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【完形填空】Cloze: The Letter and the River
The letter arrived on a Tuesday, and Lin Xiaoran read it (1) she stood by the window.
Steam from her noodle bowl curled past the page. She was 19, a first-year at a college in Kunming, and the only person in her family who had ever (2) in university.
Her father drove a truck; her mother sold vegetables. The internship paid 4,000 yuan for eight weeks, plus a bunk in a dormitory that had been computerised (3) at eleven.
"Chill," her roommate said. Xiaoran did not feel chill.
The programme was run by a research institute (4) the upper Mekong, a river that changes from glacier to delta across 4,350 kilometres.
Xiaoran was assigned to a team of seven. Their leader, Dr. Pan, was 54 and had spent 20 years (5) sediment.
"The river is not one thing," he told them on the first morning, signposting a map with a pen. "It is a helix of demands." She liked that.
She began to devote twelve hours a day to the work, scouring satellite images for signs of overgrazing along the banks. Her parental calls went unanswered twice a week. Her focus was sole and absolute.
The other interns diversified quickly — some to laboratory formality, some to fieldwork. Xiaoran stayed with the images.
By week five, she had found something. A 3.2-kilometre stretch near a tributary showed a 27 percent drop in vegetation over four years. She checked the data three times.
"Plausible," Dr. Pan said, "but you must conduct yourself with caution." She wrote it up anyway.
The findings, if correct, would (6) a case against a new hydropower dam.
When she presented them at a Friday meeting, a senior researcher named Guo Wei, 41, leaned back and asked one question: "Who taught you to read a river?" "No one," she said. "I taught myself." The room went quiet. Guo Wei smiled. "Then you have a unique position," he said. "And a dangerous one."
He was right. Within a week, her name appeared in a regional newspaper as part of a story about "outside interference." Her father called, furious. "Abolish this nonsense," he said. "Come home." She did not go home.
Instead, she undertook a second analysis, this time with a parallel dataset from 2009. The numbers held. But the cost was real: her internship was suspended, her stipend frozen, and a note placed in her file.
Dr. Pan, who had encouraged her, now could not speak to her publicly. "I (7) with your methods," he told her in a corridor, quietly. "But I cannot protect you from the onslaught." She packed her bag that night. The dormitory lock clicked at 11:04.
What she carried home was not a triumph. It was a scar and a question. She spent the next two years finishing her degree, working nights at a convenience store, and sending letters to 14 environmental organisations. Three replied.
One, a small NGO in Chiang Rai, offered her a job. She was 22. Her father, who had not spoken to her for months, drove her to the bus station in silence. At the gate, he handed her a plastic bag. Inside were two boiled eggs and a note: "Eat. Do not forget the river." She cried, briefly, and then she (8) the bus.
The work was not glamorous. She measured water quality, catalogued fish species, and taught village children to read rainfall charts.
In 2023, she returned to Kunming for a reunion of that first internship cohort. Seven had become five. Guo Wei had left academia. Dr. Pan had retired.
She stood by the same window where she had once read the letter, now 25, now (9) for a team of four. A young intern asked her, "Is it worth it?" She looked at the river below, brown and indifferent, and said nothing.
The question stayed in the air, (10), like sediment that has not yet settled.
Choices
(1) A. since B. while C. because D. unless
(2) A. attended B. enrolled C. joined D. entered
(3) A. to lock B. locking C. locked D. locks
(4) A. studying B. study C. studied D. to study
(5) A. to measure B. measuring C. measure D. measured
(6) A. challenge B. ignore C. support D. weaken
(7) A. agree B. concur C. consent D. comply
(8) A. got B. boarded C. entered D. took
(9) A. accountable B. responsible C. liable D. in charge
(10) A. answer B. answered C. answering D. to answer