第10章 在那不勒斯岛上(3)

Cases and Exercises

Case 1:Flying Abroad with Home-Made Chinese Dishes

Xiong Zheng was admitted by the University of Chicago,which was located in the famous "wind city"of the United States.Before he went there,he used several weeks to pack all his stuff,because it would be his first time to visit and live in the United States.

One day,his classmate Li Qin,whose father was a CEO in an American company,told him that American food was very different from Chinese food –American people like sweet food very much,and unlike Chinese people,they drank cold water and ate salad.Zheng Xiong said:"I 'm sure I will miss Chinese food very much,especially the Chinese dishes made by my mom.""If only you would bring some home-made dishes along with you to the U.S.!"Lin Qin replied.

Xiong Zheng stood before the custom officer at Beijing Capital Airport;he was waiting to check in.He was a little bit nervous,because he brought a small bottle of spicy beef stew with him.He was uncertain whether he could take all these Chinese dishes along to the United States.

It was his turn."Sir,I'm sorry,you can't take this on to the plane.It's prohibited.I'm afraid you have to throw it into the garbage can before you get on board"A foreign custom officer said to him politely.Xiong Zheng replied with a great disappointment:"Sorry,this is my mom's home-made beef stew.I thought I might miss Chinese food very soon,so I brought it with me.I'm sorryabout that."At last,he was obliged to throw the bottle of beefstew into a garbage can.What went wrong?

Case 2:How to Deal with the Garbage?

Jing Heng moved to a new students'dorm building in the campus at the beginning of a new semester.She shared her dorm with two girls,who were of the same age.Jing was very good-tempered;she believed she can get along very well with her new roommates.However,after only one and a half month,she felt very embarrassed and out of place.

Her roommates were two slim blonde girls –Devan and Jennifer.Devan was not very pretty,but smart and very humorous;Jennifer was very pretty and she was a sport fan.At first,Jing Heng thought Devan and Jennifer would be perfect roommates and she tried to make friends with both of them.

Everything seemed to go wrong after they decided to clean the dorm in turn.Both Devan and Jennifer were very strict about garbage classification.They got two garbage cans from the RA and tagged one can as "recyclable"and another one "unrecyclable".To the dismay of Jing Heng,she always confused recyclable garbage with unrecyclable one.Whenever she misplaced the garbage,her roommates would point out her mistake and put it into the right can.Jin Heng felt very embarrassed;she apologized to her roommates several times and tried hard to remember the correct way of classifying the garbage.Why were these Americans so strict about garbage classification?

Case 3:Good Friends or not?

Anne was the best friend of Devan,who was Jing Heng'sroommate.Anne was of the same age as Devan.It was said that they have been on good terms with each other for about five years.Anne was studying Philosophy in the University of Wisconsin,which was located in the capital of Wisconsin and not very far away from Chicago.She has beautiful brown hair and eyes of the same color.She came to visit Devan at the beginning of every semester.

After Jing Heng moved in,Anne came to see Devan and they decided to walk around the whole campus with Jing Heng.They told Jing Heng lots of stories about the university and showed her some interesting places where Jing Heng had never been before.Jing Heng believed Anne and Devan were true friends,However,when they found a vending machine,Devan bought only one bottle of coke,and then Anne paid for her own bottle.Jing Heng was very surprised to see that,because in China,good friends were supposed to be more intimate,generally they would offer to pay for drinks for their friends without hesitation.