Unit 2 Tales of True Love
Key to Exercises
Opener
Suggested answers for reference
1. Qian Zhongshu was a Chinese literary scholar and writer, best known for his wit and great academic knowledge. One of his most famous novels is Fortress Besieged (《围城》). Yang Jiang was a Chinese playwright, author, and translator. Her memoir We Three (《我们仨》) recalls memories of her late husband, Qian Zhongshu, and her daughter, Qian Yuan, who died before her father.
David Beckham is an English former professional footballer, and the first English player to win league titles in four countries: England, Spain, the United States and France. David is married to Victoria Beckham, an English businesswoman, fashion designer, model, and singer. They have four children.
2. Qian and Yang’s romance began when they met at Tsinghua University after Yang Jiang enrolled in the graduate school in 1932. They married in 1935.
David started dating Victoria in 1997, after she attended a charity football match. The couple announced their engagement in 1998 and married in 1999.
3. During the Cultural Revolution, like many other prominent intellectuals of the time, Qian Zhongshu and Yang Jiang were “sent down”, doing “reform through labor” in a “cadre school” in Henan from 1969 to 1972.
The challenge David and Victoria have come across is media attention. They are both famous, so their relationship has attracted a great deal of media attention from its very beginning.
Reading & Interacting
I. Understanding the Text
1. Text Organization
Dates
Senders
Information
31 days to D-Day
Frank
He was badly homesick and bitter about his absence while their daughter was growing up.
28 days to D-Day
Frank
He comforted Polly over the coming assault by saying that whatever was to happen depended on God’s will, and he encouraged Polly to trust God.
17 days to D-Day
Polly
The yard was fixed up; she missed him badly; they had been separated for 8 months.
10 days to D-Day
Frank
He was glad that Dee was going to her first movie, and he wanted Polly and Dee to fully enjoy their life during his absence.
9 days to D-Day
Polly
She wrote about her loneliness and her expectation for their reunion after the war.
1 day to D-Day
Polly
She wrote about her being sentimental and her loneliness, as well as her confidence in the future.
2. Comprehension Check
2.1 Focusing on the main ideas
      Frank joined the U.S. Army during World War II, and frequently exchanged letters with Polly, his wife. Frank, away in England, wrote about his longings for home and his feelings towards Polly and Dee, their toddler daughter, while Polly described in detail her life at home and expressed her concern over the war, as well as the loneliness she endured from the long separation. They wrote about their love for each other and comforted each other with the expectation for their reunion in the future. Tragically, however, Frank was killed in the Normandy landing operation on D-Day.
2.2 Digging into detail
  1. He was very bitter that he was not going to be by her side while she grew up.
2. He believed it was God’s will whether he would be one of the assault troops and whether he would survive the fighting. What he would do was to trust God.
3. They had not seen each other for 8 months.
4. Polly would take her daughter Dee to see her first movie.
5. Polly imagined she and Frank would listen to their favorite music together on Sunday nights.
6. She felt all the more sentimental but at the same time more confident in the future.
2.3 Understanding difficult sentences
  1. B    2. A    3. B    4. B    5. B
II. Focusing on Language in Context
1. Key Words & Expressions
1.1
beckham
  1. While I was working in a fast-food restaurant, I constantly dreamt of being able to own
one someday.
2. It was common for people to keep up correspondence with friends through letters before the age of the Internet.
3. In modern Chinese society, women, to a large extent, are no longer dominated by men either in family life or in the workplace.
4. There is now a growing realization of the importance of recycling among the residents in our neighborhood.
5. The Japanese invasion during World War II met with fierce resistance from the Chinese people.
6. It is wonderful to see flowers bloom in different colours after a long bleak winter.
7. The elderly landlady couldn’t endure the behavior of the young man any more: he tossed trash all over the building.
8. It is true that human beings have had war constantly throughout history; nevertheless human civilization has managed to survive.
9. An increasingly large number of Chinese plan to spend their time travelling to different countries and seeing more of the world when they retire.
10. Last week I submitted my first project proposal and I was very anxious to know how the department manager would react to it.
11. We all sympathize with those who lost loved ones in the disaster.
12. The general decided to launch an assault on the enemy at midnight.