泛读材料与方法.doc

It’s a typical Saturday night at the Red Scene restaurant, which is packed with well-to-do Chinese diners. The younger ones clap in time to the music, while a gaggle of middle-aged patrons—many of them red-faced and tipsy—are on their feet, dancing and singing along with the stage performers. Tables groan under heaping platters of food. This could be any one of Beijing’s popular dinner shows, which draw audiences with the promise of Chinese opera or Western cabaret. But at Red Scene, the waiters and performers are all dressed as Red Army soldiers, Red Guards, workers, and peasants. And the skit is showcasing the persecution of an evil landlord, who is being beaten and forced to wear a pointed dunce cap—a scene straight out of China’s Cultural Revolution, one of the most tumultuous times in the nation’s history. The epoch remains controversial for a huge number of Chinese who were submitted to such “criticism sessions”—or even knew people who’d been “struggled” to death—for being too bourgeois.
Such restaurants are part of a boom in Chinese tourism and entertainment venues catering to revolutionary nostalgia. To many, the idea of a Cultural Revolution–themed dining establishment is paradoxical, since tasty cuisine was certainly not that era’s strong suit. The first “Red restaurants” sprouted in Beijing in the ’90s, offering little more than a few socialist-realist posters and food that was minimalist in the literal sense of the word. One served dandelion-leaf salad and raw cucumbers to symbolize the grass and bark that some poor Chinese ate during the hardscrabble ’60s and ’70s. Now Red-restaurant cuisine is more in line with middle-class tastes. In Mao’s hometown, “the Chairman’s Favorite”—roast fatty pork（—is a must, while Red Scene offers a pricey shrimp dish for $27 alongside less-expensive cornmeal cakes and country-style bean curd. By Western standards, Red Scene’s clients aren’t big spenders—an average check is about $12 per person—but that isn’t mere peanuts for most Chinese, either.
The emergence of songs, dances, and vignettes evoking Cultural Revolution conflict is an equally significant change over the past decade. Before that, anything that exacerbated “class struggle,” or focused on the gap between the haves and the have-nots, was considered too sensitive for public airing. But Red Scene, which opened in 2005 and serves an average of 400 customers a night, is a good example of how many older Chinese have forgotten the dark side of that era—and how a younger generation never really knew it to begin with. During the skit vilifying an arrogant landlord, diners applauded and waved little red flags (conveniently provided by the wait staff).
1. What’s the central idea of the passage?
A. Beijing’s popular dinner shows are on Red Scene restaurant
B. Vegetables are used to remind people of the old hard days in China’s Cultural Revolution.
C. Red Scene restaurant booms in Chinese tourism and entertainment.
D. A brief introduction of Chinese Red Scene restaurant
2. What can you learn from paragraph one?
A. diners in the Red Scene restaurant are mostly wealthy people
B. there is still no agreement on the pros and cons of China’s Cultural Revolution
C. The landlord should always be beaten and wear a pointed dunce cap in the old days
D. More and more people will go to Red Scene restaurant
3. The word “paradoxical” in line5 paragraph2 most probably means_____
A. expensive
B. elegant
C. contradictory
D. simple
4. What’s the author’s attitude towards Red Scene restaurant?
A. strong disapproval B. partly consent
C. enthusiastic support D. slightly snobbish
5. What can you learn from last paragraph?
A. People enjoy the show without special purpose to know the cultural background
B. most people can easily afford to go to the Red Scene restaurant
C. Chinese people are ashamed to present the epoch of Cultural Revolution
D. the landlords in Cultural Revolution are sure to be put to death

“Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?”
That sentence would become one of Jobs’s most famous formulations, along with “insanely great” and “think different.” The basis of its power, the reason it was such an irresistible pitch, was this: Steve Jobs, then only 28 years old, had already changed the world, and would go on, over the next quarter century, to change it again and again.
While Jobs surely ranks as one of the most important figures in business and technology, he’s also one of the most influential cultural figures of our time, the motivating force behind the idea that business and work can be primary sources of creativity, fulfillment, and meaning in our lives; the belief that companies can foment cultural change; the notion that engineers and executives can think like artists; and the realization that good design and aesthetics matter in one of the world’s most cutthroat industries.
Jobs’s relentless pursuit of perfection was also a key part of his legend. In 1977, when Apple’s first corporate headquarters was in the same building as a regional sales office for Sony, he would stop by and ogle Sony’s marketing materials, admiring the graphics and logos, noticing the weight of the paper stock. For one of his public presentations, Jobs scrutinized 37 different color variations before picking the background for his projector slides.
The perfectionism extended to his home life as well: the first two houses he owned, in Los Gatos and Woodside, Calif., remained nearly empty for years because he couldn’t find the perfect furnishings.
And rather than relying on market research or focus groups for guidance, Jobs followed his own gut about product design. When he was creating the iMac, which combined a monitor and computer in the same casing, industry research said consumers wouldn’t buy this kind of so-called all-in-one design. But Jobs wasn’t deterred, telling a colleague, I know what I want and I know what they want.”
He, of course, was right. And that sense of leading public tastes, rather than following them, is as important as anything else in Jobs’s genius. Perhaps equally astonishing is just how close he came to failing entirely.
Sculley, who succumbed to that balcony pitch and joined Apple as CEO, soured on Jobs only two years later, forcing him out of the company that Jobs saw as an extension of himself. Betrayed by the man he felt closest to in the world, Jobs seemed so depressed that one of his longtime friends, Apple executive Mike Murray, feared he was suicidal.
Jobs considered any number of randomly different paths, from expatriating to France to staying home at his huge, unfurnished old mansion in Woodside and cultivating his garden. Ultimately, his escapist fantasies were just that, and instead he persisted—tenaciously, resiliently—on the path he had begun following at 21. For most of the next decade he struggled as his two new companies, NeXT and Pixar, were so financially ruinous that he came close to blowing the entire $100 million fortune he had amassed from selling Apple stock.
But he didn’t give up, and his astonishing comeback and eventual triumph are as much a part of the Jobs legacy as the iPads and iPhones and Macs that have shaped our daily lives.
In 1995, only two years after his situation seemed hopeless, Pixar created Toy Story, the first full-length computer-animated feature film, and Jobs immediately took the company’s stock public and became a billionaire at age 40. He sold what was left of NeXT to Apple for a $400 million windfall, then, in the most stunning reversal of all, returned to Apple after more than a decade-long exile. The company that once seemed destined to die would ultimately be worth more than Microsoft and Google and second only to ExxonMobil as the most valuable company on earth.
1. Jobs’s creativity originates from_____.
A. business and work
B. his working experience in Sony Company
C. his high education
D. his eagerness to success
2.  The word “deterred” (Line 8, Para6) most probably means___
A. encouraged
B. doubtful
C. optimistic
D. grieved
3. Jobs once was seriously depressed because ______.
A. his newly-created product was refused by customers
B．He lost most of his property through producing IMAC
C. He was betrayed by his intimate friend
D. he shouldered too much responsibility in the company
4. What can you learn about Pixar?
A. it is the biggest cartoon –making company
B. it once lost a lot of money and was in debt
C. it was owned by Jobs all the time
D. it was finally sold out by Jobs
5. What is the most crucial factor for Jobs’ success?
A. persistence
B. young
C. energetic
D. perfection