kept the alder branch your father cut to find my water. I don't understand, it hasn't dried out.”
Moved as I touched the branch, kept out of I don't know what sense ofpiety—and which really wasn't dry—I had the feeling that my father was watching me over my shoulder; I closed my eyes and, standing above the spring my father had discovered, I waited for the branch to writhe, I hoped the sound of gushing water would rise to my ears.
The alder stayed motionless in my hands and the water beneath the earth refused to sing.
Somewhere along the roads I'd taken since the village of my childhood I had forgotten my father's knowledge.
“Don't feel sorry,” said the man, thinking no doubt of his farm and his childhood; “nowadays fathers can't pass on anything to the next generation.”
And he took the alder branch from my hands.
桤木树枝在我紧握的手指下扭动，如受惊的蛇一般。父亲看到我想扔掉它。
“抓紧。”
“树枝在蠕动，“我又说一次。”我听到像河流的声音！”
“睁开眼睛，”父亲命令道。
我吃了一惊，好像被他从睡梦中叫醒一样。
“这是怎么回事？”我问父亲。
“这意味着在我们脚下，就在这儿，有个小淡水泉。挖的话，就可以喝到水了。我这是在教你怎么找到泉水。这是我父亲教我的。这些东西你在学校是学不到的。它不是没用的知识：人不用写作和算术都可以生存，但不能没有水。后来，我发现父亲在这里有名的原因是具备人们所说的天赋：每次挖井之前总来咨询他，他们都会看到他勘察田地或山岗，双眼紧闭，双手紧握桤木树杈。父亲每在一个地方停下来，人们就在那里做上记号并在此处挖掘，水流就会从这里涌出。”
很多年过去了，我去了别的学校，看到别的国家。我有了孩子，还出了些书。然而，我可怜的父亲还在地球的一隅，那里他发现了很多淡水。
一次，有人要拍摄关于我们村子和村民的电影，就是从这些村民那里，我听到了自己讲过的很多故事。我们和电影工作者一起去访问一个农民，这是为了拍摄一个悲伤者的形象：他的孩子们不想要他倾注毕生精力为他们准备的遗产--这个地方最好的'农场。当技术人员准备好了摄像机和麦克风时，这位农民抓住我的双肩，说：
“我和你父亲很熟。”
“哈，我知道。这个村的人都相互熟悉...没人觉得自己是外人。”
”你知道你脚下是什么吗？“
“地狱？”我笑着问。
“你的脚下是一眼井。挖之前我请来了农业部的专家们，他们进行了研究，分析了一铲土的成分，最后做出的报告是，我的田地里根本没有水。我有一家人要养活，有牲畜要养，
有庄稼要种，我需要水。这时我发现这些专家什么都没有发现。我想到了你父亲，请他过来。他起初不想来，我想他很不高兴，因为我已经请过专家，而没有请他来。但他最后还是来了。他砍了一个小树枝，双眼紧闭地四处走了一会儿，然后停下。他听到了我们听不到的声音，他告诉我：”就在这里挖，下面的水足够供你家的牲畜饮用了，也可以淹死你那些专家们。“我们挖了挖，果然挖到了水。很好的根本没被污染的水。”
电影人员准备好了，他们要我开始扮演自己的角色。
“我想跟你说些事，”农民说，“你在这儿等着。”
他走进一个小屋，这应该是他储藏物品的地方，然后，拿着一个树枝出来，并交给我。
“我从来不仍任何东西，一直保存着这个桤木树枝，你父亲用它找到了水。我不明白的是，它一直都没有干。”
我摸着树枝，走动着，心里升起一种难以言喻的虔诚--这种感觉一直没有干枯--我感到父亲的目光越过我的肩头。
我闭上眼睛，站在父亲发现的这眼泉水上，我等着树枝翻腾，希望听到泉水涌出的声音。
手里的树枝一动不动，地下的水也没有欢唱起来。
童年后离开村庄所走过的路的某个地方，我已经忘了父亲教我的知识。
“不要伤心，”他说，无疑地，他在想着自己的农场和童年。“现在的父亲们都不会把知识传给下一代了。”
他把桤木树杈从我手中拿走。
1.Beneath adv. 在下方 prep. 在...之下
例句：
The ship sank beneath the waves.
