高一英语报刊阅读每日5分钟----5doc

高一英语报刊阅读每日5分钟 5

Star talk

TAIWAN singer Angela Chang (张韶涵) attempts to revive her career after disputes (争端) with her mother over money issues tarnished (玷污) her image. She will hold her first Beijing concert on May 15.

Chang calls the concert The Moon of Pandora (潘多拉星球) because she claims to be a fan of the hit movie Avatar (《阿凡达》). She claims she is greatly inspired by the movie.

She wants her concert to have magical stage effects. “I hope my concert can be an ‘Avatar’ among concerts,” reports Beijing Evening News.

Revive 意为“重振、复兴、再生” (become strong, healthy, or active again)。

例如：The family is trying to revive an old custom。

Let's sit down and chat, seriously

SMALL talk may be common, but it doesn’t do much to make you happy. Compared with people who rated themselves as unhappy, people who were happiest spent 70 percent more time talking, had one-third as much small talk and twice as many deep conversations.

Researchers came to their conclusions by having a group of 79 college students wear a tape recorder for four days. They eavesdropped (偷听) on their conversations. The students were also given tests to measure happiness and personality.

The findings suggest that “the happy life is social rather than solitary (孤独的), and conversationally deep rather than superficial (肤浅的),” the authors, from the University of Arizona and Washington University in St. Louis, wrote.

It’s not clear, however, whether happy people attract others for deep conversations or whether deep conversations make people happier. Further research should be done, they said, to see if having deeper conversations helps unhappy people become happier.

We should honor culture that can't be touched

THOSE well-loved sites, the Summer Palace in Beijing, the Potala Palace in Tibet, Jiuzhaigou Valley in Sichuan and Mount Wutai in Shanxi are among the 38 in China to feature on the World Cultural Heritage List. They are places we can visit, touch and feel – they are tangible, in other words.

But there is another kind of heritage, the “intangible” (无形的) kind –languages, music, dance, mythology (神话), rituals (仪式) and traditional craftsmanship (手工艺) all belong to this category.

Intangible heritage, also called “living cultural heritage”, is passed on from generation to generation. UNESCO believes intangible heritage provides people with a sense of identity and continuity (连贯性). The idea of supporting it is to “promote respect for cultural di versity and human creativity”.

Of all the items on the World Intangible Heritage List, 29 belong to China. Kunqu Opera, one of the earliest forms of traditional Chinese drama, became the first in 2001.

Many of these items we grew up with. When we were very young, many of us tried our hand at Chinese paper cutting. Most of us practiced Chinese calligraphy (书法). Modern people may not go so far as to master the “Four Treasures of the Study” (文房四宝) – ink brush, ink, paper and inkstone, but we have all wanted to write in a beautiful hand. Our experience of these traditional things means that we are passing something on – our cultural heritage – whether we know it or not.