英语文章阅读六篇

Modern Technologies

We’re all enjoying the conveniences and happiness brought by modern technologies. We use telephones and mobile phones to call, emails to write and vehicles to drive; we go to another country by air planes; we see what is happening in the world by TV programs and Internet, and we even watch sports games on live. Nowadays, without these technologies, I can’t imagine what my life could be.

I used to read an article describing the modern lives of human beings. It says we will have many phone numbers if we want to search for one person; we send emails and cell phone messages to our friends in stead of visiting them. More and more people would rather sit in front of a computer than a TV. And we seldom go to libraries to check information now, because the Internet would do all the jobs.

We use digital cameras, scanners, photocopiers, blue teeth technology and digital signals for our cell phones… It seems as if we were living in a real digital world. Actually I guess we are, though. Since we are so developed and advanced, why we are less civilized?

We are easily mad with our broken computers; we fed up with things we don’t like; we call our lovers to say “farewell and good-bye” and we are afraid to face the facts which are cruel and real. We’re led to a trend that there will no more face-to-face communications. I would rather chat with my friends with OICQ and emails these years, instead of seeing them in reality.

I hide myself inside my car so that I can flee away from dirt, air pollutions, robberies, thieves, winds, rains and snows. However, I could not taste the spring rain and the winter snow either. The nature is fleeing away from me too!

Should I thank modern technologies or blame them? I wonder if you have got the right answer.

My Journals 7

June 22, 2005.. I bought a 525 ml bottle of Vaseline(a brand of lotion.) Extra Strength lotion. It was on sale, just 3 bucks, like RMB 20 kuai. That was a really good deal. I can use it for 365 days. Saving is my premier job, coz Im not rich and also couldn’t buy luxury products. One of my friends who is in Australia only love Louis Vuitton( a luxury brand of leather products from France) Last time, she sent me some pictures about her Louis Vuitton collection. It was huge! Everything of hers is Louis Vuitton, even her underwears.( Does Louis Vuitton produce UNDERWEAR?) She probably bought a Nissan(a car brand from Japan.) 350z. Wow! I love that car very much, but I can’t afford it. When we were in the same senior high school, she told her friends she liked me, but she never said it to me. When I knew it, she is already living in Australia. We chat sometimes on MSN(a message software which is extensively used all over the world), but we are just common friends. Speak it like it is, I was never in love with her, coz I didn’t have that feeling. Maybe she was seeing me, but I was not. Yesterday, I mentioned about a Korean girl. She was rich as well. She has a BMW X5 and…… I think that car is enough to prove everything. How come those girls who liked me are much richer than me? Im poor and still suffer the poverty. When these 2 girls are eating delicious food, I m eating instant noodle soup. When they are driving on the road elatedly, Im walking to university. I really wanna find a poor girl to be my galfriend, coz I could also find the balance. My ex-girlfriend is living in Japan. She is ok, not that rich. Sometimes, we talk online, and she still calls me SWEETIE and regards me as her husband. I can see through she wants to get back our relationship. Ha, that is okay. But it doesn’t make any sense. She won’t come to Canada for me. She has a good job and family there. That was why I did not want her to tag along with me and stick with me. We are hopeless although our love lasted almost 4 years. I just wanna get over it! Now Im a 100% single man. I live by myself. Everyday I keep being busy. I do believe that sometimes girl is nothing but troubles. Today, I bought a new tee, the words printed on the shirt are “Canadian Girls Drinking Team”, I just felt it was interesting and bought it. Maybe some of my friends see it, they probably scream “are you gonna change your sex and join that team, man? You look weird and freak! ” Ha, who cares!

I just tried to use very very basic and easy words here in order to make each sentence more understandable and clean out any vocabulary blocks. I just hope you enjoy it and keep reading it day by day. Today, my test was fabulous! Tomorrow there is another one. Im gonna prepare it. Cya.( See ya)

My Girlfriend is Cat---- By smellycatty

We knew each other on the forum of New Oriental School. That time, we both had been hurt, drifting in a lonely city for a long time, yearning to fly, and craving for true and forever love.

I studied GMAT by myself in a rented small flat, she was working hard to go abroad as a post-doctor. Studying for the test, writing her emails, and having long talks over the phone late at night became a habit as well as the happiest moments of my otherwise boring and lonely life. Before long, I found myself attached to the sweet voice and the gentleness of the girl I had never met.

One night, before I hung up the phone, a sadness and romance surged up in me. And I said to her: “I want to sing a song to you.” I used to be a big music fan in college. I listened to music as a way of dealing with the bland school life. And I also liked to yell some tunes in the corridor or on my way back to my dorm at night. Some people labeled my style “street singer” who’s from the suburb of Hong Kong.

