有关交通的英语文章中学阶段,并且适合做演讲稿的

有关交通的英语文章中学阶段,并且适合做演讲稿的
有关交通的英语文章
中学阶段,并且适合做演讲稿的

有关交通的英语文章中学阶段,并且适合做演讲稿的
Traffic in China
Beijing and Guilin seem to run on pretty much the same traffic rules,the only real difference lying in the exact mixture of trucks,microvans,cars,taxis,motorized tricycles,pedaled tricycles,motorcycles,scooters,mopeds,bicycles,and pedestrians.Chinese drivers - by drivers,I mean anyone operating any of the aforementioned devices,as well as pedestrians,so perhaps a more encompassing term is in order - Chinese traffic combatants combine traits from two of my friends.
As does Gus,they treat all other objects on the road as impersonal objects to be circumnavigated and all traffic laws and mores as tentative suggestions.By depersonalizing the Other,the Chinese traffic combatant frees herself to try any and all maneuvers that might get her from point A to point B at her own time and pace.For example,driving on the wrong side of the street; inventing lanes; making nine-point U-turns in the middle of a crowded street; stopping without warning in the middle of a four-lane street; parking on a busy sidewalk; all quite ordinary and acceptable once the Golden Rule is eliminated.
Chinese drivers share with Jessie a stubborn unwillingness to assign emotional value to a projected collision.Near misses that would prompt a road rage shooting incident in America are in China non-events.Little old ladies veer abruptly into the path of speeding buses,and the bus driver swerves and carries on.
These two traits,in combination,open up a lot of options.To cross a street,just start walking.Glance briefly to the left and,unless the laws of physics mandate immediate death,start walking.Heavy traffic?Trying to cross at the intersection of two four-lane divided streets,against the light?No problem.Just start walking.In certain circumstances it may be advantageous to accumulate a small group and cross together,but this tactic is always optional.Riding a bicycle with an unbalanced hundred-pound sack on the back?Kindly disregard the bus bearing down on you and toodle forward cheerfully.
I suppose some of this is predictable cultural evolution.With so many people,you have to depersonalize stuff (as is done in New York),you have to treat everyone as a faceless body.And the gross selfishness (also seen in the strong bias for mobs over queues) may result naturally from thousands of years of hardship,and the last 40 years of pathological leadership in particular.But the end result is certainly dysfunctional.Gus,Jessie,you'd be happy as clams.
The bottom line:traffic in China is a continuous,high-volume game of chicken.And yet,I have yet to see a collision and Michael says that he's never seen one either.
Drivers use two standard methods to communicate:honking,during the day,and flashing brights,at night.Honking and flashing seem to be semantically identical.I am compiling a list of translations from honking to English:
Look out Stop Go Don't move Don't do what I think you're going to do I'm going to pass you on your right I'm going to pass you on your left I beg your pardon,but you need to move I beg your pardon,but you really need to move I beg your pardon,but I almost hit you back there Please move a few feet to your left Please move a few feet to your right No,_I'm_ the lighthouse Hello you stupid foreigner,what are you doing?Hello,would you like a ride?Look at me,I'm pleased to be operating a moter vehicle
Standard detailing for a car in China includes 90% tint over all rear and side windows,up to a six-inch gap on the front side windows to allow,I assume,for use of side mirrors.This is also standard on police cars.
A word on safety.Li Xu picked me up from the train station with the University car and driver,a VW with a leather interior and curtains instead of tinted windows.It was the first car I've been in here that had seatbelts,so I put mine on.This of course drew a comment:"Only Westerners use those." Bicycles (and tricyclists) of course do not wear helmets; those on scooters do tend to wear construction helmets,but rarely use the chin straps.Michael (the junior person in the Foreign Affairs Office) explained that they get tickets for not wearing helmets.A fairly pointless exercise if not wearing chin straps,but ...not my problem.I brought my bicycle helmet.
Gas stations seem fairly rare.Most of the Petrochina stations I've seen,which look very much like Western stations,are abandoned or incomplete.Guilin actually had the first open Petrochina station.
Thursday,23 Aug A product in one of the stores:"Corpulent Man's Briefs." Package includes a picture of a fat white guy in 3/4 profile,wearing an undershirt and the briefs,with his mustachioed face turned toward the viewer and a blank yet serious expression on his face.
A sign on the foot bridge between downtown Guilin and the suburb,in Chinese and English:"Dare to open your mouth to speak English."
I bought a few groceries,included a small carton of ISO 9002 milk.I think it's BHT milk,whatever that stands for,the milk that doesn't have to be refrigerated.Even cold,it didn't taste that good.
Friday,24 Aug I went walking mid-morning,headed out one of the smaller roads away from the city into the hills.By hills,I mean the standard karst formation that's made Guilin famous:a flat plain punctuated by sudden sheer vertical mini-mountains,pierced with caves,which rise maybe a hundred feet straight up or nearly so before gradually coming to a halt in rounded peaks.They are mostly vegetated,but with frequent large patches of bare limestone.The road wound around a few of these hills and off into the distance.At first,the road was very crowded with the usual assortment of trucks,buses,and smaller motorized vehicles,all of which tried to pass one another in improbable configurations lubricated by much honking.After maybe a mile,when it had quieted down substantially,I noticed that several of the hills had,on their lower elevations,a bunch of white markings.I gradually noticed that the road was now surrounded on both sides by waist-high circular mounds,with stone walls and plants on top.These have headstones,either on the ground in front or embedded in the sides of the mounds.It's a cemetary,filling up the valley and spilling up onto several surrounding hills.I kept walking for a while,looking for some sort of King's Tomb.I haven't been able to get a decent map of the area,and I don't read Chinese,so I was ultimately unsucessful and headed back.Just as I turned around,some drumming started up behind the trees,so maybe I was almost there.
Later,Michael took me computer shopping.There are two computer shopping areas in Guilin,each a warren of small shops with mostly identical product.The first area focussed on software.Much of the current,common US software is available at a flate rate of 5 yuan (US$0.60) per CD.registration codes included.Also present are plenty of pirated movies,mostly Chinese,on the VCD format.Steve and Jessie,I saw Season 3 X-Files on 8 cds in "DVD MPEG4." I ended up picking up Red Hat Linux 7.1.
Then we went in search of a new keyboard and mouse.The original one supplied with the computer in my apartment is a very mushy weird thing with some keys added in unusual locations:for example,where I would expect to find the right half of the left shift key,there is instead a key labeled "Brazil." Turns out that there are no ergonomic (split keyboard,curved) keyboards to be found,not even the cheap clones.The Microsoft Natural Keyboard might be available on order for essentially the same price as in the US (turns out it's made in the US.Who knew?).I ended up with a decent Logitech keyboard and mouse for US$22,total.Made in China.
Overall,I was impressed with the relatively good availability of hardware.There isn't the breadth of inventory that you'd find at a CompUSA,and the prices aren't insanely low,but it's not bad at all for what amounts to a small rural town.
We also got me a new phone card.I've been buying phone cards for several days now,and I have:
a Y100 mobile phone card,useful only if you have a particular brand of mobile phone
a Y50 IC card,useful for payphone calls
a Y30 IP card,useful for some range of long-distance calling from some type of phone
a Y20 200 card,which should allow me to make local and long-distance calls from the phone in my apartment.
I bought the first three on my own,the last with Michael.After I handed over the 20 yuan,he said something in Chinese and the vendor dug out four yuan and handed them back to me.So apparently you always pay less than face value for these cards,unless you're an ignorant foreigner.
I still haven't made any sucessful phone calls.I suppose the whole scheme isn't any more complicated than in the US,but not speaking the language it feels that way.