单项选择题

The Chinese of 3,500 years ago believed that the earth was a chariot, and the sky like a curved canopy stretched above it. The canopy was nine layers thick, and it sloped slightly to the northwest, as a cataclysm had broken one of its supporting columns. This gentle slope explained the movement of the stars from east to west. The sun’s disappearances were thought to be caused by _________.
A. fights with cocks B. fights with dragons C. a scientific phenomenon D. eclipses

According to these ancient Chinese beliefs, the sun spent the night on earth and ascended to the sky each morning from the luminous valley of the east by climbing the branches of an immensely tall sacred tree. To the Chinese people, the sun was the incarnation of goodness, beauty, and truth. In popular imagination, the sun was represented as a cock that little by little assumed human form. His battles with the dragons, which personified evil in their beliefs, accounted for the momentary disappearances of the sun that men now call eclipses. Many of the Chinese people worshiped the sun, but in the vast and complicated organization of the Chinese gods, the sun was of only secondary importance.Along with these unsophisticated beliefs about the sun, the Chinese evolved a science of astronomy based upon observation——though essentially religious——which enabled them to predict eclipses of the sun and the movements of the stars. Such predictions were based on calculations made by using a gnomon——an object whose shadow could be used as a measure, as with a sundial or simpler shadow pointers. Moreover, with the naked eye, the Chinese observed sunspot, a phenomenon not then known to their contemporaries.

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单项选择题

The main contradiction between the north and the south was that ______. A. northerners thought they didn’t make large profits from cotton B. northerners thought slavery was the cause of the backwardness in the south C. southerners thought the north made the south poor D. the north and the south had different interests

As far back as 1830s, sectional lines had been steadily hardening on the slavery question. In the north, abolitionist feeling grew more and more powerful, encouraged by a free-soil movement vigorously opposed to the extension of slavery into the regions not yet organized as states. To southerners of 1850, slavery was a condition for which they were no more responsible than for their English speech or their representative institutions. In some coastal areas, slavery by 1850 was well over 200 years old, an integral part of the basic economy of the region. In 15 southern and border states, the black population was approximately half as large as the white, while in the north it was an insignificant fraction.
From the middle 1840s, the slavery issue became more important than all else in American politics. The south, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi River and beyond, was a relatively compact political unit agreeing on all fundamental policies affecting cotton culture, using only primitive implements, was singularly adapted to the employment of slaves. It provided work nine months of the year and permitted the use of women and children as well as men.

单项选择题

The disaster that happened when the writer was 4 years old ______. A. makes him believe in life more deeply than the other people. B. makes him appreciate the value of the rest of his faculties. C. makes him prefer going without his eyes. D. strengthens his memory of the color of red.

All my life I have set ahead of me a series of goals and then tried to reach them, one at a time. I had to learn my limitations. It was no good to try for something I knew at the start was wildly out of reach because that only invited the bitterness of failure. I would fail sometimes anyway but on average I made progress.