1 / 23 句0 词已学
【完形填空】Cloze: The Test Ahead
At 2:14 a.m., the driver turned off the engine and for a moment nobody moved. 'This is Dongguan,' he said, as if the name (1) everything. Rain slid down the window. Beside me sat a twenty-nine-year-old quality inspector named Lin Yue, who had spent eleven hours checking capacitors on a line that (2) 40,000 units a day. She was not unconcerned about the delay; her phone showed fourteen missed calls from her mother.
Lin had left her village in Hunan in 2016, at nineteen, with 1,200 yuan and a duffel bag. The recruiter's promise was vague and slightly unrealistic: easy money, clean dormitory, three meals. The reality was a (3) of noise, overtime, and a dormitory whose walls seemed to close in on you.
She learned to (4) cheap coffee, to ignore the pervasive smell of solder, and to sleep through the rhythmic noise of the machines. Her older brother, Lin Wei, a forklift operator in the same industrial park, told her the job was a (5), not a home. She believed him for a while.
Then the company began to (6) workers by output. Names appeared on a whiteboard; bonuses fluctuated; a heartless supervisor would condemn anyone who fell below quota. Lin was good, efficient, and naturally quiet. She saved 23,000 yuan in two years. 'I wanted to be trustworthy,' she told me. 'I wanted (7) that my effort meant something.'
But the factory had a different storyline. In 2019, an order from a foreign client required a process the workers called the inversion: night shift workers were made to (8) they were day shift during an audit. Lin refused to lie. The supervisor threatened to notify her family, to accuse her of theft. She was bewildered, then furious.
She quit in March 2020, three weeks before the borders closed. What followed was a deterioration she had not predicted. Jobs evaporated. She moved to Shenzhen, lived in a room so small she could touch both walls, and began to study English — partly for opportunity, partly for revenge. Her teacher, a retired consulate translator named Mr. Feng, was sixty-seven and discourteous in a way she found oddly encouraging. 'Your accent is not the issue,' he said. 'Your grammar is (9). Your vocabulary is random. But you are not devoid of insight.'
He made her transcribe BBC reports, listen to the stress in every sentence, and read literature aloud until her throat hurt. She scored 6.5 in 2021. She needed 7.5. The third attempt, in 2022, ended in a disappointing 7.0. She cried in the stairwell of the test centre, then went to work the next morning.
Her brother had been injured by a forklift; he now walked with a limp and could not (10) his old job. Lin sent money home every month, 3,000 yuan, sometimes 4,000. She began to tutor younger workers for 60 yuan an hour, mostly online, using a recycled laptop. 'I don't want to be a bully like the supervisor,' she said. 'I want to edify. I want to revive whatever they still believe in.'
Last December I met her again at an intersection near Huaqiangbei. She had just finished a virtual interview with a logistics company in Guangzhou; the salary was 11,000 yuan a month, contingent on a final English test. She was preparing for her fourth IELTS attempt. 'Four times,' she said, and laughed. 'Maybe I am insane.' She pulled out a dispenser of hand sanitiser, then a notebook. On the cover was a comic drawing of a helicopter — a joke from her brother. Inside, in tiny handwriting, she had transcribed 214 model sentences. She had also written a single line in Chinese: 别回头. Don't look back.
The bus started again. Lin fell asleep against the window, her mouth slightly open. The rain had stopped; the highway was illuminated by the orange glow of streetlights. Somewhere ahead, the border checkpoint waited, and beyond it, a test she might pass or fail. Her phone lit up. Her mother was calling again. She did not wake. The driver turned on the radio, low. A Cantonese pop song, from 1994, filled the bus. Nobody sang along.
Choices
(1) A. described B. explained C. clarified D. defined
(2) A. manufactured B. produced C. assembled D. generated
(3) A. combination B. mixture C. collection D. compound
(4) A. guzzle B. drink C. swallow D. sip
(5) A. barrier B. hurdle C. challenge D. obstacle
(6) A. divide B. isolate C. separate D. segregate
(7) A. assurance B. guarantee C. promise D. certainty
(8) A. assume B. pretend C. simulate D. feign
(9) A. lacking B. inadequate C. deficient D. insufficient
(10) A. renew B. continue C. resume D. restart