单选题 The view from the top of the luxurious Morgan Centre down onto Beijing's Olympic Green is breath-taking, There, far below, lies the stunning" bird nest" Olympic Stadium. Right next to it is the equally mesmerizing National Aquatics Center, known as the Water Cube. The Aquatics Center poses one critical question: where will all the water to fill this bold but massive architectural masterpiece" and to supply the Games" come from?
One can drive a hundred miles in any direction from Beijing and never cross a healthy river. Heading north to Shanxi province, one passes river after river that has dried up. And in 80 percent of those Shanxi rivers that ale still flowing, water quality is" unfit for human contact" or for agricultural or industrial use. As you drive south across Hebei and Henan provinces, the situation is no better. Reaching the famed Marco Polo Bridge over the Yongding River, we crossed our first parched(干裂的) riverbed. From there to the Yellow River, we traversed many legendary rivers that show as blue lines on the map; all of them are now almost bone dry. All that remains to memorialize these watercourses are highway bridges, left behind like vestigial organs. The Yellow River itself, once known as" China’s Sorrow" because of its natural tendency to flood, killing millions, has in Henan been reduced to a modest-size channel. At its lower reaches in Shandong, it is not uncommon for the river to cease flowing into the Bohai Sea altogether.
What is the answer for the 250 million thirsty people who live on the North China Plain? Drought has forced farmers to turn to groundwater. But over extraction has caused water tables to fall by as much as 10 feet a year. Desperate officials have taken to making substantial investments in" precipitation-inducement (引导水分凝结) technologies," or cloud seeding. Using aircraft, meteorological balloons and even rockets and artillery shells, they’ve been attempting to shoot passing clouds full of rainmaking chemicals. The China Meteorological Administration reports that hundreds of aircraft and thousands of rockets and shells are used each year in the effort. Such campaigns have been only modestly successful and have created tensions between different localities, each claiming that clouds are being" intercepted" upwind by the other and their precious moisture stolen!
Then there is the monumental South-North Water Transfer Project. But some environmentalists fear that shifting the increasingly polluted water of the Yangtze northward will also introduce a whole host of new toxic pollutants to the breadbasket of China.
No one knows what the consequences of all these Promethean(独创的) efforts will be. In the truly magnificent facilities being built for the Olympics, one can see a dear manifestation of this understandable urge to restore Chinese greatness. The question is whether China’s limited natural-resource base can sustain the magnitude of such an ambition. With water, the country is confronting the edge of one very inflexible environmental envelope. Beijing's glorious Water Cube is a symbol both of China’s remarkable accomplishments, and its all-too-pressing limits.

单选题 By saying" One can drive a hundred miles in any direction from Beijing and never cross a healthy river" (Line 1, Paragraph 2), the author implies that ______.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】本题为篇章结构题。题干要求找作者暗示的意思。第2段说,北京周边方圆100英里范围内的河流不是干涸就是受到了污染,几条幸免的河流也水量不足,后面通篇关于北京缺水问题。因此第一句话有承上启下的作用,意在说明北京严重缺水,B项最符合题意。
单选题 The phrase" vestigial organs" (Line 8, Paragraph 2) refers to ______.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】本题为语义理解题。从前面几句话“从那里到黄河,我们途经许多历史悠久的河流,这些河流在地图上标记为水量丰沛,实际上却濒临干涸。只有那些高速公路桥才能让人们想起下面曾经是河道,残存的现状好似‘退化了的器官’”。是“Highway bridges.”“(are) left”,所以应该选择B。A项范围太大,基础设施覆盖面太广,应排除。C、D两项只是表面现象,而非本质。
单选题 According to the text, the best way to relieve the drought of the northern area is ______.
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】本题为细节理解题。第3段开头提到C“干旱迫使农民转而开采地下水”是地下水位迅速下降;后面半段提到了D人工降雨,但是城市之间彼此抱怨对方“终结”了雨云;第1段末说“上哪找这么多水来填满这个水库啊?”说明了这个设施本身不能产生水源。第4段开头就提到A“意义重大的南水北调工程”。所以相比之下A是最好办法。
单选题 We can infer from the last paragraph that ______
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】本题为推理判断题。主要考查对文章主旨大意的理解。作者并没有讨论可能的结果,所以A错。B显然是文中原话,不能算作推理。C项认为中国的建设正面临着环境危机,言过其实。只有D在原文中可以找到类似结论“The question is whether China's limited natural-resource base can sustain the magnitude of such an ambition.”意在说明中国环境难以支撑众多浩大丁程。
单选题 Which of the following is true according to the text?
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】本题为细节理解题。文中第2段倒数第一句话谈到:“黄河在河南缩减成中等大小的河流”,并没有在那里断流。所以A不恰当误。文中倒数第3段倒数第二句话说“这种降水技术只取得了一定成功,仍存在一些问题”,因此B中称其为巨大的成功是不对的。最后一段说北京新建的水库反映了崛起的迫切需求,并没反映出最终结果。只有D在文章倒数第2段能找到。