1、阅读素材：张桂梅 Zhang Guimei woman fighting for girls education in China When girls came back from their exam site for the Gaokao, Chinas annual college entrance exam, on June 8, Zhang Guimei hid in the office, refusing to come out. She wouldnt let reporters interview her nor have students bid her farewell
2、. This year, she sent 150 female students to college from a free all-girls high school she had founded in 2008 in southwest Chinas deep mountains. For the past 13 years, a total of 1,954 female students have graduated from this school, the first and only one of its kind in the country. To educate a
3、girl is to change the destiny of three generations, Zhang said. The 64-year-old teacher from southwest Chinas Yunnan Province was presented with the July 1 Medal by Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, at a ceremony in Beijing on Tuesday. Read more:
4、CPC holds ceremony to honor outstanding Party members A fighter Zhang was born to a family of ethnic Manchu minority group in northeast Chinas Heilongjiang Province in 1957. At the age of 17, she came with her sister to Yunnan as part of a team supporting the countrys border regions. She met her hus
5、band in the pastoral city of Dali and worked as a teacher in a local school. But the good times didnt last long. Her husband died of gastric cancer in the mid-1990s, five years into their marriage. Inconsolable, Zhang decided to leave this place with which she was too familiar. After her husbands fu
6、neral, she packed her stuff and went some 260 kilometers away to Huaping, an impoverished county nestled in the mountains. There she witnessed dire poverty and the tragedies that it led to. The destitution just sprawls in front of you, naked and straightforward, she recalled. One day, Zhang saw a te
7、enage girl sitting beside a shabby grass basket with a sickle in hand and staring at the opposite hilltop. She went to ask her if there was something wrong. The girl replied, I want to go to school, but my parents are too poor to afford it. They have me engaged to be married, as they can get betroth
8、al gifts (also known as bride price) from the bridegroom. Zhang went to her home to persuade the parents, promising she could afford her tuition and living expenses, but to no avail. Over those years, she discovered that many female students would just disappear after studying for a while. The reaso
9、ns varied: to pay for the younger brothers tuition, the girls parents would have her quit and return home for a job or work on the farm; the family received betrothal gifts, and the teenage girl would have to get married. After becoming a mother at a welfare home for children in 2001, which she rena
10、med as Childrens Home, Zhang learned more about the backgrounds of those young kids. Some of the mothers went to prison for killing abusive husbands while others died from childbirth due to medical misconceptions, leaving behind their newborns. Over time, Zhang witnessed the gender gap in education
11、up close in relatively poor rural areas. Urban and rural students already faced unequal access to quality education, and the traditional notion of male superiority only exacerbated rural girls inferior situation. Some girls were even pulled out of class just before the college entrance exam because
12、they had to provide for their brothers. In 2002, Zhang came up with an idea which, to many, seemed crazy: to found a free high school for girls. That was a tough task. She had to raise money and hire teachers. Six years later, she founded the Huaping All-Girls High School. Given the rugged environme
13、nt, however, nine of the original 17 teachers later resigned. With the goal of never letting a girl fall behind in schooling, Zhang often works overtime despite suffering from a bone tumor, aneurysm and chronic lung illnesses. Despite her debilitating health, she has walked to almost every household
14、 deep in the mountains, talking to the parents about the importance of education for girls. To educate a girl is to change the destiny of three generations. A cultured, responsible mother wont let her daughter drop out of school. -Zhang Guimei Since the students there had weak academic backgrounds,
15、the class day at this school is counted in minutes: five minutes to freshen up in the morning, 10 minutes to settle in for early study period, one minute to make it to the field for morning exercise. Students all pretty much have to run when going to classes, canteens and their dorms. Womens educati
16、on in China Because of Zhangs endeavors to improve female education in China, more girls can change their destiny. When the Peoples Republic of China wad founded in 1949, female illiteracy was much higher than that of their male counterparts. In the 1950s, the Chinese government launched campaigns t
17、hat helped some 16 million females become educated. In recent decades, wiping out illiteracy and improving the reading skills of women is regarded as one of the highest priorities in China, according to the governments guideline for helping the countrys females. The female illiteracy rate for those
18、above age 15 has decreased from roughly 90 percent in the early 1950s to 7 percent in 2019. In 2021, China scored 0.973 in the Global Gender Gap Report released by the World Economic Forum (with a score of 1 being completely equal). 时文阅读 海地总统遇刺身亡 Haiti President Mose assassinated at 海地临时总理克劳德约瑟夫 （Cl
19、aude Joseph） 周三在一份声明中说， 海地总统莫伊兹 （Jovenel Mose）在一群身份不明人员袭击其私人住所后遭刺杀身亡。 约瑟夫还说，总统夫人也受伤，目前正在住院治疗。 约瑟夫谴责了他所称的“可恶、不人道和野蛮的行为”。他说，海地国家警察和其他部门已经控制 了这个国家的局势。 Haiti President Mose assassinated at home, wife hospitalized Haitian President Jovenel Mose was assassinated(行刺;暗杀)in an attack on his private residence
20、, according to a statement Wednesday from the countrys interim(临时的)prime minister, who called the killing a “hateful, inhumane and barbaric act.” First Lady Martine Mose was shot in the overnight attack and hospitalized, interim Premier Claude Joseph said. Haiti was already in a precarious political
21、 situation before the assassination, having grown increasingly unstable and disgruntled under Mose. The president ruled by decree( 专 制 ) for more than two years after the country failed to hold elections and the opposition demanded he step down in recent months. “The countrys security situation is u
22、nder the control of the National Police of Haiti and the Armed Forces of Haiti,” Joseph said in a statement from his office. “Democracy and the republic will win.” In the early morning hours of Wednesday, the streets were largely empty in the Caribbean nations capital of Port-au-Prince, but some peo
23、ple ransacked(搜寻；洗劫) businesses in one area. Joseph said police have been deployed to the National Palace and the upscale community of Ptionville and will be sent to other areas. Joseph condemned the assassination as a “hateful, inhumane and barbaric act.” He said some of the attackers spoke in Span
24、ish but offered no further explanation. Haitis economic, political and social woes(问题；困难) have deepened recently, with gang violence spiking heavily in Port-au-Prince, inflation spiraling and food and fuel becoming scarcer at times in a country where 60% of the population makes less than $2 a day. T
25、hese troubles come as Haiti still tries to recover from the devastating 2010 earthquake and Hurricane Matthew that struck in 2016. Opposition leaders accused Mose, who was 53, of seeking to increase his power, including by approving a decree that limited the powers of a court that audits government
26、contracts and another that created an intelligence agency that answers only to the president. In recent months, opposition leaders demanded the he step down, arguing that his term legally ended in February 2021. Mose and supporters maintained that his term began when he took office in early 2017, following a chaotic election that forced the appointment of a provisional(临时的) president to serve during a year-long gap. Haiti was scheduled to hold general elections later this year.