The song I sang that night is the original Japanese version of an old song by the name of “Half Full Moon(月半弯)”. As I already said, I sang it thousands of times on the street, in corridor and Karaoke Bars. But my performance has never been that good this time. I didn’t know or wasn’t sure what kind of person she would be in my life. Maybe a friend on the Internet, maybe just an ordinary friend, or even my future girlfriend, I had absolutely no idea. She was some girl I hadn’t met, so I just treated her as a listener to my heart.

What happened later was an abrupt twist. One dark and windy night, our friendship became a love caught on fire because of my not bad singing. On an impulse, I whispered to her, “Tell you the truth, all my life, I am looking for someone, with her, we could become happy for the rest of our life.”

On the other end of the phone, she choked up and started sobbing. All of a sudden, I realized that both she and I wished to bring the other happiness.

From my past experience and instinct, I thought that I should do something immediately. So a few days later, driven by curiosity and passion, I decided to visit her. My surprise visit indeed shocked her. It seemed to me that she still wanted to keep on our relationship by telephone and Internet. Later she told me that this gave her lots of romance and fun for imagination.

Urged by my pleading and threatening, she showed up, a small girl with embarrassment and excitement all over her face. I was more than one head tall than her. Walking beside her, I turned my head and couldn’t see her. Her hairs were blown up by wind, brushing against my face and making me very itchy. I was trying very hard to figure out some topics, suddenly my hand was in her hand.

This could be the greatest embarrassment of my whole life. Never before had my hand been hold by a girl first. In a second, I felt like that I became a girl walking on the street with hand hold. We walked and walked. A long time passed, we tried to loose each other up by talking about some funny things. She was much easy-going than I thought she would be. But I was much shyer than I used to believe.

A red dragon in the global economy

Many Chinese believe that for China to be strong its trade account must not be in the red. It must have a trade surplus to grow prosperous. So if we look back at 5000 years of Chinese history, it would be surprising that the time China’s trade was in the red was also just when the ‘middle kingdom’ was at its peak during that dynasty.

For example, during Han Dynasty, China ran a trade deficit for centuries with neighboring countries, and it was also the time China became the center of the Asia. Another obvious example is the Tang and Song Dynasty (from 7th century to 11th century), when China was again in a trade deficit with nearly all its neighbors. China was then experiencing shortages of gold, silver or even bronze, but none of this had blocked the red dragon from being the strongest nation at that time. But at the end of Song Dynasty, just decades before the Chinese were invaded and defeated by Mongolians, China became the main exporter in Asia and it was one of the several periods when China was weak. Historians cannot simply conclude this as coincidence.

Recent history tells the same story. The end of 19th century was a nightmare for the ancient nation. Many blamed the trade deficit that resulted from opium trade as the plague which caused the weakness of China’s economy in the late Qing Dynasty. However, if we put opium trade aside, China was still a large exporter in the world while it imported little from the outside world. At some point, China’s trade partners had to use opium as a way to pay for their trade deficit with China. Earlier, in the middle of the 18th century, China could produce enough opium for domestic market and also become an exporter in normal definition, but it didn’t help China to be a stronger nation at all. When China launched its first industrialization campaign, it’s trade soon turned into red again, but this happened during the last struggle of Qing Dynasty in its dying years.

After its opening-up in 1978, China was in the red again for eleven years, with the exception of 1983. The government is implementing of a strategy of stimulating exports initially from China’s opening-up. It is a reasonable policy for a post-communism economy which is lack of an efficient fiancé system and a minimum-required foreign currency reserve.

Since 1990, China has been chalking up trade surplus with the exception of 1993. In 2004, the trade surplus of China amounts to $70 billion, of which $58.6 billion from Sino-US trade. With its expanding of trade surplus, its economic rapid growth continues for decades. At the same time, Chinese factories are famous for dumping cheap goods from advantages of its low-cost labors and poor environment standard. After all, China is developing, much faster than EU, US, Japan or any other major power of the world. There is no doubt that China is regaining its strength and will be a major economic power in the 21st century.

What will China bring to the globalization of economy? Even for a country of 1.2 billion population and 960 square kilometers, there is no unlimited supply of cheap labor or unlimited tolerance of environment pollution. However, the demand of the 1.2 billion population market in a fast-growing economy could be the powerful engine of the global economy in human history. Some of Chinese key officials and scholars has turned to pro-deficit attitude on this debate and more and more people realize that China has no responsibility to supply the world with cheap goods while the living standard of Chinese people are below average level. While those booming Chinese companies have shown their appetites for raw materials on the global market, the extravagance of Chinese wealthy family in cities has given hopes to global manufacturers.

Most of the pressure to grow imports comes from China’s trade partners, especially US and Japan. A strong wind calling for the revaluation of RMB has been blowing since the beginning of 2003, and some even criticize China as an exporter of deflation. At the same time, huge amounts of hot money flow into China despite capital controls that strictly limit money flows into this country. Chinese officials have openly refused to revaluate RMB under pressure and some even say that its a conspiracy to sacrifice China’s economy without bringing benefits to the global economy. But those strong words against the revaluation of RMB were more or less for internal politics. The government then began to boost the imports to ease the pressure on the currency.