轮船沉没于波涛下面。
2.wriggle n. 蠕动,蜿蜒 v. 蠕动,蜿蜒前进
例句：
I can't brush your hair if you keep wriggling all the time.
你要是一直扭来扭去, 我就没法给你梳头了.
3.squirm vi. (因不舒适、羞愧或紧张而)蠕动
例句：
He was squirming (around) on the floor in agony.
他躺在地上痛苦地扭动著.
4.arithmetic n. 算术
例句：
I'm good at history but not so hot at arithmetic.
我的历史成绩不错, 但算术不太好.
5.prospecting n. 勘探
例句：
Great successes were achieved in geological prospecting.
地质调查成果丰硕。
6.bough n. 大树枝
例句：
The bird settled on the topmost bough.
这只鸟儿在最高的权枝上停了下来。
7.gush n. 涌出 v. 使涌出,迸出
例句：
Oil gashed out from the broken pipe.
油从断裂的管道中喷出来。
8.inhabitant n. 居民
例句：
He lives in a city with 100000 inhabitants.
他住在一个有十万居民的城市。
9.inheritance n. 遗传,遗产
例句：
On the maternal side his inheritance was a happy one.
他从母方接受的遗传是良好的。
10.shovelful n. 满铲(一铲的量,一锹的量)
例句：
He put a shovelful of snow in Kate's bed as a practical joke.
他把一铲雪放在凯特的床上，以此来开玩笑。
11.be fed up with 受够了，厌倦
例句：
I am be fed up with this dull life!
我受够了这种枯燥的生活。
12.piety n. 虔诚
例句：
The old man has great piety towards God.
这位老人对上帝非常虔诚。
1.they would watch him prospecting the fields or the hills, eyes closed, hands clenched on the fork of an alder bough.
【参考译文】他们都会看到他勘察田地或山岗，双眼紧闭，双手紧握桤木树杈。
【结构解析】这里用了watch sb. doing sth.意思是“看到某人正在做某事”。“eyes closed, hands clenched...”做“prospecting ”的伴随状语，表示同时发生的动作。
2.One day someone began to make a film about my village and its inhabitants, from whom I've stolen so many of the stories that I tell.
【参考译文】一次，有人要拍摄关于我们村子和村民的电影，就是从这些村民那里，我听到了自己讲过的很多故事。
【结构解析】“its”指的是“my village”。“ from whom I've stolen so many of the stories that I tell”是定语从句，修饰“ inhabitants”。
3.I had the feeling that my father was watching me over my shoulder.
【参考译文】我感到父亲的目光越过我的肩头。
【结构解析】这句话相当于“I feel that my father...”。
新视野大学英语2读写教程第一单元课文原文
课文指教科书中的正文，区别于注释和习题等，一般在语文或地理中出现。英语，有对话和短文。下面我们来看看新视野大学英语2读写教程unit 1 Time-Conscious Americans课文原文吧。
Section A
Pre-reading Activities
First Listening
Please listen to a short passage carefully and prepare to answer some questions.
Second Listening
Listen to the tape again. Then answer the following questions with your own experiences.
1) What precious resource do Americans value and save?
2) What are the three kinds of behaviors that Americans consider to be a waste of time?
3) In what different ways do Americans approach time in business relations?
Time-Conscious Americans
Americans believe no one stands still. If you are not moving ahead, you are falling behind. This attitude results in a nation of people committed to researching, experimenting and exploring. Time is one of the two elements that Americans save carefully, the other being labor.
“We are slaves to nothing but the clock,” it has been said. Time is treated as if it were something almost real. We budget it, save it, waste it, steal it, kill it, cut it, account for it; we also charge for it. It is a precious resource. Many people have a rather acute sense of the shortness of each lifetime. Once the sands have run out of a person's hourglass, they cannot be replaced. We want every minute to count.
A foreigner's first impression of the U.S. is likely to be that everyone is in a rush — often under pressure. City people always appear to be hurrying to get where they are going, restlessly seeking attention in a store, or elbowing others as they try to complete their shopping. Racing through daytime meals is part of the pace of life in this country. Working time is considered precious. Others in public eating-places are waiting for you to finish so they, too, can be served and get back to work within the time allowed. You also find drivers will be abrupt and people will push past you. You will miss smiles, brief conversations, and small exchanges with strangers. Don't take it personally. This is because people value time highly, and they resent someone else “wasting” it beyond a certain appropriate point.
