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【阅读理解】Reading: The Litter Ritual on Yellow Mountain
In April 2019, Zhou Lan, a 41-year-old former ecology postgraduate, knelt on wet stone on Yellow Mountain and picked up a strip of orange plastic.
She had returned to Anhui after eleven years in Shanghai, where she worked for a company making camera processors.
The salary was good, but the work was monotonous, and she felt her life was a borrowed passport, stamped but never read.
She quit, rented a small house at the foot of the mountain, and began a survey of waste along the trails.
In the first year, she and six volunteers collected about 2,400 items across 38 kilometres of path.
Most were bottles, wrappers, and thin plastic sleeves that tourists wrap around their shoes.
The volume was not the enigma; the enigma was where it came from.
Her brother, Chen Wei, a 33-year-old photographer, joined her in 2020.
He preferred to work alone and had a theory that the rubbish was not dropped but placed.
One evening, he spread 60 photographs across the floor and pointed out the same spot and angle every two weeks.
Zhou Lan felt a cold confusion; someone was returning to the same coordinates and leaving the same objects, like a private ritual.
In May 2021, they set up a camouflage tent near a sandstone ledge and waited.
On the fourth night, a man in a stylish grey jacket arrived, arranged seven bottles in a line, photographed them, and walked away.
Chen Wei followed him and learned he was Liu, a 29-year-old applicant for a postgraduate programme in environmental design.
Liu said he was documenting 'the real condition' of the mountain for his portfolio, and that the park only showed the gorgeous side.
He had donated 3,000 yuan annually to a cleanup fund and believed his images would outweigh his litter.
Zhou Lan disagreed but swallowed her urge to disparage him.
Her report, submitted in October 2021, ran to 74 pages, but the park authority was sympathetic yet cautious.
They could not authorise a full cleanup without a budget line; the annual maintenance fund was 1.2 million yuan for 210 square kilometres.
An official told her, 'We are not denying the problem. We are delaying a decision.'
That winter, she developed an autoimmune condition, likely from prolonged damp and stress, and moved to Hefei for a lecturing job.
Chen Wei kept going; by 2023, he had documented 11,000 items and 400 photographic series, exhibited in three cities and downloaded 90,000 times.
Some viewers were moved, but most scrolled past, and he wondered if visibility was a substitute for action.
In March 2024, Zhou Lan returned for a weekend and found the trail cleaner, with a new sign reading 'TAKE YOUR TRASH HOME'.
A child dropped a wrapper, but his mother picked it up, smiled at Zhou Lan, and put it in her pocket.
Zhou Lan checked the coordinates of the old ledge on her phone, then put it away and started walking uphill.
Questions
1. What did Zhou Lan do after returning to Anhui in 2019?
A. She worked for a camera processor company in Shanghai. B. She moved to Hefei to take a lecturing job. C. She started a survey of waste along the trails with volunteers. D. She set up a camouflage tent near a sandstone ledge.
2. What was Chen Wei's theory about the rubbish?
A. It fell from tourists' pockets accidentally. B. It was left by park officials during maintenance. C. It was placed deliberately at the same spots. D. It came from the nearby village of Anhui.
3. What does the word 'enigma' in paragraph 3 most likely mean?
A. A mystery that is hard to understand. B. A solution that is easily found. C. A problem that is quickly solved. D. A pattern that is clearly visible.
4. Why did the park authority not authorise a full cleanup?
A. They thought volunteers should do it. B. They did not believe there was a problem. C. They were waiting for Zhou Lan's report. D. They lacked a budget line for it.
5. What is the main idea of the passage?
A. A man's portfolio led to a major environmental policy change. B. A park authority successfully solved the litter problem with a new sign. C. A photographer's images brought about a full cleanup of Yellow Mountain. D. A former ecologist's survey revealed a deliberate littering ritual and the limits of action.