—Why not        (尝试一下坐高铁去那儿).

Dear Mr Jones,

    I expect you may be slightly surprised to receive a letter from someone living as near as your next­door neighbor, but I have to raise a subject so that it will be easier for me to discuss in writing.

    You may have noticed that I have a 1 of apple trees running alongside the fence that 2 our two gardens. You may also have taken 3 in the frequent sight of your two children 4 on your lawn directly by the fence. And you may also have 5 that my apple trees, so to speak, bend over the fence and seem to 6 your children with interest.

    It is only natural that your children should sometimes seem to return that 7. And it is not only natural, 8, I acknowledge, quite legal, for them occasionally to show that interest by 9 all the apples that hang over on 10 side of the fence.

    But to be plain with you, Mr Jones, I am tired 11 seeing your children, day after day, tear the branches off the side of every one of my apple trees, and leave my trees looking 12 a battle had been fought on one side of them. I am, if anything, even more tired of waking up these fine autumn 13, to find even the apples on my side of the fence 14 in number. I know this is the work of your children, since last night I was woken at midnight by the 15 they were making 16 one of my trees, and (as they may have told you) chased them home.

    While I am on the subject, I am at least grateful to you for keeping your bonfires on the far side of your garden this year. Last year neither I 17 your children had any apples, because the smoke from your bonfire destroyed all the flowers 18the apples had time to form. I very much hope that next year—for the first time since I came to this village—I shall have my apples, and your children 19 have theirs and that the sight of the line of apple trees will be 20 pride to us both.

    Dujiangyan is the oldest man­made water system in the world, and a wonder in the development of Chinese science. Built over 2, 200 years ago in what is now Sichuan Province in Southwest China, this amazing engineering achievement is still used today to irrigate over 6, 000 square kilometers of farmland, take away floodwater and provide water for 50 cities in the province.

    In ancient times, the region in which Dujiangyan now stands suffered from regular floods caused by overflow from the Minjiang River. To help the victims of the flooding, Li Bing, the region's governor, together with his son, decided to find a solution. They studied the problem and discovered that the river most often overflowed when winter snow at the top of the nearby Mount Yulei began to melt as the weather warmed.

    The simplest fix was to build a dam, but this would have ruined the Minjiang River. So instead Li designed a series of channels built at different levels along Mount Yulei that would take away the floodwater while leaving the river flowing naturally. Better still, the extra water could be directed to the dry Chengdu Plain, making it suitable for farming.

    Cutting the channels through the hard rock of Mount Yulei was a remarkable accomplishment as it was done long before the invention of gunpowder and explosives. Li Bing found another solution. He used a combination of fire and water to heat and cool the rocks until they cracked and could be removed. After eight years of work, the 20­metre­wide canals had been carved through the mountain.

    Once the system was finished, no more floods occurred and the people were able to live peacefully and affluently. Today, Dujiangyan is admired by scientists from around the world because of one feature. Unlike modern dams where the water is blocked with a huge wall, Dujiangyan still lets water flow through the Minjiang River naturally, enabling ecosystems and fish populations to exist in harmony.

    When a leafy plant is under attack, it doesn't sit quietly. Back in 1983, two scientists, Jack Schultz and Ian Baldwin, reported that young maple trees getting bitten by insects send out a particular smell that neighboring plants can get. These chemicals come from the injured parts of the plant and seem to be an alarm. What the plants pump through the air is a mixture of chemicals known as volatile organic compounds, VOCs for short.

    Scientists have found that all kinds of plants give out VOCs when being attacked. It's a plant's way of crying out. But is anyone listening? Apparently. Because we can watch the neighbors react.

    Some plants pump out smelly chemicals to keep insects away. But others do double duty. They pump out perfumes designed to attract different insects who are natural enemies to the attackers. Once they arrive, the tables are turned. The attacker who was lunching now becomes lunch.

    In study after study, it appears that these chemical conversations help the neighbors. The damage is usually more serious on the first plant, but the neighbors, relatively speaking, stay safer because they heard the alarm and knew what to do.

    Does this mean that plants talk to each other? Scientists don't know. Maybe the first plant just made a cry of pain or was sending a message to its own branches, and so, in effect, was talking to itself. Perhaps the neighbors just happened to "overhear" the cry. So information was exchanged, but it wasn't a true, intentional back and forth.

    Charles Darwin, over 150 years ago, imagined a world far busier, noisier and more intimate (亲密的) than the world we can see and hear. Our senses are weak. There's a whole lot going on.

注意：①每处错误及其修改均仅限一词；

②只允许修改10处，多者（从第11处起）不计分。

    Last summer, I got a part-time job as a waiter. I worked hard and very helpful. Everyone in a restaurant including some regular customer liked me. One day, a foreign couple in their fifties entered into the restaurant. I was happy to have a chance to practice their spoken English. I went up to greet them warm. After I took their order, I told them their food will be served quickly because we Chinese respect the elderly. After heard my words, a look of displeasure appeared on the wife's face. Seeing my confusing look, her husband explained to me the Westerners disliked the description "old". I apologized to them but realized the importance of knowing cultural differences.