节目资讯
刊物:空中英语教室
日期:2014-04-08
难易度:Low
关键字:rural, entertainment, performance, dye, canal, boxing
Hello, and welcome to Studio Classroom.
My name is Gabe.
And I'm Carolyn.
I'm glad you're joining us today as we look at some more villages in China that
are worth visiting.
Now the first one we learned about in yesterday's lesson was Cuandixia, a small
town nestled in a little valley.
It looks like a place forgotten by time, but it is a wonderful spot to visit.
Especially if you don't have much time, you can explore much of this place in
just a day.
And today we are going to look at another great China town that may not come to
your mind right away.
That's right, Wuzhen.
So I hope your magazine is open.
Let's get started.
(Music).
The Villages of Old China.
Wuzhen.
An experience of historical China is not only to be found in the mountains,
however.
Life on Zhejiang's canals shows that old, rural China was not always slow and
quiet.
The busy village of Wuzhen has prospered on the Grand Canal since A.D. 872.
Passengers and produce are moved around on the water in the town's water market.
People often row their boats right up to windows and sell their goods.
(Chinese).
Thank you, Michelle.
Well, even from this paragraph, we can tell that Wuzhen has quite a different
feel from Cuandixia.
You're right.
And we know that the nature surrounding this village is different from Cuandixia
as well.
And we read here: An experience of historical China is not only to be found in
the mountains, however.
Now why does our author Nathanael write "however"?
Because today's lesson is a continuation of yesterday's.
If you remember, yesterday we learned about Cuandixia, a village surrounded by
tree-covered mountains.
In today's lesson on Wuzhen, he is contrasting the two villages.
So one experience of historical China is in the mountains, Cuandixia, and the
other is not.
Well, let's look at the word "historical" for a moment.
If you are talking about a historical village, should you say a historical
village or an historical village?
Good question, Gabe.
Most of you probably wouldn't even think to ask this question because you have
been taught that if a word begins with a consonant like D or T, or in this case,
H, then the word before it should be A or a.
However, historical is an interesting exception.
Right. In older practices, people would write "an" before the word historical or
historic.
For example, the title of a book might be An Historical View of the World.
But some people today still write and talk like this.
So if you hear someone say an historical event or an historic site, it's OK.
They are not wrong.
But there are only a few H words that can say "an" before:
historic: I saw an historic site.
historical: There is an historical landmark.
And Hispanic: I learned an Hispanic song.
And there are a couple of other words.
But just remember, it's not wrong to say an historic something or an historical
something.
Now let's move on to something else in this first sentence, the phrase: not only
to be.
An experience is not only to be found in the mountains.
How else can we use this phrase?
Beautiful mountains are not only to be seen in China but in many places around
the world.
Or a lion's roar is not only to be heard in the wild but also at a zoo.
And of course if you want a cool experience of historical China, it's not only
to be found in the mountains surrounding Cuandixia.
We continue reading:
Life on Zhejiang's canals shows old rural China was not always slow and quiet.
Ah, from this sentence, we can see that Wuzhen is a village located on or near
canals, which are waterways made by people.
They could be for the purpose of traveling, shipping or just to make a place for
water to flow.
And there are a few famous canals around the world.
The Panama Canal comes to mind.
Yes. That connects the Pacific Ocean with the Atlantic Ocean.
I've seen many canals in one city, and that was in Holland.
Actually, Holland is kind of known for their many canals.
I enjoyed a delicious meal one evening with my sister on a canal boat not too
far from Amsterdam.
That sounds cool.
And perhaps you could do something similar on the canals of Zhejiang.
Now we read the life on these canals shows that old rural China was not always
slow and quiet.
Again, Nathanael is using words to contrast Cuandixia and Wuzhen.
Right.
Cuandixia is slow and quiet, but Wuzhen is not.
And I'm sure the accents are a little different, too.
Chinese speakers probably sound different in those two places.
Hey, I think Steve and Ken have something they'd like to share about that.
Let's join them in the Info Cloud now.
In a country as big as China,
we can expect there to be some differences in the way Chinese is spoken up north
in Cuandixia Village compared with the Chinese heard down south in, say,
Zhejiang's Wuzhen Village.
And there are differences.
First, the most obvious, there are differences in the way words are pronounced.
People from these two different regions in China will speak Chinese with
slightly different pitches, stresses and enunciations.
These differences fall into the category of accents.
If, however, the language differences are greater than merely how words are
pronounced, then we're getting into the realm of dialects.
Right.
Two groups of people who speak different dialects not only produce different
sounds for the same words, they also use different grammar and vocabulary.
Despite these differences, people who speak different dialects can usually
understand one another to a degree if the parent language is the same.
Like the people who speak Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French and Romanian, the
parent language being Latin.
Exactly.
Sometimes, though, dialects of the same parent language diverge so much that
they become mutually unintelligible,
and so could be considered full-fledged languages in their own right.
(Chinese).
Thank you, gentlemen.
Indeed, I am now smarter in regard to accents and dialects.
Uh, was that a British accent, Gabe?
Yes.
No... I don't know. It is just... whatever.
Keep working on that.
Well, we must move on.
We read: The busy village of Wuzhen has prospered on the Grand Canal since A.D.
872.
That's quite a while.
Now if you remember from last month's lessons, years B.C. is the amount of years
before Christ.
And what does A.D. stand for?
Um, after death?
No. No, although yes, that is an easy way to remember the letters, but it stands
for Anno Domini.
It is the years since Jesus Christ.
So A.D. 872, that was a long time ago.
It was.
Now let's look at the phrase "the village of Wuzhen" for a moment.
Sometimes we use the word "of" before the names of places.
For example, I live in the city of Taipei.
I come from the state of West Virginia.
And we are learning about the villages of China, the old villages of China.
In Wuzhen, we read, passengers and produce are moved around on the water in the
town's water market.
People often row their boats right up to the windows and sell their goods.
Hey, row their boats... like the song.
Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream...
So this is a water market.
Eh, is this a market that sells water?
No. It's a market that is on the water, on the canals, of course.
All right.
Well, there's more to be found on the waters of Wuzhen.
And we'll find out about all ofthat after this.