《英语流行话题阅读:语境识词3500》Unit 21 身份危机

　　Unit 21
Identity Crisis
With industrialization and modernization¹, more and more people are confronted with the problem of identity. The most interesting example is that of a so-called "banana", which refers to an American who has an Asian face but holds Western values. In the US many banana children complain that they cannot explain to their young friends in the kindergarten why they cannot speak a word of Chinese and practice Kungfu although they look exactly like a Chinese.
In Shanghai, there now live a group of people from abroad. They look no different from the locals and speak fluent mandarin² or even Shanghai dialect, but when it comes to writing the Chinese characters, they are almost illiterate³. Jack⁴ is such an example. He runs a bar at the Changshu Road. Born in Shanghai, he moved to Los Angeles at the age of two with his parents. With his family, Jack spoke⁵ two languages: English and Shanghai dialect. But he never learned to read or write the Chinese words, which he find mysterious and difficult. "To be frank," he said, "Every time I signed a contract, I would pretend to read its contents carefully, but actually I understood no word of it." From time to time, he will fly to the US as he does not feel Shanghai is where he came from. "But when I am in the States, I feel that's not my destination either," he said.
At the De Gaulle Airport in France, there is a Swiss man who has been living at the waiting-room for 11 years because he lost his passport during a travel. He was refused entry into several countries. He lived upon being interviewed by the mass media. But when at last, he was allowed to return to Switzerland, he refused to leave the airport. His reason is very simple -- "I am very sure who I am. I need no acknowledgement from outer influence", he said during an interview. For this reason he is honored by the Western media as "the Hero of Identity."
As the Internet becomes more and more popular, the problem of identity becomes more serious. In a virtual world, people can have many identities. One can have different emails registered with different alias⁶. In the Internet chatroom, even one's gender⁷ is hard to determine. It seems that in this global village, people are saying hello everyday to each other without knowing whom they are talking to.
What will be the next crisis of identity? With the development of cloning technology, it might be: who is the real "I"?

1 modernization   

n.现代化，现代化的事物

参考例句：

• This will help us achieve modernization.这有助于我们实现现代化。
• The Chinese people are sure to realize the modernization of their country.中国人民必将实现国家现代化。

2 Mandarin   

n.中国官话，国语，满清官吏；adj.华丽辞藻的

参考例句：

• Just over one billion people speak Mandarin as their native tongue.大约有十亿以上的人口以华语为母语。
• Mandarin will be the new official language of the European Union.普通话会变成欧盟新的官方语言。

3 illiterate   

adj.文盲的；无知的；n.文盲

参考例句：

• There are still many illiterate people in our country.在我国还有许多文盲。
• I was an illiterate in the old society,but now I can read.我这个旧社会的文盲，今天也认字了。

4 jack   

n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克

参考例句：

• I am looking for the headphone jack.我正在找寻头戴式耳机插孔。
• He lifted the car with a jack to change the flat tyre.他用千斤顶把车顶起来换下瘪轮胎。

5 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

6 alias   

n.化名；别名；adv.又名

参考例句：

• His real name was Johnson,but he often went by the alias of Smith.他的真名是约翰逊，但是他常常用化名史密斯。
• You can replace this automatically generated alias with a more meaningful one.可用更有意义的名称替换这一自动生成的别名。

7 gender   

n.（生理上的）性，（名词、代词等的）性

参考例句：

• French differs from English in having gender for all nouns.法语不同于英语，所有的名词都有性。
• Women are sometimes denied opportunities solely because of their gender.妇女有时仅仅因为性别而无法获得种种机会。