2020年托福阅读素材：Little match children 卖火
柴的孩子们
Towards the end of “Jude the Obscure”, Thomas Hardy’s
final novel, comes one of the most harrowing scenes in
English literature. Jude, an itinerant laborer struggling to feed his family, returns home to find his eldest son has hanged himself and his younger siblings from the coat hook on the back of the door. A note says “Done because we are too menny.”
harrowing 悲惨的 itinerant 周游的，流浪的 sibling 兄弟姐
妹
在托马斯.哈代最后一篇小说《无名的裘德》的结尾，人们能读到
英国文学中最悲惨的一幕。
四处流浪苦苦支撑家庭的裘德，当他回到
家时，在门后的衣帽勾发现他的大儿子吊死了弟妹，大儿子自己也上
吊自杀。
遗书中写道“因为我们人太多了”。
In June this year China suffered a real-life variant of
this terrible scene. In a rural part of Bijie township in Guizhou province, in south-west China, a brother and three sisters, the oldest 13, the youngest five, died by drinking pesticide. They had been living alone after their mother had disappeared and their father had migrated for work. The 13-
year-old boy left a note saying, “It is time for me to go—death has been my dream for years.”
variant 变化，变体 pesticide 杀虫剂
今年六月，中国发生了这个恐怖场景真实的再现。
在中国西南部
的贵州省，毕节市的乡村，一个哥哥和他的三个妹妹集体喝农药自杀。
他们中的13岁，最小的仅仅5岁。
自从母亲失踪，父亲外出务工以来，他们一直独自生活。
13岁的哥哥遗书中写道“我该走了，死亡是我多
年的梦想”。
Three years before that, also in Bijie, five street children died of carbon-monoxide poisoning after they had clambered into a roadside dumpster and lit charcoal to keep themselves warm. Chinese social media drew parallels with the little match girl in Hans Christian Andersen’s story of that name： afraid to return home because she has not sold any matches, she freezes to death in the winter night, burning match after match because the light reminds her of her grandmother. It is a well known tale in China because it is taught in primary schools as an example of the uncaring
nature of early capitalism.
carbon-monoxide 一氧化碳 clamber爬 dumpster垃圾箱
charcoal 木炭 capitalism资本主义
就在三年前，同样是在毕节，五名流浪街头的孩子爬进了街边的
垃圾桶点燃木炭来取暖，最终却死于一氧化碳中毒。
中国的社会媒体
将这件事与安徒生童话中的卖火柴的小女孩来比较。
在安徒生的故事里，因为连一根火柴也没有卖出去，小女孩害怕回家。
她点燃了一根
根火柴因为光亮使她想起了祖母，最终却冻死在冬日的夜晚。
这个故
事在中国广为人知，在小学里，它作为早期资本主义的冷漠本质的例
证被教授给孩子们。
Over the past generation, about 270m Chinese laborers
have left their villages to look for work in cities. It is
the biggest voluntary migration ever. Many of those workers have children; most do not take them along. The Chinese call these youngsters liushou ertong, or “left-behind children”.
According to the All-China Women’s Federation, an official body, and UNICEF, the UN organization for children, there
were 61m children below the age of 17 left behind in rural areas in 2020. In several of China’s largest provinces, including Sichuan and Jiangsu, more than half of all rural children have been left behind. In effect, some villages consist only of children and grandparents. This is a blight
on the formative years of tens of millions of people. Alongside the expulsion of millions of peasants from the land they have farmed and the degradation of the country’s soil, water and air, this leaving behind is one of the three
biggest costs of China’s unprecedented and transformative industrialization.
blight枯萎，破坏 expulsion驱逐，离开 degradation 退化
在过去一代人里，大约有2.7亿中国劳动离开家乡，到城市寻找
一份工作。
这是有史以来规模的自发迁徙活动。
这些工人中的很多人
有子女，但绝大部分人不会把他们带在身边。
中国人管这些孩子叫做“留守儿童”。
官方组织中华全国妇女联合会以及联合国儿童组织UNICEF数据显示，2020年大约有6100万17岁以下的农村留守儿童。
中国的几个省份中，包括四川和江苏，超过半数的农村孩子被“留守”了。
这样的后果是，有些村子里只剩下老人和小孩。
数已千万孩子的
性格成长阶段被破坏。
同时，数以百万计的农民被迫离开他们耕作的
土地。
乡村的土地，水质与空气质量持续恶化。
而这些，是中国在史
无前例的巨大工业化变革中，所付出的最为高昂的代价之一。
Just over half of the 61m counted in 2020 were living
with one parent while the other spouse was away working; 29m had been left in the care of others. Mostly the carers were grandparents, but about 6m were being looked after by more distant relatives or by the state (that number includes。