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The philosopher Susan Neiman believes growing up means finding the courage to live in a world of painful uncertainty. A grown-up, Neiman writes, helps to move the world closer to what it should be while never losing sight of what it is. So, growth is a goal rarely achieved entirety, and all the more worth striving for.Topic: My Understanding of Growing-UpOutline:I. State your understanding of growing up.II. Justify your understanding with your experiences during Covid-19 pandemic.III. Draw a natural conclusion.Marks will be awarded for content, organization, grammar and appropriateness.Failure to follow the instructions may result in a loss of marks.

In 1924 the Phoebus Cartel, an association of manufacturers including General Electric, Osram and Philips, held a meeting in Switzerland. They agreed to reduce the life of light bulbs—at the time proudly averaging 2,500 hours, to 1,000 hours, thereby more than doubling the number of light bulbs that would be sold. Members of the cartel controlled their subsidiaries firmly, and those who did not reduce the quality of their light bulbs were fined. The cartel was successful, within a decade, in making the thousand-hour light bulb the standard. In 1928 the young advertising journal Printers’ Ink proclaimed “an article that refuses to wear out is a tragedy for business.” The manufacture of goods designed to decay was hardly limited to light bulbs. The auto industry discovered it early, allowing General Motors to dominate the market by 1931, edging out Henry Ford, who clung to the obsolete idea that goods should be built to last.The phrase “planned obsolescence (过时，淘汰)” was first used in a pamphlet written in 1932 by American entrepreneur Bernard London, who argued that in order to reduce unemployment during the Great Depression, the government should make planned obsolescence compulsory. In an age that had yet to develop environmental concerns, the solution looked simple: the more often a product decays, the more products need to be made, the more workers needed to make them. There was no need to be explicit about the greater profit created for corporations. London’s proposal for compulsory planned obsolescence proved unnecessary, for the advertising industry was learning that seduction was more effective than legal force. Convincing consumers that their things were unfashionable before they actually broke down began in the 1950s in earnest. Occasionally a product still needed tinkering (修补): after DuPont invented nylon stockings strong enough to tow a truck, it sent its chemists back to the laboratory to design ones that ran when snagged by a fingernail. Today’s products often hide computer chips that ensure their demise, and we now expect to replace most of the things we depend on every few years. Nor does the maintenance of this system of production any longer require cartels or fines. In 1981, the East German light-bulb manufacturer whose products lit up half Beijing tried to peddle (推销) its longer-lasting wares at a West German trade fair. No company was interested in stocking them. The factory was closed shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall ended travel restrictions for Eastern Europeans, and business restrictions for Western companies.Critics as different as Goodman, Vance Packard and David Riesman deplored the introduction of planned obsolescence, and other features of the burgeoning consumer culture of the early 1960s. That’s probably the reason the term went out of use and was replaced by the woollier “product life cycle”. Life cycles sound normal, part of an organic process of birth and decay. We now find it natural that most of the objects we use will need replacement before we have finished paying for them. In a way, this sounds no surprising. We have long known that advertisers target our unconscious desires and insecurities in their efforts to get us to buy their products. It was in 1957 that The Hidden Persuaders first claimed to pull back the curtain and reveal the manipulations and tricks that the ad-men were practicing on us.

