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【完形填空】Cloze: The Beekeeper Who Would Not Give Up
Li Guodong had been a beekeeper for over twenty years, and by 2016 he was (1) 180 hives along a ridge in Pinggu, northeast of Beijing.
His hands had long since lost their sensitivity (2) bee venom, so a sting felt no worse than a mosquito bite.
He had learned the craft from his father, a quiet man who used to (3) that bees were the only honest workers left in China.
By 2018 his honey was selling at 180 yuan a jar, and the income covered his daughter's tuition and a second-hand truck.
Then the orchards began to fail. A late frost in 2019 killed the peach blossoms across two townships, and a new pesticide, applied broadly on the plains, (4) the bees in ways Li could not immediately see.
An invasive mite had already been (5) in neighbouring provinces.
By the winter of 2020 he had lost 96 of his 180 hives, and for a brief period he stopped talking to anyone (6) his bees.
What followed was a slow adaptation. He moved 300 kilometres north, to a cooler plateau in Hebei, (7) the last clean forage.
He learned to overwinter his colonies in insulated sheds, an expensive trick he picked up from a beekeeper in Inner Mongolia (8) methods he had once dismissed as extravagant.
He cut his own consumption to almost nothing, and his wife took a job at a hotel in the county town, (9) the marriage entered a period of quiet resistance.
By 2022, Li kept only 60 hives, but each was healthier than anything he had owned before. An agricultural officer, a young woman named Chen Yu, began visiting monthly and taught him to treat the apiary (10).
"The old model was to outdo your neighbour," she told him. "The new model is to outlast the climate."
Li was sceptical at first, but he listened. He began to keep a chronological record of every swarm, every loss, every jar sold, and by 2024 the record ran to 340 pages.
Choices
(1) A. making B. keeping C. taking D. giving
(2) A. for B. with C. to D. at
(3) A. claim B. announce C. declare D. state
(4) A. weakened B. thinned C. reduced D. lessened
(5) A. rare B. rampant C. occasional D. scarce
(6) A. except B. except for C. besides D. beside
(7) A. chasing B. following C. pursuing D. seeking
(8) A. whose B. who C. which D. that
(9) A. so B. and C. or D. but
(10) A. separately B. partially C. holistically D. individually