英语口语高级训练(lesson19)a
|
Lesson19 Is it Good to Live in a Large Modern City？ Text I Hate to Live in a Large Modern City“Avoid the rush-hour” must be the slogan of large cities the world over. If it is, it's a slogan no one takes the least notice of. Twice a day, with predictable regularity, the pot boils over. Wherever you look it's people, people, people. The trains which leave or 'arrive every few minutes are packed： an endless procession of human sardine tins. The streets are so crowded, there is hardly room to move on the pavements. The queues for buses reach staggering proportions. It takes a bus to get to you because the traffic on the roads has virtually come to a standstill. Even when a bus does at last arrive, it's so f ull, it can ' t take any more passengers. This whole crazy system of commuting stretches man's resources to the utmost. The smallest unforeseen event can bring about conditions of utter chaos. A powercut, for instance, an exceptionally heavy snowfall or a minor derailment must always make city-dwellers realize how precarious the balance is. The extraordinary thing is not that people put up with these conditions, but that they actually choose them in preference to anything else. Large modern cities are xoo big to control.They impose their own living conditions on the people who inhabit them CIty-dwellers are obliged by their environment to adopt a wholly unnatural way of life. They Iose touch witla the land and rhythm of nature. It is possible to live such an airconditioned existence in a large city that you are barely conscious of the seasons. A few flowers in a public park （if you have the time to visit it） may remind you that it is spring or summer. A few leaves clinging to the pavement may remind you that it is autumn. Beyond that, what is going on in nature seems totally irrelevant. All the simple, good things of life like sunshine and fresh air are at a premium. Tall buildings hlot out the sun. Traffic fumes pollute the atmosphere. Even the distinction between day and night is lost. The flow of traffic goes on unceasingly and the noise never stops. The funny thing about it all is that you pay dearly for the “privilege” of living in a city. The demand for accommodation is so great that it is often impossible for ordinary people to buy a house of their own. Exorbitant rents must be paid for tiny flats which even country hens would disdain to live in. Accommodation apart, the cost of living is very high. Just about everything you buy is likely to be more expensive than it would be in the country. In addition. to all this, city-dwellers live under constant threat. The crime rate in most cities is very high. Houses are burgled with alarming frequency. Cities breed crime and violence and are full of places you would be afraid to visit at night. If you think about it, they are not really fit to live in at all. Can anyone really doubt that the country is what man was born for and where he truly belongs？ II. Read Read the following passages. Underline the important viewpoints while reading. 1. Tokyo I don't live in Tokyo. I don't even know whether I would like to live there. I love it and hate it-it is one of those places that you can love and hate at the same time. The first “fact” about Tokyo, for me, is that there are too many people. I don't mean the fact that more than twelve million people live there. A number like 12,000,000 doesn't mean anything to me. In Tokyo there are always too many people in the places where I want to be. That is the important fact for me. Of course there are too many cars. The Japanese drive very fast when they can, but in Tokyo they often spend a long time in traffic jams. Tokyo is not different from London, Paris and New York in.that. It is different .when-one wants to. walk. At certain times of the day there are a lot of people on foot in London's Oxford Street or near the big shops and stores in other great cities. But the streets near the Ginza in Tokyo always have a lot of people on foot, and sometimes it is really difficult to walk. People are very polite； there are just too many of them. The worst time to be in the street is at 11.30 at night. That is when the night-clubs are closing and everybody wants to go home. There are 35, 000 night-clubs in Tokyo, and you do not often see one that is empty. Between ll and 12 everybcdy is looking for a taxi. Usually the taxis are shared by four or five people who live in the same part of the city. During the day, people use the trains. Perhaps the first thing you notice in Tokyo is the number of trains. Most people travel to and from work by train, and there is a station at almost every street corner. Tokyo people buy six mi1lion train tickets every day. One station——Shinjuku-has two million passengers each day. At most stations, trains arrive every two or three minutes, but at certain hours there do not seem eo he enough trains. At 8 o,clock in the morning you can see students pushing passeng.ers into the trains. Usually the trains are nearly full when they arrive at the station, so the students have to push very hard. Sometimes the pushers are also pushed in by mistake, and they have to get out at the next station. Some people who are pushed into the train lose their shoes. They, too, get out at the next station, and go back to look for them. Although they are usually crowded, Japanese trains are very good. They always leave and arrive on time. On a I.ondon train you would see everybody reading a newspaper. In Tokyo trains everybody in a seat seems to be asleep. Some Japanese make a irain journey of two hours to go to work, so they do their sleeping on the train. But if a train journey lasis only five minutes, and if they have a seat, thcy will also go to sleep. They always wake when they arrive at their station. The last time I went to Tokyo, I went there from Osaka in great comfort. The blue-and-white trains which run evcrv？half-hour between the two cities are not only very fast but very comfortable. There are no pushers； only those who have reserved seats can travel on the train. It was not possible to run more trains on the old lines, so the Japanese built a special linc for the new fast trains. It is a very good line indeed. You can eat and drink without difficulty at 220 kilometres an hour-you know the speed because there is a speedometer inside the carriage. In Tokyo, I stood outside the station for five minutes. Three fireengines-the very latest kind with every moclern fitting -raced past on the way to one of the many fires that Tokyo has every day. The peopie who passed on foot included some of the loveliest girls in the world in the latest European dresses or the finest Japanese kimonos. Businessmen passed in big new cars, and. among them, in a small Honda, there was a geisha in the clothes and hair arrangement of hundreds of years ago. Tokyo has so many surprises that none of them can really surprise me now. Instead, I am surprised at myself： I must go there next week on business, and I know that I shall hate the city and its twelve million people. But I feel like a man who is returning to his long-lost love. |