It has long been understood that working outdoors has certain psychological and emotional benefits, especially when it involves tending nature. Gardening can prove helpful in alleviating depression, and there is evidence to suggest that the presence of foliage (植物叶子) directly lifts an individual’s mood.There is a long history of putting mentally troubled people to work on farms. People who can’t seem to find coherence in their own lives, can’t relate to a conventional job, or have suffered some brutal emotional rupture, discover that the presence of plants and animals has a calming influence.In the early 2000s, Beren Aldridge was looking to establish a farm of this sort in Cumbria, in Britain’s Lake District. In 2004, Growing Well was established, a ten-acre farm producing vegetables that are sold locally. Evaluations have shown that those who spend time working at the farm experience clear improvements in their conditions, which tend to be more sustainable than the improvements offered by medicalized forms of treatment.How should we make sense of the success of something like Growing Well? If one chooses to view the human mind or brain as some magically autonomous entity, with its own strange habits, tastes, fluctuations and dysfunctions (失调，功能紊乱), which we as human beings have to look after (with the assistance of managers, doctors and policy-makers), then the story is relatively obvious. People are occasionally victims of a spontaneous mental or neurological affliction which they are powerless to fix. The natural environment and physical activity offer a psychosomatic (身心的) treatment for these sorts of ailment, not unlike a drug or a talking cure.No doubt this is the sort of story that many of Growing Well’s funders and National Health Service collaborators would tell. Spending time with plants becomes a medical fix. But this is very different from how Beren Aldridge understands the project he founded. As far as he is concerned, Growing Well is a business, not some form of medical prescription in disguise. Prior to establishing the farm, Aldridge had done a master’s degree in vocational rehabilitation (康复), studying how work helps people recover from illnesses and painful life events. His dissertation looked at participatory management practices, exploring the benefits of democratic business structures, otherwise known as co-operatives. It struck him that including people in the running of businesses—be they social enterprises or not—was an obvious way of helping them rediscover a sense of purpose and agency in their own lives. Why not bring together the movement for “care farming”, which had traditionally been viewed as a service to mental health patients, with that of cooperatives, which offered a template for empowering people to organize and produce collectively?Virtually all the scientific analysis of the psychological effects of spending time with plants completely ignores why a person might do so. Gardening and harvesting become merely therapeutic (治疗的). The relationship between foliage and mood is represented as a simple one of cause and effect. The ethos of Growing Well is entirely different from this. Its organizing principle is that volunteers share the same purpose, of producing and selling good vegetables. The farm is established as an “industrial and provident society”, one of the legal forms available for the creation of co-operatives in the UK. Anyone who has an interest in Growing Well, be it as a customer, a volunteer or a visitor wanting to know more about farming, is encouraged to become a member, who is then able to participate in decision-making. Volunteers are offered the opportunity to engage in management of the business, at whatever level of seniority they would like. This isn’t just about “working with your hands”; it is also about expressing a view and taking some control.

Milton Mizner once said, “A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something.”Listening is not the simple thing it seems to be. Listening is participating in at least five important ways. You are a good listener if 1. you can “see” an idea when you hear it. 2. you can distinguish between essential points and details. 3. you can distinguish between facts and opinions. 4. you can distinguish between information and persuasion. 5. and if you can then make up your own mind about what has been said.You are to write a composition of 150 words or so about the power of listening. You should write according to the outline given below. Please write your composition neatly and clearly on your answer sheet.Topic: The Power of ListeningOutlineI evaluate your listening powerII justify the need to improve listening power educationally, socially, politically, nationally and internationallyIII draw a natural conclusionMarks will be awarded for content, organization, grammar and appropriateness.Failure to follow the instructions may result in a loss of marks.

