|
Unit 15
DIALOGUE I
A Beijing Opera Fan
A: I've sensed a boom in the recreational activities of the Chinese.
B: You really keep your eyes open. Yes, more and more people are taking part in various kinds of recreation.
A: Dancing, singing, going to the theatre and concerts, and giving concerts and staging plays themselves.
B: More than that. Painting, photographing, collecting, fishing, touring, body-building, shadow boxing, and many more, so far as I know.
A: Do people form interest clubs and associations?
B: Yes, many do. And some activities are well organized. For example, book review discussions and poetry readings are often organized by community centres for cultural exchanges. And workers' clubs encourage members to read literature and create their own works of literature.
A: That's amazing! People really profit from their reading this way.
B: Say, you've been in China for some time now. Have you developed any interest in a particular form of Chinese entertainment?
A: You bet I have. I go to Beijing opera at the weekends.
B: Beijing opera! That's really a surprise.
A: I can't say I liked it the first time I went to one. In fact, the moment the opera started, I regretted going there. The deafening gongs and cymbals almost drove me nuts. Luckily I was with Professor Shi, my Chinese teacher. He's a Beijing opera fan, completely obsessed with this theatrical art.
B: A lot of people are, particularly older people.
A: Professor Shi taught me how to appreciate this genuine Chinese art. I stayed on and soon began to feel fascinated by the singing and acting. Later on, I went to more Beijing operas and gradually developed an interest. I used to go to movies a lot. But now, compared with Beijing opera, films are boring.
B: Imagine a young American admiring an old school of Chinese folk theatre. Unbelievable!
A: Now that I've taken a fancy to Beijing opera, I never miss a chance to see the famous stars acting.
B: You're really more Chinese than I am in this respect. I somehow haven't been able to appreciate Beijing opera yet.
A: What's more, I've begun to read books about this form of ancient art so that I can enjoy it more. I know there are five categories of major roles in Beijing opera, namely, sheng, dan, jing, mo and chou (生旦净未丑).
B: What's jing!
A: That's the painted face, also known as hualian (花脸). I also know that different coloured clothes show different social ranks: yellow for the imperial family, red for aristocracy, dark red for usurpers and barbarian generals.
B: My! You seem to have become an expert in Beijing opera now.
A: Oh, no, far from it. But I do find the mimes amusing. Two people stoop and rise alternately, and they do look as if they were sailing in a boat. A man flicks his whip and he looks as if he were riding on horseback. I've really come to appreciate the artistic value of Beijing opera.
B: Next time you go to a Beijing opera, I'll go with you. Perhaps you'll make a Beijing opera fan of me, too.
DIALOGUE II
Dialogue:
Bob and Peter are planning their camping holiday. Bob has prepared a list of articles to include in their survival kit. Here is the incomplete list:
Survival Kit
a knife
a whistle
a torch
tinned food
water bottles
antiseptic cream
sticking plasters
...
B: What's the point of taking a torch?
P: I'm going to take it for signalling, in case we get lost and have to attract attention.
B: I don't see why you're taking a whistle. I really don't think we'll need it.
P: Well, maybe not, but it doesn't take up much room, so let's put it in.
B: What about all this tinned food? What are you taking all these heavy tins for, I don't understand.
P: Well, in case we get hungry and can't find anywhere to eat.
B: But it's so heavy! Wouldn't it be better to take some packet-foods, or at least some smaller tins?
P: Packet-foods may get wet. It's a bit risky.
B: Well, we could put them in plastic bags to keep them dry. If it rains then they won't get wet.
P: A tin would keep them from getting wet.
B: Yes, but it would be too heavy.
READING I
A Breeze at Hand, Part I
Many a grown man can remember with pleasure the cool refreshment that came to him as a five-year old when he ran to his mother after playing on a hot afternoon and she fanned his perspiring face for a moment with her fan. If it was a folding lace fan it may have had a drop of sweet-smelling perfume in it to make the breeze sweet to a child.
Today, air-conditioning and electric motors have made us forget fans. In these days it often seems, too, that we have no time to sit and fan ourselves - and that's our great loss.
