2013年3月托福考试备考：托福阅读背景之上海死猪事件

Here's a riddle for you: When is the discovery of 2,813 dead and rotting pigs in a major city's water source not a public health problem?

给你出个谜语：一个大型城市的水源在什么情况下发现2813头腐烂的死猪不算是一个公共卫生问题?

Answer: When the discovery is made in China.

答案：当在中国发现的时候。

The Shanghai water bureau, which oversees the water consumed in China's largest city, was insisting on Monday that tap water derived from the Huangpu River met national standards despite the presence of the decomposing pigs.

负责监管这座中国最大城市用水的上海水务局在周一坚称，尽管出现大量腐败的死猪，来自黄浦江的自来水水质仍然符合国家标准。

All I can say is that I am glad I live in Beijing, not Shanghai.

我所能说的是，我很高兴自己住在北京，而不是上海。

Truly disgusting photographs of bloated porcine carcasses on a riverbank have appeared in many Chinese papers and websites, drawing attention to what seems – believe it or not – to be a relatively common occurrence.

中国许多家报纸和网站都刊登了令人极其恶心的发胀死猪尸体照片，让大众注意到这似乎是一种比较普遍的现象，不论你信不信。

When pigs die of disease, farmers who cannot be bothered to bury the animals just toss them into the nearest river.

如果猪死于疾病，农民们都懒得掩埋，而是直接扔到最近的河里。

Local residents of one pig-rearing village upstream from Shanghai told the national broadcaster China Central Television on Sunday that disposing of dead pigs in the river was a common practice. "After the pigs died of illness, [they] just dumped them in the river … constantly. Every day," one villager said.

来自上海上游地区的一个养猪村的本地村民在周日接受中国中央电视台采访时说，将死猪丢到河里是一种常见做法。一位村民说，“猪病死后，他们直接将死猪扔到河里……每日不断。”

"They are everywhere and they smell very bad," the villager added.

这位村民补充道：“到处都是死猪，味道非常难闻。”

Thousands of pigs in the Shanghai area have succumbed to epidemic disease in recent months, according to the Jiaxing Daily, a government-run paper in a hog-raising region southwest of Shanghai.

据位于上海西南肉猪饲养区政府运营的一份报纸《嘉兴日报》报道，最近几个月，上海地区有数千头猪死于流行疾病。

Last week the paper reported that more than 18,000 pigs had died since the beginning of the year in Zhulin, a village in the Jiaxing district. It was not immediately clear how many of them had been legally disposed of and how many had been thrown into the river.

上周，《嘉兴日报》报道称，自今年年初以来，嘉兴竹林村已经有超过1.8万头猪死亡。目前尚不清楚有多少人已被依法处置，有多少被扔进河里。

But in a report last week, the paper quoted one pig farmer as saying that "when things are busy," he and his fellow farmers do not bother to call the local veterinary services to take the corpses away and just "throw them away where we can." In the summer, he added, the smell of rotting meat is sometimes so strong that villagers cannot open their windows.

在上周的一篇报道中，该报援引一位猪农的话说，“如果工作很忙，他和他的农友不会费事打电话给当地兽医服务部门运走尸体，我们能扔哪里就扔哪里。在夏天，腐肉的气味有时候非常强烈，以至于村民无法打开窗户。”

More worryingly, the paper said, many readers had called the editorial desk's hotline to report pig carcasses abandoned by the roadside or in water channels that had mysteriously lost their hind legs overnight.

该报称，更令人担忧的是，许多读者打进编辑部热线，报告死猪尸体被遗弃在路边或水道，而猪腿却一夜之间神秘失踪。

"What if they were cooked in a restaurant?" the newspaper article wondered.

该报纸发文质疑说，“如果它们出现在餐厅里呢?”