Many new arrivals to the States will miss the opening exchanges of a business call, for example. They will miss the ritual interaction that goes with a welcoming cup of tea or coffee that may be a convention in their own country. They may miss leisurely business chats in a restaurant or coffee house. Normally, Americans do not assess their visitors in such relaxed surroundings over extended small talk; much less do they take them out for dinner, or around on the golf course while they develop a sense of trust. Since we generally assess and probe professionally rather than socially, we start talking business very quickly. Time is, therefore, always ticking in our inner ear.
Consequently, we work hard at the task of saving time. We produce a steady flow of labor-saving devices; we communicate rapidly through faxes, phone calls or emails rather than through personal contacts, which though pleasant, take longer — especially given our traffic-filled streets. We, therefore, save most personal visiting for after-work hours or for social weekend gatherings.
To us the impersonality of electronic communication has little or no relation to the significance of the matter at hand. In some countries no major business is conducted without eye contact, requiring face-to-face conversation. In America, too, a final agreement will normally be signed in person. However, people are meeting increasingly on television screens, conducting “teleconferences” to settle problems not only in this country but also — by satellite — internationally.
The U. S. is definitely a telephone country. Almost everyone uses the telephone to conduct business, to chat with friends, to make or break social appointments, to say “Thank you”, to shop and to obtain all kinds of information. Telephones save the feet and endless amounts of time. This is due partly to the fact that the telephone service is superb here, whereas the postal service is less efficient.
Some new arrivals will come from cultures where it is considered impolite to work too quickly. Unless a certain amount of time is allowed to elapse, it seems in their eyes as if the task being considered were insignificant, not worthy of proper respect. Assignments are, consequently, felt to be given added weight by the passage of time. In the U. S., however, it is taken as a sign of skillfulness or being competent to solve a problem, or fulfill a job successfully, with speed. Usually, the more important a task is, the more capital, energy, and attention will be poured into it in order to “get it moving”.
Section B
Culture Shock
Do you think studying in a different country is something that sounds very exciting? Like many young people who leave home to study in another country, do you think you would have lots of desirable fun? Certainly, it is a new experience, which brings the opportunity of discovering fascinating things and a feeling of freedom. In spite of these advantages, however, there are also some challenges you will encounter. Because your views may clash with the different beliefs, norms, values, and traditions that exist in different countries, you may have difficulty adjusting to a new culture and to those parts of the culture not familiar to you. This is culture shock. Evidently, at least four essential stages of culture-shock adjustment occur.
The first stage is called “the honeymoon”. In this stage, you feel excitement about living in a different place, and everything seems to be marvelous. You like everything, and everybody seems to be so nice to you. Also, the amusement of life in a new culture seems as though it will have no ending.
Eventually, however, the second stage of culture shock appears. This is the “hostility stage”. You begin to notice that not everything is as good as you had originally thought it was. You become tired of many things about the new culture. Moreover, people don't treat you like a guest anymore. Everything that seemed to be so wonderful at first is now awful, and everything makes you feel distressed and tired.
Usually at this point in your adjustment to a new culture, you devise some defense mechanisms to help you cope and to protect yourself against the effects of culture shock. One type of coping mechanism is called “repression”. This happens when you pretend that everything is acceptable and that nothing bothers you. Another type of defense mechanism is called “regression”. This occurs when you start to act as if you are younger than you actually are; you act like a child. You forget everything, and sometimes you become careless and irresponsible. The third kind of defense mechanism is called “isolation”. You would rather be home alone, and you don't want to communicate with anybody. With isolation, you try to avoid the effects of culture shock, or at least that's what you think. Isolation is one of the worst coping mechanisms you can use because it separates you from those things that could really help you. The last type of defense mechanism is called “rejection”. With this coping mechanism, you think you don't need anybody. You feel you are coping fine alone, so you don't try to ask for help.
The defense mechanisms you utilize in the hostility stage are not helpful. If you only occasionally use one of these coping mechanisms to help yourself survive, that is acceptable. You must be cautious, however. These mechanisms can really hurt you because they prevent you from making necessary adjustments to the new culture.
