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【阅读理解】Reading: The Slow Poison
When the evacuation notice came, Grandma Zhou refused to leave her home in Dongtan.
Her granddaughter, Liu Yan, an environmental scientist, had returned from overseas to persuade her.
The river's sediment load had increased eightfold since 2015, and a nearby landfill held 2.4 million tonnes of industrial waste.
But for Grandma Zhou, the house was not property but a connection to her ancestors.
Their standoff lasted nine days.
On the third morning, a neighbour's surgery was cancelled because the ambulance could not cross the submerged route.
On the fifth day, the power failed.
Liu Yan watched her grandmother light a candle, its flame throwing a hypnotic glare on the wet wall.
'You calculate risk,' the old woman said. 'I calculate love.'
That night, Liu Yan stopped arguing and began packing.
Grandma Zhou did not resist; she only asked to take a chunk of brick from the doorway, carved by her husband.
By the time they reached the resettlement camp, 11,400 people had been moved from four districts.
The camp was eco-friendly on paper, but congested and bleak in reality.
A supervisor, Chen Wei, told Liu Yan that the relocation budget had been cut by 30 per cent.
'The legislation was written for floods, not for this slow poison,' he said.
What troubled Liu Yan most was the disenchantment that followed.
Elderly residents sat absent-eyed, their routine destroyed.
A scholar's preliminary findings showed that depression rates among the displaced were three times the national average.
Children showed linguistic delays and irrational fears.
'The old people are grieving,' the scholar said. 'Not for a house. For a world.'
Liu Yan began to suspect that her scientific training had been too superficial, too instrumental.
She had tried to alleviate suffering with numbers; she had forgotten that grief does not obey statistics.
Six months later, she returned with a research team.
The water had receded, leaving a toxic stain across the pasture.
Excavation revealed that the landfill's lining had failed years earlier, a fact the original environmental evaluation had failed to anticipate.
The company responsible had been profitable throughout; its directors had since repatriated their dividends abroad.
Liu Yan stood on a levee, staring at the ruins.
Her grandmother, now in a city apartment, had stopped speaking of home.
The brick sat on her windowsill, a small, mute relic.
'We were not ignorant,' Liu Yan wrote in her field notebook. 'We were merely late.'
Behind her, a flock of herons rose from the shallows, their wings catching the last light, and for a moment she could not decide whether the river had taken something from them or simply moved on.
Questions
1. What was Grandma Zhou's main reason for refusing to leave her home?
A. She had no other place to live. B. She was waiting for her granddaughter to return. C. She believed the house connected her to her ancestors. D. She did not trust the government's evacuation notice.
2. How did Liu Yan finally persuade her grandmother to leave?
A. By showing her scientific data about the flood risk. B. By stopping arguments and starting to pack. C. By asking a neighbour to help convince her. D. By promising they would return soon.
3. What does the word 'disenchantment' in the passage most likely mean?
A. A feeling of disappointment and loss of belief. B. A state of physical discomfort. C. A feeling of confusion and disorientation. D. A sense of anger and rebellion.
4. What can be inferred about Chen Wei from the passage?
A. He was a former student of Liu Yan. B. He was responsible for the budget cuts. C. He disagreed with the relocation policy. D. He was injured while helping others.
5. Which of the following would be the best title for the passage?
A. Environmental Science in Crisis B. The Flood That Changed Everything C. The Slow Poison D. A Grandmother's Love