英语听力：Wild China 美丽中国 -2（在线收听） |
It has transformed the landscape. Late winter in southern Yunnan is a busy time for local farmers as they prepare the age-old paddy fields ready for the coming spring. These hill slopes of Yunyang county plunge nearly 2,000 meters to the floor of the Red River Valley. Each contains literally thousands of stack terraces carved out by hand using basic digging tools. Yunnan’s rice terraces are among the oldest human structures in China, still ploughed, as they always have been, by domesticated water buffaloes, whose ancestors originated in these very valleys. This man-made landscape is one of the most amazing engineering feats of pre-industrial China. It seems as if every square inch of land has been pressed into cultivation.
As evening approaches, an age-old ritual unfolds. It’s the mating season, and male paddy frogs are competing for the attention of the females. But it doesn’t always pay to draw too much attention to yourself. The Chinese Pond Heron is a pitiless predator. Even in the middle of a ploughed paddy field, nature is red in beak and claw. This may look like a slaughter, but as each heron can swallow only one frog at a time, the vast majority will escape to croak another day.
Terrace paddies like those of Yunyang County are found across much of southern China. This whole vast landscape is dominated by rice cultivation. In hilly Guizhou province, the Miao minority have developed a remarkable rice culture. With every inch of fertile land given over to rice cultivation, the Miao build their wooden houses on the steepest and least productive hillsides. In Chinese rural life, everything has a use. Dried in the sun, manure from the cowsheds would be used as cooking fuel.
It’s midday, and the Song family are tucking into a lunch of rice and vegetables. Oblivious to the domestic chitchat, granddad Gu Yongshou has serious matters on his mind. Spring is a start of the rice growing season. The success of the crop will determine how well the family will eat next year, so planting at the right time is critical. |
| 原文地址：http://www.tingroom.com/lesson/wenhuabolan/2008/340499.html |