After you deal with your hostile feelings, recognition of the temporary nature of culture shock begins. Then you come to the third stage called “recovery”. In this stage, you start feeling more positive, and you try to develop comprehension of everything you don't understand. The whole situation starts to become more favorable; you recover from the symptoms of the first two stages, and you adjust yourself to the new norms, values, and even beliefs and traditions of the new country. You begin to see that even though the distinctions of the culture are different from your own, it has elements that you can learn to appreciate.
The last stage of culture shock is called “adjustment”. In this stage, you have reached a point where you actually feel good because you have learned enough to understand the new culture. The things that initially made you feel uncomfortable or strange are now things that you understand. This acquisition of understanding alleviates much of the stress. Now you feel comfortable; you have adjusted to the new culture.
Evidently, culture shock is something you cannot avoid when living in a foreign country. It does not seem like a very helpful experience when you are going through its four stages. However, when you have completely adjusted to a new culture you can more fully enjoy it. You learn how to interact with other people, and you learn a considerable amount about life in a culture that is not your own. Furthermore, learning about other cultures and how to adjust to the shock of living in them helps you learn more about yourself.
Section C
Adjustment to a New Culture
I had to find more friends. After several weeks in school I knew a couple of students but saw them only a few minutes, perhaps three times a week. I decided to learn a few more names. I came ten minutes early to my News Media and U.S. Government class. Two young women, one black and one white, were already there. I told myself to be aggressive and went up to them.
“Hi.” I tried to be casual. “My name is Liu Zongren. I come from Beijing, China.” I stressed Beijing, hoping that might create some attention.
“Oh, really? How do you find it here? ” The white woman seemed interested.
I couldn't understand what she meant. “I came here by plane, of course.” I must have looked lost. The white woman added quickly, “I mean, do you like this country?”
“Well, I don't know. ” How foolish I was. Why had I said this?
“My name is Ann. This is Geri.”
Several other students had arrived by now. I didn't know if the two women wanted to go on talking. I began feeling nervous when I realized I was standing in the middle of the classroom.
Ann started to move away. “Glad to meet you, Mr.— ”
“Liu,” I said in haste, “Just call me Liu. My last, no, my first name is too hard to pronounce.”
“Glad to meet you, Mr. Liu,” Ann repeated.
“Thank you,” I said, my face turning red. I wondered what I had thanked them for, as I made my way to a seat.
After the class began, most of what the professor said escaped my ears and I left as soon as the lecture ended. I had no other class that day and I didn't want to go back to the loneliness of the McKnight house, so I explored around the grounds. Many students were entering a particular lecture hall. I stopped and checked my list of classes. It was a history class. Good.
I went in. I sat in a seat away from the lecture stand. Nobody paid any attention to me. I saw several Asian faces among the crowd. I relaxed, took out my notebook, and opened the school newspaper, pretending to be an old hand. A young man sat down beside me and smiled. It was five minutes until class. Perhaps I could strike up a conversation with this friendly looking man. I started my set introduction. “My name is Liu Zongren. I come from Beijing, China.”
“Glad to meet you. My name is George Christi.” He seemed ready to talk.
“Please write down your name for me.” I handed my notebook to him. “You know, it is very hard for me to remember American names without seeing them spelled out.” I said this out of a desire to speak two more sentences, rather than as an explanation. I looked at what he wrote. “Is yours the same name as that British woman who writes mystery novels? ”
“Sort of,” he answered.
Seeing me at a loss, he asked, “How do you like the weather here?”
“Much the same as that in Beijing. We have cold winters, too.”
“I hope someday I can go to Beijing.”
“You'll be welcome. If you wait for two years, I can show you around.” I was so very eager to make a friend of him.
Unfortunately, the professor appeared and the class began. I would be sure to come to this class again and locate this friendly person.
I didn't try my luck anymore that afternoon. Instead I found a seat in the library and tried to finish some assignments. I took out my books, but my mind refused to absorb anything. I glanced around the library; some students were doing their homework; a few were dozing on the sofa along the wall. Looking at those tired students, I remembered an article in the newspaper had reported that the 1981 fees would be $6,900. How could I blame them for not wanting to talk to me? Costs were so high; they had to put their time and energy into their studies.
