英语听力：Wild China 美丽中国 -12

 The Chinese moccasin is an ambush¹ predator² with a deadly bite. This is one of China's largest and most feared venomous snakes. But the monkeys have lived alongside these dangerous serpents for thousands of years. They use this specific alarm call to warn each other whenever a snake is spotted³. Once its cover is blown, the viper⁴ poses no threat to the monkeys, now safe in the treetops. And life soon returns to normal.

 

 

By late summer, the rice fields of southern China have turned to gold. The time has come to bring in the harvest. Nowadays, modern high-yield strains are grown throughout much of the rice lands, boosted by chemical fertilizers and reaped by combine harvesters. This is the "Great Rice Bowl" of China, producing a quarter of the world's rice.

 

 

Insects stirred up by the noisy machines are snapped up by gangs of red-rumped swallows, including this year's youngsters who were unfledged several weeks ago. This could be their last good feast before they head south for the winter.

 

 

Mechanized farming works best in the flat-bottom valleys of the lowlands. To the south, in the terraced hills of Zhejiang Province, an older and simpler lifestyle persists. It's 7 in the morning, and Longshan's most successful businessman is off to work. In the golden terraces surrounding the village, the ears of rice are plump and ripe for harvesting. But today, rice isn't uppermost in Mr. Yang's mind. He has  bigger fish to fry. Further up the valley, the harvest has already begun. Yang's fields are ripe too, but they haven't been drained yet. That's because for him, rice is not the main crop.

 

 

The baskets he's carried up the hillside give a clue to Yang's business. But before he starts work, he needs to let some water out of the system. As  water level drops, the mystery is revealed: golden carp. Longshan villagers discovered the benefits of transferring wild-caught carp into their paddy fields long ago. The tradition has been going on here for at least 700 years. As the water level in the paddy drops, bamboo gates stop the fish escaping. The beauty of this farming method is that it delivers two crops from the same field at the same time: fish and rice.

1 ambush   

n.埋伏(地点)；伏兵；v.埋伏；伏击

参考例句：

• Our soldiers lay in ambush in the jungle for the enemy.我方战士埋伏在丛林中等待敌人。
• Four men led by a sergeant lay in ambush at the crossroads.由一名中士率领的四名士兵埋伏在十字路口。

2 predator   

n.捕食其它动物的动物；捕食者

参考例句：

• The final part of this chapter was devoted to a brief summary of predator species.本章最后部分简要总结了食肉动物。
• Komodo dragon is the largest living lizard and a fearsome predator.科摩多龙是目前存在的最大蜥蜴，它是一种令人恐惧的捕食性动物。

3 spotted   

adj.有斑点的，斑纹的，弄污了的

参考例句：

• The milkman selected the spotted cows,from among a herd of two hundred.牛奶商从一群200头牛中选出有斑点的牛。
• Sam's shop stocks short spotted socks.山姆的商店屯积了有斑点的短袜。

4 viper   

n.毒蛇；危险的人

参考例句：

• Envy lucks at the bottom of the human heart a viper in its hole.嫉妒潜伏在人心底，如同毒蛇潜伏在穴中。
• Be careful of that viper;he is dangerous.小心那个阴险的人，他很危险。