I received pictures of my daughter floating (漂浮) on a lake in California. Right there under the sun during the hottest time of the day, she has only her swimsuit to cover her.
When I showed it to my students, it was as if I had shown them scenes from a horror (恐怖) movie.
“But she will get dark,” they said.
“That’s what she wants,” I told them. “We think darker skin (肤色) is beautiful.”
They looked at me in disbelief. It was as if I came from the moon.
For years, American girls spend their summer trying to get as tanned (晒黑) as possible. In China, on the other hand, girls use umbrellas all year round.
What in the world is going on?
The pale skin we think looks unattractive (不漂亮) is what Asian women want. Both groups want to meet their culture’s standard (标准) of beauty.
In the US, if you can afford to go on vacation in the summer, you head for a river, a lake or a beach, where you try to get as much sun as possible. If you are rich you take a winter vacation in some sunny spot. Your winter tan shows your wealth.
In China, once upon a time, the few wealthy were the ones who didn’t have to work out in the hot sun. So the whiter the skin, the richer the woman. The folk opera performers who play these ladies wore lots of white makeup (妆容). The tradition survives to this day.
So it comes naturally that none of my students wishes to follow the Western ways in this regard.
But now I am noticing that a new business – the tanning booth (美黑店) – started up in China. I admire those brave enough to define（给…下定义）their own idea of beauty, but I do wonder what their grandmothers would have to say to them about it!
【小题1】The students were shocked at the picture the writer showed them because ______.

A．Women with blond hair.	B．Women with a slim figure.
C．Women with tanned skin.	D．Women with pale skin.

A．is hard-working	B．doesn’t have to work
C．has a lot of money and spare time	D．is from a very poor family

　　Can you imagine what life would be like if there is no telephone? You could not call your friends 1 the phone and talk to them. If fire 2 out in your house, you could not 3 the fire department. If somebody were 4 , you could not call a doctor.

　　In our 5 life, we need to communicate with one another. We do this 6 by speaking to other people and listening to 7 they have to say to us, and as we are 8 to them we can do this very 9 . However, our voices will not travel very far even when we 10 . It is thanks to the 11 of the telephone that we are 12 able to communicate with each other 13 hold conversations when we are far 14 . We can hear each other clearly 15 we were in the same room.

　　The man who 16 this possible was Alexander Graham Bell, a Scotsman. Bell, a teacher of visible speech 17 later moved to Canada, 18 all his spare time experimenting. He was 19 active in his research for a means of sending speech by electricity that he left 20 time for his day-to-day work and at one time was almost penniless.

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