问答题 .  SECTION A MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS
    PASSAGE ONE
    (1)Gabriel Oak was a sensible man of good character, who had been brought up by his father as a shepherd, and then managed to save enough money to rent his own farm on Norcombe Hill, in Dorset. He was twenty-eight, a tall, well-built man, who did not seem, however, to think his appearance was very important.
    (2)One winter morning he was in one of his fields on the side of Norcombe Hill. Looking over his gate, Gabriel could see a yellow cart, loaded with furniture and plants, coming up the road. Right on top of the pile sat a handsome young woman. As Gabriel was watching, the cart stopped at the top of the hill, and the driver climbed down to go back and fetch something that had fallen off.
    (3)The girl sat quietly in the sunshine for a few minutes. Then she picked up a parcel lying next to her, and looked round to see if the driver was coming back. There was no sign of him. She unwrapped the parcel, and took out the mirror it contained. The sun shone on her lovely face and hair. Although it was December, she looked almost summery, sitting there in her bright red jacket with the fresh green plants around her. She looked at herself in the mirror and smiled, thinking that only the birds could see her. But behind the gate Gabriel Oak was watching too. "She must be rather vain," he thought. "She doesn't need to look in that mirror at all!"
    (4)As the girl smiled and blushed at herself, she seemed to be dreaming, dreaming perhaps of men's hearts won and lost. When she heard the driver's footsteps, she packed the mirror away. The cart moved on downhill to the tollgate. Gabriel followed on foot. As he came closer he could hear the driver arguing with the gatekeeper.
    (5)"My mistress's niece, that's her on top of the furniture, is not going to pay you the extra two pence," said the driver. "She says she's offered you quite enough already." "Well, if she doesn't pay the toll, your mistress's niece can't pass through the gate," replied the gatekeeper. Gabriel thought that two pence did not seem worth bothering about, so he stepped forward. "Here," he said, handing the coins to the gatekeeper, "let the young woman pass."
    (6)The girl in the red jacket looked carelessly down at Gabriel, and told her man to drive on, without even thanking the farmer. Gabriel and the gatekeeper watched the cart move away. "That's a lovely young woman," said the gatekeeper. "But she has her faults," answered Gabriel.
    (7)"True, farmer." "And the greatest of them is what it always is with women." "Wanting to win the argument every time? Oh, you're right."
    (8)"No, her great fault is that she's vain."
    (9)A few days later, at nearly midnight on the longest night of the year, Gabriel Oak could be heard playing his flute on Norcombe Hill. The sky was so clear and the stars so visible that the earth could almost be seen turning. In that cold, hard air the sweet notes of the flute rang out. The music came from a little hut on wheels, standing in the corner of a field. Shepherds' huts like this are used as a shelter during the winter and spring, when shepherds have to stay out all night in the fields, looking after very young lambs.
    (10)Gabriel's two hundred and fifty sheep were not yet paid for. He knew that, in order to make a success of the farming business, he had to make sure they produced a large number of healthy lambs. So he was determined to spend as many nights as necessary in the fields, to save his lambs from dying of cold or hunger.
    (11)The hut was warm and quite comfortable inside. There was a stove, and some bread and beer on a shelf. On each side of the hut was a round hole like a window, which could be closed with a piece of wood. These air-holes were usually kept open when the stove was burning, because too much smoke in a small, airless hut could kill the shepherd.
    (12)From time to time the sound of the flute stopped, and Gabriel came out of his hut to check his sheep. Whenever he discovered a half-dead new lamb, he brought the creature into the hut. In front of the stove it soon came back to life, and then he could return it to its mother.
    (13)He noticed a light further down the hill. It came from a wooden hut at the edge of a field. He walked down to it and put his eye to a hole in the wood. Inside, two women were feeding a sick cow. One of the women was middle-aged. The other was young and wore a cloak. Gabriel could not see her face.
    (14)"I think she'll be all right now, aunt," said the younger woman. "I can come and feed her again in the morning. What a pity I lost my hat on the way here!" Just then the girl dropped her cloak, and her long hair fell on to the shoulders of her red jacket. Gabriel recognized the girl of the yellow cart and the mirror, the girl who owed him two pence. The women left the hut, and Gabriel returned to his sheep.
    (15)As the sun was rising the next morning, Gabriel waited outside his hut until he saw the young woman riding up the hill. She was sitting sideways on the horse in the usual lady's position. He suddenly thought of the hat she had lost, searched for it, and found it among some leaves on the ground. He was just going to go up to her to give it back, when the girl did something very strange. Riding under the low branches of a tree, she dropped backwards flat on the horse's back, with her feet on its shoulders. Then, first looking round to make sure no one was watching, she sat up straight again and pulled her dress to her knees, with her legs on either side of the horse. This was obviously easier for riding, but not very ladylike. Gabriel was surprised and amused by her behaviour. He waited until she returned from her aunt's hut, and stepped out into the path in front of her.