Domestically, there are more and more criticisms against the stimulating-export policies, especially the tax reimbursement policy. The tax reimbursement to exporters has aggravated the fiscal deficit of the central government. The government has paid 125 billion RMB and 115 billion RMB for tax reimbursement. This appropriation was far from the amount incurred every year and up to the end of 2003, the tax reimbursement in arrears reached to 340 billion RMB ($41.06 billion). The profit margin rates of many exporters are below the reimbursement rate. As the default of payment accumulated year-by-year, some exporters have fallen into liquidity problem while waiting for the payment of tax reimbursement in arrears.

So China should not be afraid to become red in trade, like it has during many periods of greatness. If the dragon becomes be red for years or even decades, the most foreseeable consequence is that RMB will be an international currency. To support an international currency, China should build ‘a stable macroeconomic environment, an efficient market mechanism and a healthy banking system’ as Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao mentioned as the preconditions for a revaluation of RMB. It is easy to say what’s good but it is difficult to identify the problems and solve them. When the growth is still enough to sustain the system, who will be brave enough to cut the mess behind the rise? China should not be afraid to become red again.

Make your fate in control

Fate is determined by character, and character is determined by knowledge, desire and habit. If a person wants to change his fate, he has to change his character first; and if he wants to change his character, he has to change his knowledge or his desires and habits. Complaining to other people or the environments makes no sense.

Actually, everybody in this world will know about the meaning of life. It’s just the matter of time. A worker, who had just lost his job, met a university professor one day. He admitted that he didn’t love to study when he was a student. He just hated to study no matter what and how his father asked him to. When he got a job and became a worker, he realized how important to have knowledge in this world. But, it was too late…

There are no parents who don’t think studying is important for their children, and all the parents tell their children to study hard. We, however, still have so much difference on different children, on the results, that we finally will know it’ is the matter of self-control.

When we are kids in a primary school, we see no difference from each other. We just know somebody is good at Chinese, Math or Sports. We just know that the teacher likes him or her. Nowadays, we differentiate our classmates by their parents. We say: oh, god, his father is the vice mayor, his father is very rich; his mother is the dean of the biggest hospital…. This is definitely not a good sign for China and the Chinese people, because it makes no competition for the youngsters, who are having China’s future in hand.

The poor always hate the rich, because they see the rich driving all the luxury cars, living in condominiums, villas and spending money like they are countless. And the poor see the rich always on vocations, always so relaxed and enjoyable. So the poor are jealous and they wonder how can the rich be so rich and the poor are so poor. Well, the poor obviously forget one thing: When the rich are working hard and smart to collect money, the poor are lying somewhere and making complains.

Make your fate and success in control; you can make a difference in the future, unless you want to a poor person, both mentally and physically.

Love, love, love

Please forgive me because I’m not talking about the popular song here. I really love that song, though! What I want to bring to you people here is something I’d like to discuss with.

Love is indeed a big concept. Thus it makes some people confused or feel blur. As I have mentioned before in this forum, I don’t even differ “love” from “like” sometimes. Can you?

I know nobody who doesn’t want his life filled with love. One is/has been/will be receiving love from his parents, relatives, friends, colleagues, lovers and whatsoever living creatures, including animals. Fully enjoying love from around me is what I always long for. How happy and joyful I would be if I could have love everywhere in this planet!

Love conquers everything in human’s world. The more civilized and developed a country is, the more love you will see in there. I saw many charity organizations in Singapore and Canada, and I believe there must be many in other developed countries. There is, however, so few in China. Even though there are some similar organizations in China, I’m afraid they are not doing their jobs.

The most popular case we can see in China is Leukemia. I have all along been donating money to those patients, since I was a student. I just feel that’s the only way I can use to help them.

The other case is raised by baggers, who are wandering in the streets all the time. They are everywhere in the cities. They are annoying sometimes, because they would even pull your pants to hold you back if you refuse to give them cashes. I pay more respect to those who would rather go collecting rubbishes at nights than being criminals to steal or rob, or commit whatever bad things against the local citizens. Once a 80 over years old woman was seen lying on the side of a road. I saw her too, for several times. She seldom bagged for money, she wanted foods and clothes more than cashes. Each time I passed by, I would give her 10 Yuan, not for pitying her, but do what I could to be of help. She died one year later. I was sad when I heard the news because I couldn’t imagine what kind of children she had would abandon their parents! She must be very sad and desperate when she left her home; she must be tough and strong to survive in such a big cold city alone for years; she must be thinking about something before her death; she must be…

If there is another life for this wretched poor woman after her death, I hope she would have a much better life by then. May her soul rest in peace.