1-3 备战奥运：新老城市（在线收听）

Learn English for the 2008 Olympics

New City Versus the Old

Foreigner: Beijing is developing so fast that in effect, it is a completely new city. Impressive as your new skyscrapers are, they are changing the face of Beijing completely, turning it into a nondescript¹ city like any other modern city in the world. I find it such a great pity.

Chinese: It is a problem, I admit. And it’s not only the face of Beijing that’s changing, it’s the way of living which has a greater effect on the Beijing people. People are forced out of their traditional courtyard² homes to live in apartment houses. Despite the modern conveniences of the new apartments, many old Beijingers still prefer to live in the old courtyard houses.

Foreigner: Besides the historical edifices³ like the Imperial Palace and the Temple of Heaven, the traditional hutongs and courtyard houses of Beijing are part of the attraction for foreign tourists, and that’ s why we are sorry to see them disappear. But that’s the price of modernization I suppose; the old has to give way to the new.

Chinese: That’s only partly true. The destruction of the old is not a must. Some of it should, and can be preserved. I believe there was a debate among the top leaders and city planners on whether or not to preserve the old Beijing and build a new city beside the old in the early days of Liberation. In fact there was a part of the suburbs called New Beijing, which apparently was to be developed into the new metropolis.

Foreigner: That would have been ideal. You should, and could have preserved your city walls and all those city gates, which now exist only in name.

Chinese: I couldn’t agree with you more. I don’t know why the original plan of building a New Beijing didn’t materialize⁴. Instead, construction and development centered around the old city, and so, the walls and gates had to go to make way⁵ for the new roads and modern traffic. But even so, I think this regrettable destruction could have been avoided if the planners and architects set their minds to it.

Foreigner: I don’t think that’s the point. They were merely carrying out the orders of the policy makers. The most they could do was to make suggestions, or even to voice a different opinion. The decision rested on the policy? makers, whoever they might be.

Chinese: You know when I was visiting London last summer, I couldn’t help comparing it with Beijing. Both are ancient cities, and while as you’ve just said, modernization has changed the face of Beijing completely, I found London has hardly changed at all.

Foreigner: That couldn’t be true. Actually London has changed a lot, so what do you mean by saying that it has hardly changed?

Chinese: Well, even from the air, I found it was the old familiar buildings such as St. Paul’ s Cathedral, the Westminster Abbey, the Tower Bridge etc. that dominated the landscape. On the ground, I found the streets and the houses looked almost exactly the same as in the photos before the Second World War, except that there are more cars on the roads now.

Foreigner: I see what you mean, but if you go underneath the surface, you will find the changes you don’t see from the outside. The houses may look the same as before, but if you go inside, you’ll find that many have been turned into apartment houses, or flats as they are called in Britain, with each family occupying one flat. So the old saying “The Englishman’s house is his castle” no longer holds true, I’m afraid.

注释：

1.nondescript [5nCndis5kript] adj. (因无特征而)难以归类的；难以形容的

2.courtyard [5kC:tjB:d] n. 院子，庭院；天井

3.edifice [5edifis] n. (巨大而雄伟的)建筑物(如大教堂、宫殿、庙宇)

4.materialize [mE5tiEriElaiz] vt. 使具体化；实现

5.make way 让路；腾出地方(或位置)