Twenty-first century humanity has mapped oceans and mountains, visited the moon, and surveyed the planets．But for all the progress, people still don’t know one another very well.
That brings about Theodore Zeldin’s “feast of conversation”－events where individuals pair with persons they don’t know for three hours of guided talk designed to get the past “Where are you from?”
Mr．Zeldin, an Oxford University professor, heads Oxford Muse, a 10-year-old foundation based on the idea that what people need is not more information, but more inspiration and encouragement.
The “feast” in London looks not at politics or events, but at how people have felt about work, relations among the sexes, hopes and fears, enemies and authority, the shape of their lives．The “menu of conversation” includes topics like “How have your priorities changed over the years?” Or, “What have you rebelled against the past?”
As participants gathered, Zeldin opened with a speech: that despite instant communications in a globalized age, issues of human heart remain．Many people are lonely, or in routines that discourage knowing the depth of one another．“We are trapped in shallow conversations and the whole point now is to think, which is sometimes painful,” he says．“But thinking interaction is what separates us from other species, except maybe dogs…who do have generations of human interactions.”
The main rules of the “feast”: Don’t pair with someone you know or ask questions you would not answer．The only awkward moment came when the multi-racial crowd of young adults to seniors, in sun hats, ties and dresses, looked to see whom with for hours．But 15 minutes later, everyone was seated and talking, continuing full force until organizers interrupted them 180 minutes later.
“It’s encouraging to see the world is not just a place of oppression and distance from each other,” Zeldin summed up．“What we did is not ordinary, but it can’t be madder than the world already is.”
Some said they felt “l(fā)iberated” to talk on sensitive topics．Thirty-something Peter, from East London, said that “it might take weeks or months to get to the level of interaction we suddenly opened up.”
小題1:What can the “conversations” be best described as?
| A．Deep and one-on-one. | B．Sensitive and mad. |
| C．Instant and inspiring. | D．Ordinary and encouraging. |
小題2:In a “feast of conversations”, participants ______.
| A．pair freely with anyone they like |
| B．have a guided talk for a set of period of time |
| C．a(chǎn)sk questions they themselves would not answer |
| D．wear clothes reflecting multi-racial features． |
小題3:In paragraph 6, “they would be ‘intimate’” is closest in meaning to “______”.
| A．they would have physical contact | B．they would have in-depth talk |
| C．they would be close friends | D．they would exchange basic information |
小題4:From the passage, we can conclude that what Zeldin does is ______.
| A．a(chǎn)n attempt to promote thinking interaction |
| B．one of the maddest activities ever conducted |
| C．a(chǎn) try to liberate people from old-fashioned ideas |
| D．a(chǎn)n effort to give people a chance of talking freely |
m my friend’s house when about 20 wolves began to follow my sleigh. It was very dark in the forest. There was thick snow on the ground. It was cold, and there were no houses for miles and miles. First I heard the wolves, and the noise was terrible! The horses heard them, too. They were frightened and began running faster. Then I saw long, grey forms among the trees, and soon the wolves were near us. They were running very fast, and they didn’t seem to get tired like the horses.” “What did you do?” one of his friends asked. “When the wolves got very near,” Jack answered, “I put up my gun and shot the first wolf. The sleigh was moving about, but I hit the animal and killed it. Then all the other wolves stopped and ate it, so our sleigh got away from them for a few minutes.” “Then they finished their meal, and I heard them coming again. The moon was shining brightly on the snow, and after a few minutes I saw them among the trees once more. They came nearer again, and then I shot another of them, and the others stopped once more to eat it.” “The same thing happened again and again, and my horses became more and more tired and ran slower and slower until, after about two hours, only one wolf was still alive and following us.” 
his friends what happened to him when he was______________.
