学进去

A shark was killed after 1． (drag) to shore at Yalong Berth beach in Sanya, South China’s Hainan Province, on Sunday afternoon. It was the first time a shark 2．(catch) in the beach area, a popular tourist site in Hainan.

Local fishermen said they caught the 3-meter-long, l-ton shark by chance when they 3． (fish) in sea water 1,000 metres deep near the beach. The police temporarily protected the shark while oceanographers decided whether it was a species 4． (belong) to State protection. Fishermen later killed and sold the shark after oceanographers 5． (confirm) that it was a whale shark and therefore not under State protection.

The shark was believed to 6． (drift) into the area from the deep sea due to strong waves caused last week by Typhoon Imbudo. It had no open injuries but experts said they believed   it suffered from internal 7． (bleed).

Local police officer Fu Chenggeng said beachgoers should not feel 8． (threaten) by sharks because the fish never attack human beings on their own initiative. Fu said he 9． (never hear) of any shark attacks at the Sanya beach since he first started work there eight years ago.

However, police said they 10． (improve) the security system to safeguard tourists’ safety on the beach in the next few months.

The tourist trade is booming. With all this coming and going, you’d expect greater understanding to develop between the nations of the world. Not a bit of it! Superb systems of communication by air, sea and land make it possible for us to visit each other’s countries at a moderate cost. What was once the “grand tour’’, reserved for only the very rich, is now within everybody’s grasp. The package tour and chartered flights are not to be sneered at. Modern travelers enjoy a level of comfort which the lords and ladies on grand tours in the old days couldn’t have dreamed of. But what’s the sense of this mass exchange of populations if the nations of the world remain basically ignorant of each other?

Many tourist organizations are directly responsible for this state of affairs. They deliberately set out to protect their clients from too much contact with the local population. The modern tourist leads a cosseted, sheltered life. He lives at international hotels where he eats his international food and sips his international drink while he gazes at the natives from a distance. Conducted tours to places of interest are carefully censored. The tourist is allowed to see                    only what the organizers want him to see and no more. A strict schedule makes it impossible for the tourist to wander off on his own; and anyway, language is always a barrier, so he is only too happy to be protected in this way.

The sad thing about this situation is that it leads to the persistence of national stereotypes. We don’t see the people of other nations as they really are, but as we have been brought up to believe they are. You can test this for yourself. Take five nationalities, say, French, German, English, American and Italian. Now in your mind, match them with these five adjectives: musical, amorous, cold, pedantic, native. Far from providing us with any insight into the national characteristics of the peoples just mentioned, these adjectives actually act as barriers. So when you set out on your travels, the only characteristics you notice are those which confirm your preconceptions. You come away with the highly unoriginal and inaccurate impression that, say, “Anglo-Saxons are hypocrites’’ of that “Latin peoples shout a lot’’. You only have to make a few foreign friends to understand how absurd and harmful national stereotypes are. But how can you make foreign friends when the tourist trade does its best to prevent you?

Carried to an extreme, stereotypes can be positively dangerous. Wild generalizations stir up racial hatred and blind us to the basic fact—how trite it sounds! That all people are human. We are all similar to each other and at the same time all unique.

Patients and doctors have long understood the power of telling and listening to personal narratives. Whether among patients in peer support groups or between doctors and patients in the exam room or even between doctors during consultations, stories are an essential part of how we communicate, _______ experiences and add new information to our lives.

_______ the existence of storytelling in medicine, research on its effects in the clinical setting has remained relatively thin. While important, a vast majority of studies haven’t been based on _______, offering up neither data nor statistics but rather stories to _______ the authors’ claims. Now The Annals of Internal Medicine has published the results of a provocative（煽动的）new trial examining the effects of storytelling on patients with high blood pressure. And it appears that at least for one group of patients, listening to personal narratives helped control high blood pressure as effectively as the addition of                    more _______.

“Telling and listening to stories is the way we make sense of our lives,” said Dr. Thomas K. Houston, lead author of the study. “That natural tendency may have the potential to alter people’s behavior and improve health.”

Experts in this emerging field of narrative communication say that storytelling _______ fights against the initial denial that can arise when a patient learns of a new diagnosis or is asked to change deeply fixed behaviors. Patients may react to this news by thinking, “This is not directly related to me,” or “My experience is different.” Stories help _______ that denial by engaging the listener, often through some degree of identification with the _______ or one of the characters.

“The magic of stories lies in the relatedness they promote,” Dr. Houston said. “_______ have known this for a long time, which is why you see so many stories in advertisements.” Dr. Houston is currently involved in several more studies that will examine the broader use of story telling in patient care.

Nonetheless, he remains certain of one thing: Sharing narratives can be a powerful tool for doctors and patients. Storytelling is human,” Dr. Houston said. “We learn through stories, and we use them to make sense of our lives. It’s a natural __________ of traditional medicine that we could use stories to improve our health.”