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揽瓜阁俱乐部 Day1 2020.05.11
【社会科学-经济】 The honey trap：China’s beekeepers feel the sting of covid-19 （542字 精读 必做篇）
ZHANG YALI remembers the pains of living in the Chinese countryside when she was growing up. On the mountainside in rural Shanxi, the northern province where her family lived, snakes and scorpions lurked. If they did not bite, the mosquitos certainly would. But the Zhangs could not move their isolated home to the safety of a village, because only the mountain was free of pesticides. What worried the Zhangs more than the odd sting were chemicals that might kill their bees.
Pesticides have long plagued China’s honey-making industry, which is by far the world’s largest. This year, however, covid-19 has been a bigger headache for the country’s 250,000 beekeepers, who produce around one-quarter of the global supply. Many of them are itinerant, moving their colonies around the country on lorries in search of pollen and nectar. For many days, restrictions imposed to curb the epidemic made this difficult.
The average honey bee flies for more than 1,500km in her lifetime. Many of China’s beekeepers travel about twice that distance in a season, criss-crossing the western and southern plains. But late in January local governments began to limit people’s movements. Many keepers who had taken advantage of the cold weather, when bees huddle in their hives, to leave their colonies and visit relatives, found themselves stuck. They were unable to return to take their bees on the road. Those united with their hives could not set off either. Many of the insects died of starvation. “In previous years, our relatives would go south for spring flowers and rapeseed. But no one can go this year,” says Ms Zhang.
In mid-February the central government announced measures to make it easier for agricultural workers and goods to move around. But there are still obstacles of various kinds, including frequent health checks. Woe betide the beekeeper required to self-quarantine—that can mean separation from bees. Even those who manage to go about their business normally will struggle to make up their losses. Margins are thin at the best of times. Wang Baorong, a beekeeper in Yunnan, normally makes about 1,000 yuan ($140) a month, about average for a rural household in the poor southern province. “Beekeepers have to rely on heaven to eat,” he says.
Some may be able to supplement their income by turning to a growth industry for owners of bees: pollinating farmers’ crops. In parts of China wild bee populations have been falling because of pesticide use, climate change and diseases such as deformed-wing virus, forcing farmers to pollinate by hand. It is a labour-intensive process and results in lower yields. (Around one-third of China’s pear trees are pollinated in this way.) But Ms Zhang says that regions where demand for these services is highest, such as Xinjiang in the far west and Inner Mongolia in the far north, are too far away to make it worthwhile for her family to travel there.
The economy is slowly recovering. Travel is getting easier. But for itinerant beekeepers it is too late to catch the early blooms of spring. Ms Zhang grumbles that life even before covid-19 was “mediocre”—not helped by her father’s poor health. “We must practise the spirit of the bees, live and learn, keep busy and grow old,” she says.
Source: The Economist
【社会科学-经济】 Singapore Seeks to Increase Local Food Production with Rooftop Farming （280字 3分5秒 精听 必做篇）
先做精听再核对原文哦~
Singapore has announced new measures designed to quickly increase local food production, including rooftop farming.
Officials in the city-state recently set a goal to meet 30 percent of Singapore's nutritional needs with locally produced food by 2030.
The plan includes $21 million in government money to support local production of eggs, vegetables and fish "in the shortest possible time."
The plans were announced as the worldwide spread of COVID-19 has caused shortages of many products, including food in some areas. Restrictions on population movements around the world have weakened supply chains and raised concerns about worsening shortages and price increases.
Currently, densely populated Singapore produces only about 10 percent of its own food needs. Only 1 percent of Singapore's 724 square kilometers is currently used for agriculture. And production costs there are higher than the rest of Southeast Asia.
Singapore's Food Agency says its goal is to raise local food production levels to make up for climate change and population growth that could threaten worldwide food supplies.
"The current COVID-19 situation underscores the importance of local food production, as part of Singapore's strategies to ensure food security," the Food Agency said in a statement.
Singapore officials have repeatedly told citizens that the city-state has enough food to get through the COVID-19 crisis. But they have decided to speed up the process of increasing local production to begin within the next six months.
This plan includes efforts to identify alternative farming spaces, such as industrial areas and empty building spaces. It also calls for adding new technologies to improve farming methods.
Officials said one part of the project aims to establish rooftop farms on public housing parking areas beginning in May.
Source: VOA
【社会科学-经济】 Fewer and fewer Japanese want to see the world （333字 精读 选做篇）
No fewer than 191 countries admit Japanese visitors without a visa. That is twice as many as wave through Kuwaitis, for example, and five times the number that let in Nepalese without hesitation. By that measure, Japan’s chrysanthemum-decorated passport is the most welcomed in the world. Yet only 24% of Japanese possess one—about half the proportion of Americans who have a passport. Why do so few Japanese take advantage of their freedom to wander the globe?
On paper, Japanese are venturing abroad more often. They went on roughly 20m overseas trips in 2019, up from 19m in 2018. But that figure is inflated by people travelling for work and by frequent flyers. The share of people who hold a passport has been slowly falling, from 27% in 2005. Morishita Masami, who chaired a government committee to promote outbound travel, estimates that at least two-thirds of Japanese are lukewarm about the idea of leaving the country. Several factors deter them: miserly annual leave, concerns about safety, the inferiority of foreign food and, most of all, a crippling fear of the embarrassment of not being understood. Sluggish wage growth and a weak yen have made travel less affordable. Even pensioners, who have plenty of free time and disposable income, are travelling less.
In the 1980s and 1990s Japanese were keen to explore the world. Students backpacked for weeks with their copies of Chikyu no arukikata (“How to walk the Earth”), a popular travel guide. A strong yen made foreign jaunts affordable. But interest has been dwindling since the late 1990s. They are “just one of many” leisure options, Ms Morishita explains.
The number of Japanese studying abroad has also fallen, from 82,945 at its peak in 2004 to 55,969 in 2016. The shrinking population of young people is partly to blame. Also, “It costs about ¥4m ($36,000) a year to study abroad,” notes Nakamura Tetsu of Tamagawa University, a prohibitive sum for most. Meanwhile, Japan’s labour crunch makes foreign study less useful. “You don’t need an education abroad to get a good job,” says Suematsu Kazuko of Tohoku University. A survey in 2019 found that 53% of Japanese students are not interested in studying abroad, the highest ratio among the seven countries covered.
Source: The Economist
【笔记格式要求】
精读笔记格式要求： 1.总结文章中心大意 2.总结分论点或每段段落大意 3.摘抄印象深刻或者觉得优美的句子 4.总结文章中的生词 5.记录阅读时间、总结时间、总时间
精听笔记格式要求： 1.逐句听写整篇文章 2.对照原文修改听写稿，标记出错原因 3.总结文章中心大意 4.总结精听过程中的生词 5.记录听写时间、总结时间、总时间
这里也给大家两点学习小建议哦~ 精读：如遇到读不懂的复杂句，建议找出句子主干，分析句子成分，也可以尝试翻译句子来帮助理解~ 精听：建议每句不要反复纠结听，如果听 5 遍都没听出来，那就跳过，等完成后再回听总结原因，时间宝贵，不要过于执着哦~
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发表于 2020-5-10 22:33:41
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