The State Administration for Market Regulation, which launched the probe into the e-commerce giant in December, charged Alibaba with abusing its market dominance.The watchdog said its investigation concluded that Alibaba had hindered online retail in China, affected innovation in the platform-based internet economy, hurt the lawful rights of merchants and damaged consumers’ interests.The 18.23 billion yuan ($2.8 billion) fine on Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. was equivalent to four percent of Alibaba’s domestic sales in 2019, according to the Saturday statement. The company’s earnings report showed it registered profits of about $12 billion in the last three months of 2020.The announcement is the latest development in the government’s increased oversight on internet companies to avoid the “disorderly expansion of capital”, curbing behavior such as either-or choices for merchants between e-commerce platforms, and price gouging on regular customers via big data.Last December, China’s antitrust regulators made public through a statement the decision to fine, for an amount of 500,000 yuan, three of the country’s largest technology companies for failing to disclose the purchases of smaller competitors, escalating the level of enforcement against every kind of monopolistic corporate behavior that affects consumers’ interests.The companies hit by the decision are Alibaba Investment, which in three deals failed to obtain approval for the acquisition of department store operator Intime Retail Group; Tencent, which through its subsidiary China Literature failed to report the acquisition of New Classic Media; and SF Holding, which acquired a competitor previously owned by China Post Corp.As is the case with Alibaba’s investment and later privatization of Intime, the fines refer to deals concluded as early as 2014, leading to a great deal of concern for Chinese tech giants facing retroactive penalties as well as the potential amendment of the penalty amount in the upcoming antitrust law. Considering the number of acquisitions that both Alibaba and Tencent have conducted over the years, this could pose serious consequences.Strengthening anti-monopoly supervision has become a global trend, Economic Daily reported on Monday. Antitrust law enforcement agencies in countries and economies in the world have taken tough regulatory stances and restrictive measures on online platforms.According to incomplete statistics, the report said, technology behemoths like Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon have been deeply involved in antitrust investigations in the world during the past four years. Among them, Google faced 27 cases, Amazon and Apple both 22 cases, and Facebook 13 cases.The voices against big tech companies never cease. They are deemed to have too much power—too much power over our economy, our society, and our democracy. They have bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field against everyone else. And in the process, they have hurt small businesses and stifled innovation.The growing importance of technology in the development of modern economies, and as a contributor to national GDP in the age of Covid-19, now requires the maximum level of legislative intervention from every country's government through an appropriate trade-off that encourages tech companies to grow and innovate, while guaranteeing an open and fair market environment, which is the basis of social and economic stability.Answer the following questions according to the above text.1) Why is the whole world so worried about the platform-based internet giants? (10 points)2) Do you think we need more antitrust laws to regulate the market competition or simply break up those tech giants under the context of Covid-19? Justify your opinions. (20 points)

The founder of Alibaba once said “Singles’ Day (November 11) shopping festival activated only a tiny part of China’s domestic demand, and has still a long way to go to fully unleash the great potential of the Chinese market.” He added that: “Alibaba will hold Singles’ Day shopping festival for at least 100 years, and make Singles’ Day a shopping festival for not only Chinese consumers but also people around the world. The festival will last even longer than Alibaba itself.”Chinese shoppers have spent big over the Singles’ Day shopping festival, showing the country’s strong economic recovery following the Covid-19 epidemic. Sales on Alibaba’s e-commerce platform Tmall exceeded 372.3 billion yuan (56.29 billion U.S. dollars) between Nov. 1 and 12:30 a.m. on Nov. 11. At the shopping peak, 583,000 orders were made in a single second on Tmall, setting a new online shopping record. More than 800 million shoppers, 250,000 brands and 5 million merchants have participated in 2020 Singles’ Day shopping spree, according to Tmall.Some American investors have already begun to doubt if the festival would come at the expense of low spending power of Chinese consumers during the rest of the year, while other investors seemed to be much more worried if Alibaba was selling fake products to consumers. An analyst further explained that: “The major reason why investors begin to cast doubt on the effect of Singles’ Day shopping festival is that they worried that this world’s hugest, biggest and craziest shopping day of the year might undermine both consumers’ spending power and business owners’ marketing ability.”Indeed, the large-scale discount activities on Singles’ Day might interrupt some consumers’ purchase plan before and after the shopping festival, other consumers who shopped online slightly before the “big day” might have to wait for extra time to have their goods delivered to them, and still others might shop irrationally and get overdrawn, thus regretfully returning most of their goods. Business owners were also forced to seize the opportunity on Singles’ Day and do everything they could, including preparing enough goods before the big day, placing fake orders on the big day, only to attract consumers’ attention and sell as many goods as possible on the big day.The founder of another major Chinese online retailing platform once stated to the media, saying, “It has already become a common practice for business owners to place fake orders on online retailing platforms, since both these platforms and consumers are willing to rank a brand based on its sales.”“Since some online retailing platforms would lower the price a great deal to compete with other platforms in the price battle, we would even buy back the products we provided to these platforms with a lower price and then sold them with a regular price on traditional sales channels,” a senior sales personnel of a traditional brand once suggested, “We are almost forced to place fake orders since many consumers prefer to buy products with higher sales.”Nevertheless, most business owners seemed not to be making much profit out of the shopping spree on every Singles’ Day. For one thing, they had to spend much money in placing fake orders and promoting themselves; for another, they had to lower the price a lot and make profit merely by large sales, which could be highly risky when the high return rates is taken into consideration.Answer the following questions according to the above text.1) Why cannot we be totally optimistic about the enormously huge sales volume of Alibaba’s Singles’ Day shopping festival? (10 points)2) How does the Singles’ Day shopping spree influence consumers and business owners? (10 points)

But the most important lesson of this often unhappy modern world is (A) progress comes from planning. (B) Ignorance (C) about one’s career is not (D) bliss and reason is better than chance and fate.

