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 (研究员) 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(筋疲力尽的) 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 (请求) 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 . 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(癌症) 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.
小题1:Yao Ming hosted a television show to _____.A．make more moneyB．raise money for his basket teamC．make himself more famousD．raise money for researchers to find a cure for SARS小题2:We can infer (推断)from the passage that _____.A．Edna may not be a rich lady but she is willing to do something for othersB．Ruth is angry because she has been asked to donate too much moneyC．Ruth leads a busy life and she feels very tiredD．Yao Ming wants to be a television host小题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.小题4:One morning, Ruth received a letter with a picture of a horse in it because _____.A．she lost her horseB．a charity wanted her to donate some moneyC．she loved horse very muchD．she wanted to keep a horse as a pet小题5:The underlined(划线) part in the last paragraph probably means that _____.A．what impresses people deeply is what they have done for othersB．when you want to do something for others, you need stand outC．the moment you stand out, you can do something for othersD．when you look back sometimes, you need stand out