英语听力：自然百科 探索世界奥秘之万里长城 Unit3

Throughout their long history, the Chinese have been farmers. If you are committed to your land, you stay put and accumulate possessions--land, livestock¹ and homes that you fill with furniture and goods. It's a way of life constantly threatened by nomadic² 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 mentality³ 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 prodigious⁴ ego⁵ 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 remarkable⁶ man. Originally, Qin ruled only a small state in the northwest corner of China, but that wasn't enough for him. Qin built an invincible⁷ army. And one by one, he conquered his neighbors. It was said Qin ate up his neighbors as a silkworm devours⁸ a leaf. With all of China under his rule, Emperor Qin standardized⁹ measurements, created a single currency, the world's first euro. That's the good news. The bad news is that he was a paranoid tyrant¹⁰ who rewrote history to begin with himself.

Qin's tomb reveals both how magnificent and terrifying his reign¹¹ 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.

1 livestock   

n.家畜，牲畜

参考例句：

• 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。

2 nomadic   

adj.流浪的；游牧的

参考例句：

• 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。

3 mentality   

n.心理，思想，脑力

参考例句：

• 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。

4 prodigious   

adj.惊人的，奇妙的；异常的；巨大的；庞大的

参考例句：

• 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。

5 ego   

n.自我，自己，自尊

参考例句：

• 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。

6 remarkable   

adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的

参考例句：

• 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。

7 invincible   

adj.不可征服的，难以制服的

参考例句：

• 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。

8 devours   

吞没( devour的第三人称单数 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光

参考例句：

• 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。

9 standardized   

adj.标准化的

参考例句：

• 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。

10 tyrant   

n.暴君，专制的君主，残暴的人

参考例句：

• The country was ruled by a despotic tyrant.该国处在一个专制暴君的统治之下。
• The tyrant was deaf to the entreaties of the slaves.暴君听不到奴隶们的哀鸣。

11 reign   

n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势

参考例句：

• The reign of Queen Elizabeth lapped over into the seventeenth century.伊丽莎白王朝延至17世纪。
• The reign of Zhu Yuanzhang lasted about 31 years.朱元璋统治了大约三十一年。