    PASSAGE TWO
    (1)"Like Florence in the Renaissance." That is a common description of what it is like to live in Silicon Valley. America's technology capital has an outsize influence on the world's economy, stockmarkets and culture. This small portion of land running from San Jose to San Francisco is home to three of the world's five most valuable companies. Giants such as Apple, Facebook, Google and Netflix all claim Silicon Valley as their birthplace and home, as do trailblazers (先驱) such as Airbnb, Tesla and Uber. The Bay Area has the 19th-largest economy in the world, ranking above Switzerland and Saudi Arabia.
    (2)The Valley is not just a place. It is also an idea. Ever since Bill Hewlett and David Packard set up in a garage nearly 80 years ago, it has been a byword (代名词) for innovation and ingenuity. It has been at the centre of several cycles of Schumpeterian (熊彼特的) destruction and regeneration, in silicon chips, personal computers, software and internet services. Some of its inventions have been ludicrous: internet-connected teapots, or an app that sold people coins to use at laundromats (自助洗衣机). But others are world-beaters: microprocessor chips, databases and smartphones all trace their lineage to the Valley.
    (3)Its combination of engineering expertise, thriving business networks, deep pools of capital, strong universities and a risk-taking culture have made the Valley impossible to clone, despite many attempts to do so. There is no credible rival for its position as the world's pre-eminent innovation hub. But there are signs that the Valley's influence is peaking. If that were simply a symptom of much greater innovation elsewhere, it would be cause for cheer. The truth is unhappier.
    (4)First, the evidence that something is changing. Last year more Americans left the county of San Francisco than arrived. According to a recent survey, 46% of respondents say they plan to leave the Bay Area in the next few years, up from 34% in 2016. So many startups (初创公司) are branching out into new places that the trend has a name, "Off Silicon Valleying". Peter Thiel, perhaps the Valley's most high profile (知名度高的) venture capitalist, is among those upping sticks. Those who stay have broader horizons: in 2013 Silicon Valley investors put half their money into startups outside the Bay Area; now it is closer to two-thirds.
    (5)The reasons for this shift are manifold, but chief among them is the sheer expense of the Valley. The cost of living is among the highest in the world. One founder reckons young startups pay at least four times more to operate in the Bay Area than in most other American cities. New technologies, from quantum computing to synthetic biology, offer lower margins than internet services, making it more important for startups in these emerging fields to husband their cash. All this is before taking into account the nastier features of Bay Area life: clogged traffic, discarded syringes (注射器) and shocking inequality.
    (6)Other cities are rising in relative importance as a result. The Kauffman Foundation, a non-profit group that tracks entrepreneurship, now ranks the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area first for startup activity in America, based on the density of startups and new entrepreneurs. Mr Thiel is moving to Los Angeles, which has a vibrant tech scene. Phoenix and Pittsburgh have become hubs for autonomous vehicles; New York for media startups; London for fintech; Shenzhen for hardware. None of these places can match the Valley on its own; between them, they point to a world in which innovation is more distributed.
    (7)If great ideas can bubble up in more places, that has to be welcome. There are some reasons to think the playing-field for innovation is indeed being levelled up. Capital is becoming more widely available to bright sparks everywhere: tech investors increasingly trawl the world, not just California, for hot ideas. There is less reason than ever for a single region to be the epicentre of technology. Thanks to the tools that the Valley's own firms have produced, from smartphones to video calls to messaging apps, teams can work effectively from different offices and places. A more even distribution of wealth may be one result, greater diversity of thought another. The Valley does many things remarkably well, but it comes dangerously close to being a monoculture of white male nerds. Companies founded by women received just 2% of the funding doled out by venture capitalists last year.
    (8)The problem is that the wider playing-field for innovation is also being levelled down. One issue is the dominance of the tech giants. Startups, particularly those in the consumer-internet business, increasingly struggle to attract capital in the shadow of Alphabet, Apple, Facebook et al. In 2017 the number of first financing rounds in America was down by around 22% from 2012. Alphabet and Facebook pay their employees so generously that startups can struggle to attract talent (the median salary at Facebook is $240,000). When the chances of startup success are even less certain and the payoffs not so very different from a steady job at one of the giants, dynamism suffers—and not just in the Valley. It is a similar story in China, where Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent are responsible for close to half of all domestic venture-capital investment, giving the giants a big say in the future of potential rivals.
    (9)The second way in which innovation is being levelled down is by increasingly unfriendly policies in the West. Rising anti-immigrant sentiment and tighter visa regimes of the sort introduced by President Donald Trump have economy-wide effects: foreign entrepreneurs create around 25% of new companies in America. Silicon Valley first bloomed, in large part, because of government largesse (慷慨解囊). But state spending on public universities throughout America and Europe has fallen since the financial crisis of 2007 -2008. Funding for basic research is inadequate—America's federal-government spending on R&D was 0.6% of GDP in 2015, a third of what it was in 1964—and heading in the wrong direction.
    (10)If Silicon Valley's relative decline heralded the rise of a global web of thriving, rival tech hubs, that would be worth celebrating. Unfortunately, the Valley's peak looks more like a warning that innovation everywhere is becoming harder.