I closed my books and began a letter to Fengyun, but couldn't finish it. Sad, I packed up my books and walked slowly back to my room. I knew my sadness came not only from missing my family, but also from the frustration of being unable to learn. People in Beijing must be thinking I was enjoying myself here in the richest country in the world. Yet I was suffering, not because people in America were not accepting me, but because they didn't understand me and didn't seem to care how I felt — and because I didn't understand them, either. After my three classes each day, I walked without aim around the grounds like a lost soul. I had no place to go.
I felt better when dusk fell, knowing that another day had passed.
Section A:
Choose to Be Alone on Purpose
Here we are, all by ourselves, all 22 million of us by recent count, alone in our rooms, some of us liking it that way and some of us not. Some of us divorced, some widowed, some never yet committed.
Loneliness may be a sort of national disease here, and it's more embarrassing for us to admit than any other sin. On the other hand, to be alone on purpose, having rejected company rather than been cast out by it, is one characteristic of an American hero. The solitary hunter or explorer needs no one as they venture out among the deer and wolves to tame the great wild areas. Thoreau, alone in his cabin on the pond, his back deliberately turned to the town. Now, that's character for you.
Inspiration in solitude is a major commodity for poets and philosophers. They're all for it. They all speak highly of themselves for seeking it out, at least for an hour or even two before they hurry home for tea.
Consider Dorothy Wordsworth, for instance, helping her brother William put on his coat, finding his notebook and pencil for him, and waving as he sets forth into the early spring sunlight to look at flowers all by himself. “How graceful, how benign, is solitude,” he wrote.
No doubt about it, solitude is improved by being voluntary.
Look at Milton's daughters arranging his cushions and blankets before they silently creep away, so he can create poetry. Then, rather than trouble to put it in his own handwriting, he calls the girls to come back and write it down while he dictates.
You may have noticed that most of these artistic types went outdoors to be alone. The indoors was full of loved ones keeping the kettle warm till they came home.
The American high priest of solitude was Thoreau. We admire him, not for his self-reliance, but because he was all by himself out there at Walden Pond, and he wanted to be. All alone in the woods.
Actually, he lived a mile, or 20 minutes' walk, from his nearest neighbor; half a mile from the railroad; three hundred yards from a busy road. He had company in and out of the hut all day, asking him how he could possibly be so noble. Apparently the main point of his nobility was that he had neither wife nor servants, used his own axe to chop his own wood, and washed his own cups and saucers. I don't know who did his laundry; he doesn't say, but he certainly doesn't mention doing his own, either. Listen to him: “I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”
Thoreau had his own self-importance for company. Perhaps there's a message here. The larger the ego, the less the need for other egos around. The more modest and humble we feel, the more we suffer from solitude, feeling ourselves inadequate company.
If you live with other people, their temporary absence can be refreshing. Solitude will end on Thursday. If today I use a singular personal pronoun to refer to myself, next week I will use the plural form. While the others are absent you can stretch out your soul until it fills up the whole room, and use your freedom, coming and going as you please without apology, staying up late to read, soaking in the bath, eating a whole pint of ice cream at one sitting, moving at your own pace. Those absent will be back. Their waterproof winter coats are in the closet and the dog keeps watching for them at the window. But when you live alone, the temporary absence of your friends and acquaintances leaves a vacuum; they may never come back.
The condition of loneliness rises and falls, but the need to talk goes on forever. It's more basic than needing to listen. Oh, we all have friends we can tell important things to, people we can call to say we lost our job or fell on a slippery floor and broke our arm. It's the daily succession of small complaints and observations and opinions that backs up and chokes us. We can't really call a friend to say we got a parcel from our sister, or it's getting dark earlier now, or we don't trust that new Supreme Court justice.
Scientific surveys show that we who live alone talk at length to ourselves and our pets and the television. We ask the cat whether we should wear the blue suit or the yellow dress. We ask the parrot if we should prepare steak, or noodles for dinner. We argue with ourselves over who is the greater sportsman: that figure skater or this skier. There's nothing wrong with this. It's good for us, and a lot less embarrassing than the woman in front of us in line at the market who's telling the cashier that her niece Melissa may be coming to visit on Saturday, and Melissa is very fond of hot chocolate, which is why she bought the powdered hot chocolate mix, though she never drinks it herself.
It's important to stay rational.
It's important to stop waiting and settle down and make ourselves comfortable, at least temporarily, and find some grace and pleasure in our condition, not like a self-centered British poet but like a patient princess sealed up in a tower, waiting for the happy ending to our fairy tale.
