Difficult times often bring out the best in people. Many well-known people come to help those who are in trouble. And this was the case for basketball player Yao Ming. He hosted a television show in Shanghai and raised US $ 300,000 to help researchers (研究員) find a medical cure. Fund-raising, or charity, is an act of goodwill(好意) towards others.
Charities in the West have more ways. Look at a typical day for Ruth, a rich woman in the UK, for example. Ruth wakes up in the morning and collects her post. There’s a letter addressed to her with a picture of a half-dead, beaten(筋疲力盡的) horse. It’s from a charity asking Ruth to donate money to save the animals. She turns on the television, and sees a picture of a wide–eyed child dying of hunger in Africa with a request (請求) for money to help the child. The tickets for the charity shows often cost her a lot of money, but she doesn’t mind because most of the money is going to a charity that fights AIDS. She feels good about going because she’s helping the sick.
Edna, a little old lady, looks after a second-hand shop—a charity shop. Any profit (收益) it has made goes to a cancer(癌癥) charity. Now that she doesn’t have to work, she has lots of time to offer her services for free.
For people like Yao Ming, Ruth and Edna, charity is a virtue (美德) that holds the same importance in life as faith and hope. “
As you look back on your life, the moments that stand out are the moments when you have done things for others,” said Scottish writer Henry Drummond.
【小題1】Yao Ming hosted a television show to _____.
| A．make more money | B．raise money for his basket team |
| C．make himself more famous | D．raise money for researchers to find a cure for SARS |
【小題2】We can infer (推斷)from the passage that _____.
| A．Edna may not be a rich lady but she is willing to do something for others |
| B．Ruth is angry because she has been asked to donate too much money |
| C．Ruth leads a busy life and she feels very tired |
| D．Yao Ming wants to be a television host |
【小題3】Which of the following is TRUE?
| A．Only Yao Ming, Ruth and Edna try their best to do things for charity. |
| B．Ruth has given a lot of support to charity although she is not very rich. |
| C．The writer hopes that more people can do things for charity. |
| D．Edna is very rich because she has her own shop. |
【小題4】One morning, Ruth received a letter with a picture of a horse in it because _____.
| A．she lost her horse |
| B．a charity wanted her to donate some money |
| C．she loved horse very much |
| D．she wanted to keep a horse as a pet |
【小題5】The underlined(劃線) part in the last paragraph probably means that _____.
| A．what impresses people deeply is what they have done for others |
| B．when you want to do something for others, you need stand out |
| C．the moment you stand out, you can do something for others |
| D．when you look back sometimes, you need stand out |