    PASSAGE THREE
    (1)In a sunny room in a small apartment in the Tokyo satellite town of Kunitachi lies Yasuyuki Ibaraki, eyes closed and breathing laboured. Yukio Miyazaki, his doctor, who visits fortnightly from a local clinic, suspects that he does not have much time left: he has brain damage from a cerebral infarction (脑梗死), a tumour in his digestive system and is unable to swallow or talk. Reiko, his wife, feeds him through a tube to his stomach and clears phlegm (痰) from his throat. "He is from a close-knit family and is a quiet man, so I think it is better for him to be here rather than in a hospital," she says, over green tea and grapes.
    (2)Life expectancy in Japan is the highest in the world, at 84. This is good news for its people, but means that an ever-higher share of the population is elderly. Fully 28% of Japanese are older than 65, compared with 15% of Americans and 21% of Germans. More old people, in turn, means higher health-care costs. Last year the government budgeted ￥15trn ($138bn, or 15% of its total expenditure) for health care and nursing, excluding the charges it levies for the public health-insurance scheme. With public debt at 250% of GDP, and debt service consuming a further 24% of spending, the government is looking desperately for ways to cut costs. It reckons caring for people at home is one of its best options.
    (3)All Japanese pay a monthly premium to the public insurance scheme, either through their employer or the local municipality. In return they are entitled to treatment and drugs from public and private doctors and hospitals, although they must also pay a portion of the cost of treatment (a co-payment, in American parlance), subject to a cap. In 2000 Japan introduced an additional public insurance scheme for long-term care for those over 65, into which people must pay from the age of 40. It works the same way. The premiums and co-payments cover around 60% of the cost of the services provided; the government pays for the rest. And it is the old who cost the most. The government reckons that the average annual cost of health care for someone over 75 is ￥942,000, compared with just ￥221,000 for everyone else.
    (4)By the standards of ageing nations, Japan has managed to curb medical costs fairly well, says Naoki Ikegami of St Luke's International University in Tokyo. The government sets fees for services to keep costs down (although that encourages providers to perform unnecessary procedures to make more money: Japan has more CT scanners relative to its population than any other country). It has also promoted the use of generic drugs, which are cheaper.
    (5)Nonetheless, the country has crept up to sixth place in the OECD's ranking of the share of GDP spent on health care, behind France and America, but ahead of Italy and South Korea—two other ageing countries. It is not just that the number of old people is increasing; spending per person is rising, too, as people live longer with diseases like Alzheimer's (阿尔茨海默症) and diabetes.
    (6)Japan has promoted home care for many years, but it is pushing it harder now. The policy is especially beneficial given that the average hospital stay in Japan is three times longer than in the Netherlands, for instance. The health ministry reckons that 1m people will receive care at home in 2025—one-and-a-half times the current total. The number of special nursing units exclusively for home visits has risen from 7,473 in 2014 to 10,418 in 2018.
    (7)Last year a government panel suggested raising the amount doctors are paid for home visits and making consultations conducted via video-conferencing services eligible, too. It also proposed new rules to encourage care at home. Hospitals should be obliged to talk to social services when they discharge a patient, for example.
    (8)Some municipalities are already offering good care in the community. Onomichi, a small provincial city that is even older than the country as a whole, is one. Its medical facilities have 15-minute "care conferences" with doctors, nurses, family members and even dentists, to discuss how they will go about looking after people. "It used to be hard for hospitals to tell a patient to return home as there was no system for that; that has changed," says Hisashi Katayama, a doctor.
    (9)Community care for specific diseases is improving, too. Take dementia (痴呆), which currently affects 5m Japanese (4% of the population), and will afflict 6%-7% by 2030. Rather than provide only institutional care and medicine, some towns, such as Matsudo, north-east of Tokyo, have set up cafés to offer advice and companionship to patients and their carers. Day centres that give respite to families tending to elderly relatives are common. Much more could be done: only 13% of Japanese die at home, although most say they want to.
    (10)But more widespread home care will not be enough to make Japan's health care affordable. The government of Shinzo Abe wants to revamp the social-security system, which it reckons will help reduce health-care costs. Raising the retirement age, for example, will keep people active, healthier and paying tax for longer. The government also wants to try to reduce the incidence of diseases that affect older people, but have their origins in behaviour at a younger age. "We have tended to focus on the old, but we need to look at the younger to prevent disease," says Kazumi Nishikawa of the economy ministry. He is particularly focused on giving people more information on what causes diabetes, which is on the rise in Japan, or exercises that can stem the progression of dementia.
    (11)People are likely to have to pay more for health care, too. Co-payments for many of those over 75 are only 10%, compared with 30% for everyone else. The government should start by doubling that to 20%, says Shigefumi Kawamoto, managing director of Kenporen, the national federation of health-insurance societies. "Some elderly people don't have resources, but many do," he avers (断言). The government could exclude some items from coverage, he says, such as over-the-counter drugs.
    (12)Meanwhile, back in Kunitachi, Dr Miyazaki talks to Reiko about her husband's condition. She is worried that her husband is getting worse, she says, and is anxious between visits. The doctor promises to come weekly from now on.1.  It can be concluded from Para. 1 that Gabriel Oak ______. (PASSAGE ONE)