2. 外语
  3. (1)According to historical evidence, the Chinese have used chopsticks since the time of the Shang Dynasty (ca 1766-1066 BCE). Th

(1)According to historical evidence, the Chinese have used chopsticks since the time of the Shang Dynasty (ca 1766-1066 BCE). Th

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问题     (1)According to historical evidence, the Chinese have used chopsticks since the time of the Shang Dynasty (ca 1766-1066 BCE). The first sticks used as eating utensils were twigs that the hungriest eaters used to scoop food into their mouths. This invention obviously brought added convenience to eating as the sticks made it easier to handle steaming hot food. The same ingenious idea was undoubtedly conceived in other parts of the world as well, but evidence shows that elsewhere spoon-like utensils eventually achieved greater popularity at
the expense of chopsticks.
    (2)The reason why chopsticks became a fixture of the Chinese table setting may be the fact that local food is often chopped up into small pieces and only rapidly heated, which makes it especially suitable for chopsticks. Another more philosophical explanation for the development is that the revered philosopher and vegetarian Kong Zi, or Confucius, would have had antipathies towards handling knives at the dinner table. He considered using knives to tear at food to be a show of barbarism. According to this theory then, the fact that chopsticks became the main eating utensils is evidence that civilized behavior gradually replaced a culture marked by brutish knife toting. Whatever the truth may be, the use of chopsticks spread from China to Korea and Japan around the year 500. And the populations of these three nations have tightly held on to their chopsticks ever since.
    (3)Chopsticks are mainly made out of wood or bamboo, but some are also made from jade, ivory, silver, steel and nowadays even plastic. Sticks made from bamboo have the advantage of being cheap and their surface is naturally slightly coarse, which makes it easier to balance food on them. On the other hand, these materials tend to warp and break quite easily in use, which makes a strong case for favoring chopsticks made of metal, except for the fact that they are very slippery and tend to clank against the teeth quite annoyingly.
    (4)Legend has it that Chinese emperors used to prefer silver chopsticks because the material reacted to poisons that assassins put in food by turning black.
    (5)Food etiquette in China is significantly more tolerant than in Japan or Korea. The Chinese consider it to be completely polite to raise a bowl to one’s lips, at least in one’s home, and scoop food over the rim into the mouth with the help of chopsticks. The Chinese prefer to cook their rice quite sticky, so it is not as difficult as one might think to eat it with chopsticks. Noodle soup is also another delicacy that is eaten, true to Chinese style, quite flexibly but noisily with chopsticks. The only absolute taboo regarding chopsticks is that they should never be left to stand in the middle of a heap of rice in a bowl as this evokes food offerings and incense sticks.
    (6)Disposable chopsticks were invented at the end of the 19th century, and they soon became a hit product  throughout Asia. Today, the fad for using disposable chopsticks has become a significant environmental problem, as about 45 billion pairs of them are used annually in China alone. Producing such a huge amount of chopsticks requires 1.7 million cubic meters of wood. Last year, the central government added a five percent tax to disposable chopsticks to help curb waste.
What is true about the comparison between bamboo chopsticks and metal ones?
选项 A、Metal chopsticks are more durable than bamboo ones.
B、Metal chopsticks appear more delicate than bamboo ones.
C、Metal chopsticks cause more annoyance than bamboo ones.
D、Metal chopsticks are more convenient in use than bamboo ones.
答案A
解析 第3段末句中的warp and break quite easily表明竹筷子容易折断，这也是金属筷子出现的原因，由此我们可以说金属筷子比竹筷子更耐用，A正确。B中的delicate是第3段第2句中coarse的反义词，虽然原文说竹筷子很粗糙，但在提到这个内容的时候没有将其与金属筷子作对比，故B证据不足；该段提到了竹筷子和金属筷子各自的优点和缺点，很难比较哪个更让使用者感到不耐烦，因此C的对比不成立；该段末句提到金属筷子用起来很滑，这样看来，D的more convenient就显得不正确了。
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