And yet you may be surprised to know that fans have not yet disappeared from the scene. A good many are still made in France, which has always been a great home of the fan, and in the Orient, and quite a few even in busy, bustling America. You might never expect to see a fan today in a great, rushing city, and yet a few are still sold in New York and other great cities.
Today in Fifth Avenue's smart shops you may buy a severe little fan for a lady for $ 3, or a fine French "Louis XIV" fan, with pictures of the king's courtiers, and the price? ... $ 25.
Fans are still used here and there by people who find time to sit on porches, and they're used, too, at concerts and in church -- and at dances. Today, however, they're finding a use they never had before; once a year an interior decorator from St. Paul, Minnesota, journeys 1,100 miles to New York City to buy fans which she then frames as "shadow-boxes" and uses as decorations in smart homes.
Though no one knows where fans came from, researchers say that primitive men in all countries seem to have used them. Chances are that the first fan may have been a branch with leaves to whisk flies away from food, or a palm leaf used to fan up a fire in smouldering wood.
The word comes from Latin vannus: a Roman instrument for winnowing grain. The Bible says (Isaiah, 30:24): "The oxen ... shall eat clean provender which hath been winnowed with the shovel and the fan." This fan, or vannus, was a basket of special shape for tossing grain high into the air so the breeze could blow away the chaff. On hot days, farmers no doubt found they could cool each other by fanning with the vannus.
But fans have a very ancient history as the Chinese had fans in 2699 B.C., if not long before. The Assyrians, 3,000 years ago, hung fans from the ceiling and, when they were pulled by ropes, they gave "enough wind to wreck a ship". In early Egypt, fans were widely used by kings and became a symbol of authority.
The strange thing about fans is: they are talkative. Since early times, man has used fans to say things. What can you say with a fan? Until fifty years ago, Japanese generals when giving an order to attack, threw their fans in the air as high as possible where, whirling over and over, the fans inspired men to fight.
Labourers in the Far East for hundreds of years used fans to cool themselves while working. Soldiers fanned themselves while under attack. Laborers and soldiers alike learned to greet each other pleasantly by a "nod" of their fans.
READING II
A Breeze at Hand, Part II
The fan has always been far more than a cooling device. It is interesting to note that it has long been called a "fly-whisk". Early fans were sometimes mentioned in royal wills as tools used to "de-fly" the King's table.
Women in Europe found fans useful in romance. A pair of eyes above a lace fan went straight to a man's heart. A flutter of the fan, or of the eyelids at the right time, carried a message only love could understand.
But fans also have had their intrigue. Marat, the French revolutionary leader, was killed in his bath by Charlotte Corday who held a fan to hide the knife with which she stabbed him. Old pictures show fans being used to hide a letter, to mask a face, and to cover a whisper.
King Louis XVI of France carried a great feather fan, as did many men of his court. Only in recent years did the fan become a woman's implement.
Fans were used, too, to dramatize news; some showed the latest balloon flight, a new play, a leading person. They have figured in the world's great plays and books. Shakespeare talks of fans, while in the Arabian Nights, in the tale known as "The Sleeper Awakened", it is told that Abou Hassan sat at a fine dinner table where he was fanned by seven beautiful women with feather fans. And Ovid, in a charming passage, asks his beloved: "Dost thou wish that a gentle breeze cool the heat of thy cheeks? This leaf, waved by my hand, will afford thee this pleasure."
The Arabians, who have had fans for 2,000 years, used to place religious writings on them. And school boys in Japan wrote notes on them; and on Japanese "war fans" a red sun was painted so that it showed when the fan was spread wide. Japan's iron-and-leather fans were useful, in emergency, as weapons of defense! In India, fans have been held in reverence -- along with umbrellas.
But men seem to have overlooked one great value in their fans: therapy. Nothing is more refreshing to tired men, women and children than a breeze across the face. Men discover this when they turn their faces to a breeze on a hilltop, a cooling wind across a desert on a hot day, or a rush of salty air across a ship's rolling deck. A breeze has power to "blow the cobwebs away", but it does more than that. It brings new heart, new vigour, new courage. So, in a small but important way, mankind's fans have helped him for thousands of years.
So of cheerfulness, or a good temper - the more
it is spent, the more of it remains.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
|