No Giant SkyscrapersChicago and New York are famous for their1 tall buildings2. California cannot be3. Its4 buildings have to be famous for their beauty or their historical importance5. California is earthquake country.The San Andreas Fault is a cause of earthquakes6. It7 is a long crack in the earth that stretches from Southern to Northern California. Rocks inside the earth8 move and the earth shakes. These earthquakes make the fault bigger9.The most famous earthquake in California happened in 1906. It10 destroyed most of the young city of San Francisco. People rebuilt the city11. They looked at the buildings that did not12 fall in the earthquake and they learned more about13 building in California. Tall buildings can be dangerous14 in earthquakes. Today California has codes that say15 how a building must be built and how tall it can be.Los Angeles has16 several earthquakes each year. The tall buildings move a little17 and everyone takes a deep breath18. Usually tourists and newcomers are the most frightened19. People who grew up20 in California say, “We're used to it21!”Earthquakes do not stop the building industry in California, but they do make architects work a little harder. The buildings they design have to look good and stand up in an earthquake22. These buildings are good examples of modern California architecture. The Nonaventure Hotel is a few city blocks from the old Mission church. The Century City Complex is near the Ocean. It stands on the site of the old Twentieth Century Fox movie studios. These buildings show that people are not afraid to build23 in California.(264 words)苗族龙船节苗族龙船节，与汉族的端午节不同。
除时间不同外，一般不举行竞赛，主要活动是串寨子，走亲访友。
清晨，龙船在江水中游动，所到之处，亲友们纷纷到岸边“接龙”。
龙船过寨，鸣放铁炮传告亲友，岸上以鞭炮声相呼应。
亲友们上前，向船上的人各敬两杯米酒，并将礼品——鹅鸭、彩绸挂于龙头。
如系女婿、姑舅等至亲，送上的礼物则是猪羊。
下午四时左右，龙船靠岸休息，水手们将糯米饭团和肉放置船帮上就餐，不用碗筷。
岸上的妇女和小孩前来“讨路边饭”。
传说，吃了龙船上的食品，能消灾免难，百事如愿。
后来这就成为传统的风俗习惯。
岸上，还有苗家传统的赛马、斗牛、踩鼓等活动。
姑娘们身着节日盛装应着木鼓鼓点翩翩起舞。
飞歌往来，通宵达旦，青年男女得以相识，往往以后成为夫妻。
（318字）The Isle of AchillWhat a strange, pathetic island! Yet none seems conscious of this. God has planted them on a sea-grit rock; therefore, God intended them to remain there! Who would dare to murmur against the divine wisdom? The soil is hard. There is no money. But on can earn money in the foreign countries of England and Scotland, situated, also it seems by divine providence, a few short hours off in a boat.When the men go to the foreign farms, Achill becomes an isle of women. They run the home and they work the fields. They strive and plan for the return of their men in the autumn.These women and the neurotic women of cities belong to different worlds. It is tragic to see beauty withering visibly and so early, under the trials of a hard life. Here a woman is old at thirty and senile at forty. She knows nothing of comfort and care as women in cities know them. And there seems to be no time in her life when she can fold her hands and gaze about her from the privileged harbor of her old age. You will see women laboring in the fields, and coming like beasts of burden along the road, but so bent and so wrinkled that their age defies supposition.Yet there is laughter in Achill. The young girls laugh as they drive the geese over rocks; they laugh as they climb the low stone walls with their baskets; they laugh as they call off wild dogs that threaten to devour the stranger; they laugh most of all, so I am told, on evenings at dance time when the men are home from overseas and their fiddles twitter over the hills of Achill like birds under an eave.(299 words)巴拿马城巴拿马城是巴拿马首都和最大城市，位于巴拿马运河太平洋人口处。
面积106.5万平方公里，人口69.5万，占全国人口的1/3以上。
城市座落在一岩性半岛上，背山临海，平均海拔36米。
气候湿热，年平均气温29.6度，千万年差较小；年平均降雨1903毫米。
原为印第安人渔村。
1519年建城。
1671年被英国海盗烧毁。
1674年于原址西8公里处重建。
1903年起成为首都。
1911年人口仅3.8万，后随巴拿马运河的通航而发展。
作为全国经济中心，市区工商业主要为运河区的发展服务。
工业有炼油、轧钢、制鞋、服装、食品、烟草、水泥和木材加工等。
城市实行金融开放政策，有80余家外国银行在此登记营业。
外港巴尔博亚在城西8公里处，建有长1653米的亚美利加桥跨越运河；航道水深13.71米，码头总长954.9米，港口设施完备，能停泊远洋巨轮。
城市分为古城、老城和新城三部分。
古城为1617年大火所焚毁，现辟为旅游地和高级住宅区；老城在古城以南，建筑具有典型的西班牙风格，是行政、文化区；新城处于古城和老城之间，多现代化摩天大楼，是繁华商业区。
(416字)The MonsterHe was an undersized little man, with a head too big for his body ——a sickly little man. His nerves were bad. He had skin trouble. It was agony for him to wear anything next to his skin coarser than silk. And he had delusions of grandeur.He was a monster of conceit. Never for a moment did he look at the world or at people, except in relation to himself. He was not only the most important person in the world, to himself; in his own eyes he was the only person who existed. He believed himself to be one of the greatest dramatists in the world, one of the greatest thinkers, and one of the greatest composers. To hear him talk, he was Shakespeare, and Beethoven, and Plato, rolled into one. And you would have had no difficulty in hearing him talk. He was one of the most exhausting conversationalists that ever lived. An evening with him was an evening spent in listening to a monologue. Sometime he was brilliant; sometimes he was maddeningly tiresome. But whether he was being brilliant or dull, he had one sole topic of conversation: himself. What he thought and what he did.He had a mania for being in the right. The slightest hint of disagreement, from anyone, on the most trivial point, was enough to set him off on a harangue that might last for hours, in which he proved himself right in so many ways, and with such exhausting volubility, that in the end his hearer, stunned and deafened, would agree with him, for the sake of peace.千古奇人徐霞客徐霞客（1587－1641），名宏祖，字振之，号霞逸，江阴（今属江苏）人。