Nobody can foresee (A) how the future （B）holds for any of us. There are social, emotional and moral (C) considerations in our future that cannot be (D) foreseen.

But career planning should help you to (A) approach and cope better with new problems, such as deciding whether or not (B) enter educational or training programs, change jobs, and (C) analyze the difficulties you are having (D) with a situation or a person.

Career planning does not (A) guarantee that all the problems, difficulties, or (B) decision-making situations (C) facing you in the future will be solved or made (D) more easily.

The new conflict is more dangerous than the traditional one between man and his fellow man, (A) where the (B) protagonists at least shared a common language, but (C) while it comes to the reactions of the ecosystems to the (D) onslaught of modern technology, there is no common language.

A conflict (A) waged to ensure the survival of the human (B) species is bound to bring humans closer together. Technological progress has thus proved to be a double- edged sword, (C) giving rise to a new form of conflict: a (D) crash between Man and Nature.

The most (A) acute challenges (B) facing the future are likely to be not only those pitting man against his fellow man, but those (C) involved humankind’s struggle to preserve the environment and ensure the (D) sustainability of life on earth.

At the same time, however, some of these applications threaten to (A) unleash forces (B) which we have no control. In other words, the new technology Man now believes that allows him to dominate this wider cosmos could well be a Frankenstein monster waiting to (C) turn on its master. This is an entirely new situation that promises to change many of the perceptions (D) governing life on the planet.

The (A) fantastic achievements of modern technology and the speed (B) with which scientific discoveries are (C) translated into technological applications (D) attest to the triumph of human efforts.

As humankind moves into the third (A) millennium, it can (B) rightfully claim to have broken new ground in (C) their age-old (D) quest to master the environment.

Directions: Write an essay of about 150 words on the following topic. Write your answers on the ANSWER SHEET.The Covid-19 global pandemic is the most extensive to afflict humanity in a century. What do you think is the most important thing we need to do after the crisis? Please justify your idea.

Translate the following paragraph into Chinese. Write your answers on the ANSWER SHEET. （15%）No industry has been left unscathed by the pandemic but the automotive sector, along with aviation, has been among the worst hit. Across western Europe, sales collapsed 80 per cent year on year in April, with barely a car being bought in the UK, Spain and Italy. Global sales of new cars are forecast to fall more than 20 per cent this year. Factories have been shut down and consumers have stayed away from showrooms.

Translate the following paragraph into English. Write your answers on the ANSWER SHEET. （15%）中国始终秉持人类命运共同体理念，肩负大国担当，同其他国家并肩作战、共克时艰。中国本着依法、公开、透明、负责任态度，第一时间向国际社会通报疫情信息，毫无保留同各方分享防控和救治经验。中国对疫情给各国人民带来的苦难感同身受，尽己所能向国际社会提供人道主义援助，支持全球抗击疫情。

In some quarters (A) qualitative easing is still a tainted term, associated (B) both with mercantilism, as a weapon in a currency war, or (C) monetary adventurism. But the stigma is fading. Indeed some central banks now say they are doing QE even when (D) they don't. The Bank of Korea, for example, (E) has resolved to buy unlimited amounts of bonds from financial institutions that promise to (F) repurchase them after three months. These “repo” operations amount to (G) collateralised loans, not outright purchases. Few economists would describe them as QE. But far from (H) resist the term, the Bank of Korea has embraced it （“It wouldn't be wrong to say we began QE,” noted one official）. (I) Ever in the field of central banking have so many worried so little about buying so much.

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