The Great Wall 万里长城 - 3
Throughout their long history, the Chinese have been farmers. If you are committed to your land, you stay put and accumulate possessions--land, livestock 1 and homes that you fill with furniture and goods. It's a way of life constantly threatened by nomadic 2 raids. And so from earliest times, the Chinese built walls, walls around their homes, walls around their cities and walls around their country to keep the have-nots out.
Wall building was so deeply ingrained in the Chinese mentality 3 that the Chinese character for city is also the Chinese character for wall. Building a wall surrounding a country the size of China needed a man of prodigious 4 ego 5 and power. A man so powerful that China is named after him-- Emperor Qin, the first emperor of China. He began two centuries before the birth of Christ with a wall stretching more than 4, 000 miles from Lintao in modern central China, across deserts, over mountains and plateau, all the way to the Korean border. Incredibly, it was built in only 12 years. Imagine building a wall, 32 feet high, 15 feet wide from New York to California without any modern equipment. The Emperor Qin was a remarkable 6 man. Originally, Qin ruled only a small state in the northwest corner of China, but that wasn't enough for him. Qin built an invincible 7 army. And one by one, he conquered his neighbors. It was said Qin ate up his neighbors as a silkworm devours 8 a leaf. With all of China under his rule, Emperor Qin standardized 9 measurements, created a single currency, the world's first euro. That's the good news. The bad news is that he was a paranoid tyrant 10 who rewrote history to begin with himself.
Qin's tomb reveals both how magnificent and terrifying his reign 11 must have been. Here in 1974, just to the east of his tomb, a vast buried army was discovered, a terracotta army guarding its emperor from evil spirits.
stay put: remain in one place
have-not: one that is poor especially in material wealth
ingrained: imprinted, firmly fixed, deeply rooted
- Both men and livestock are flourishing.人畜两旺。
- The heavy rains and flooding killed scores of livestock.暴雨和大水淹死了许多牲口。
- This tribe still live a nomadic life.这个民族仍然过着游牧生活。
- The plowing culture and the nomadic culture are two traditional principal cultures in China.农耕文化与游牧文化是我国传统的两大主体文化。
- He has many years'experience of the criminal mentality.他研究犯罪心理有多年经验。
- Running a business requires a very different mentality from being a salaried employee.经营企业所要求具备的心态和上班族的心态截然不同。
- This business generates cash in prodigious amounts.这种业务收益丰厚。
- He impressed all who met him with his prodigious memory.他惊人的记忆力让所有见过他的人都印象深刻。
- He is absolute ego in all thing.在所有的事情上他都绝对自我。
- She has been on an ego trip since she sang on television.她上电视台唱过歌之后就一直自吹自擂。
- She has made remarkable headway in her writing skills.她在写作技巧方面有了长足进步。
- These cars are remarkable for the quietness of their engines.这些汽车因发动机没有噪音而不同凡响。
- This football team was once reputed to be invincible.这支足球队曾被誉为无敌的劲旅。
- The workers are invincible as long as they hold together.只要工人团结一致，他们就是不可战胜的。
- If anyone tries to harm them, fire comes from their mouths and devours their enemies. 若有人想要害他们，就有火从他们口中出来，烧灭仇敌。
- It eats away parts of his skin; death's firstborn devours his limbs. 他本身的肢体要被吞吃，死亡的长子要吞吃他的肢体。
- We use standardized tests to measure scholastic achievement. 我们用标准化考试来衡量学生的学业成绩。
- The parts of an automobile are standardized. 汽车零件是标准化了的。