单选题 Stressed out by modern life? Try a visit to the defiantly anachronistic fiefdom of Sark, a four-square-mile cluster of rock out-crops in the English Channel. People here have lived at their own pace since 1565, when Elizabeth I gave the islanders virtual independence in return for a promise to fend off invaders. The hereditary overlord, the seigneur, still rents his fiefdom from the crown for a token sum of￡1.79 a year. Cars are banned. So is divorce. No one but the seigneur is allowed to keep pigeons or a female dog.
Not all of Sark"s ways are so charming. A man can legally thrash his wife with a cane if it"s no thicker than his little finger. Still, most of Sark"s 600 or so inhabitants live placidly, reveling in their time-warped (an tax-free) seclusion. "We have no crime and no unemployment, "says Werner Rang, 79, a member of the island"s 40-member Parliament, Chief Pleas. "Sark is the envy of many people who like our quality of life."
Even so, the place is changing. Last month the queen formally approved a radical update of the islands" ancient property laws. As of next week--for the first time in history--landowners will be free to leave property to their daughters, Until now, the womenfolk could inherit only if there were no sons. But that was before a wealthy pair of mainland-born brothers, David and Frederick Barclay, waged a bitter three-year,￡1.75 million legal battle to revise the law so their children--three sons and a daughter--could share the family estate, an outlying 160-acre island purchased in 1993.
The brothers won--sort of late last year, under threat of action at the European Court of Human Rights, Chief Pleas voted to reform Sark"s law of primogeniture. The inheritance laws now ignore gender. But land still can"t be parceled out among multiple heirs. And the dispute has hardly endeared the Barclays to the locals. "I think they (the brothers) are a pain in the butt," says Mary Collins, a 59-year-old resident.
Not that the Barclays were ever too popular here. The brothers, whose financial empire includes London"s Bitz Hotel and a Scottish newspaper group, hardly ever visit Sark"s main island. On Brecqhou, their private islet, they spent some ￡60 million to erect a castle known locally as the Cabuncle. The brothers don"t live there, they prefer Monte Carlo. And they have made no secret of their scorn for Sark"s institutions. Writing in the family"s flagship newspaper, the Scotsman, David Barclay castigated Chief Pleas as "undemocratic and intimidatory" and pilloried Sark itself as "a haven for international tax evasion an fraud."
The islanders can only shake their heads. Michael Beaumont, the 71-year-old seigneur, scoffs at the Barclays" insults. He says Sark"s freebooting days are long gone. Like many islanders, the seigneur says he"s irked more by the Barclays" attitude than by their aim. "The change was inevitable, "he says. "but it didn"t have to happen this way". But the jousting continues. Sark"s law still prohibits the Barclays from dividing up the islet. The brothers are planning to fight on against the traditionalists.

单选题 According to the writer, which of the Sark"s ways is not so charming in modern life?

单选题 From the adapted islands" ancient property laws,______.

单选题 In the fourth paragraph, the writer implies that______.

单选题 The phrase "financial empire" most probably refers to______.

单选题 What"s the main message of this text?