After all, here we are. It may not be where we expected to be, but for the time being we might as well call it home. Anyway, there is no place like home.
Section A：
Does Mickey Mouse have a beard?
No.
Does this mean that French men seeking work with the Disney organization must shave off their moustaches too?
It depends.
A labor inspector took the Disney organization to court this week, contending that the company's dress and appearance code — which bans moustaches, beards, excess weight, short skirts and fancy stockings — offends individual liberty and violates French labor law.
The case is an illustration of some of the delicate cultural issues the company faces as it gets ready to open its theme park 20 miles (32 kilometers) east of Paris in five months' time.
The Disney management, which is assembling what it calls a “cast” of 12,000 to run the theme park, argues that all employees, from bottle washers to the president, are similar to actors who have to obey rules about appearance. Anyway, a company spokesman says, no one has yet put his moustache before a job. As one new “cast member” put it: “You must believe in what you are doing, or you would have a terrible time here.”
But what do people think of Euro Disney? People everywhere are wondering whether Europeans would like the American recreation.
For all its concern about foreign cultural invasion and its defense against the pollution of the French language by English words, France's Socialist government has been untroubled about putting such a huge American symbol on the doorstep of the capital and has been more concerned about its social effect. It made an extraordinary series of tax and financial concessions to attract the theme park here rather than let it go to sunny Spain.
The theme park itself will be only part of a giant complex of housing, office, and resort developments stretching far into the next century, including movie and television production facilities. As part of its deal with the Disney organization, the government is laying on and paying for new highways, an extension of Paris's regional express railway and even a direct connection for the high speed TGV railway to the Channel Tunnel. The TGV station is being built in front of the main entrance of Euro Disneyland, and is scheduled to come into service in 1994.
If Euro Disneyland succeeds — where theme parks already in France have so far failed — a second and even a third park is likely to be built by the end of the century. Financial experts say that Euro Disneyland, the first phase of which is costing an estimated $3.6 billion, is essential to Disney's overall fortunes, which have been hit by competition and declining attendance in the United States.
French intellectuals have not found many kind things to say about the project. The kids, however, will probably never notice. Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Peter Pan, and Pinocchio all come from European fairy tales or stories and are as familiar to children here as they are in the United States. To a French child Mickey is French. To an Italian kid he is Italian.
The Disney management is stressing this tradition in an apparent response to suggestions that it is culturally insensitive. Although the concept of the theme park is closely based on the original Magic Kingdom in California and Walt Disney World in Florida, “Euro Disneyland will be unique in a manner appropriate to its European home,” the company says. “The legends and fairy tales which come from Europe figure prominently in the creative development of the theme park.” Officials point out, for example, that Sleeping Beauty's castle, the central feature of the theme park, is based not on Hollywood, as some might think, but on the illustrations in a medieval European book. Also, a 360-degree movie, based on the adventures of Jules Verne, features well-known European actors.
Asked to describe other aspects of the effort to make the park more European, a spokesman mentioned that direction signs in the theme park will be in French as well as English, and that some performers will chat in French, Spanish and English. “The challenge is telling things people already know — and at the same time making it different,” the spokesman said.
On the other hand, this effort is not being taken too far. Another Disney spokesman said earlier that the aim of the theme park is to provide a basically American experience for those who seek it. In this way, he said, people who might otherwise have contemplated a vacation in the United States will be happy to stay on this side of the Atlantic.
The Disney organization does seem to focus a bit too much on hair. “Main Street, USA”, the heart of Euro Disneyland, it promises, will feature an old time “Harmony Barber Shop” to deal with “messy hair and hairy chins” — and perhaps even offending mustaches. One difference from California or Florida: Parts of Main Street and waiting areas to get into the attractions will be covered over as a concession to Paris's rainy weather.
Euro Disneyland's short distance to Paris is a definite attraction. Anyone tiring of American or fake European culture can reach the Louvre art museum by express railway in less than an hour — from Minnie Mouse to Mona Lisa in a flash.
Communications figured largely in the Disney organization's decision to site its fourth theme park near Paris. The site is within a two-hour flight of 320 million Europeans. The opening of Eastern Europe is another prize for the company, which thinks that millions of people will put Disneyland at the top of a list of places to visit on their first trip to Western Europe.
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