English Quiz 167

(English Quiz 167)

1. Clean up after yourself. It's a rule that we learn early in life. Now, more than 30 years after the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam, the time has come to follow that rule. In Vietnam these days, unlike many other places, both the people and their leaders are generally friendly toward the U.S. Vietnam has just joined the World Trade Organization, and America is both its largest export market and source of foreign investment. Intel is building a $1 billion chipmaking plant near Ho Chi Minh City. That's heartening, given that a generation ago we were bogged down in a war in Vietnam that seemed almost as intractable as the Iraq war does today. It's also a cause for humility because it shows that dominoes don't always fall as predicted. After the communists won in Vietnam, they got into wars with the communists in Cambodia and then China.
Q: 試翻 "It's also a cause ... in Cambodia and then China."

2. There is, however, one wound still festering. During the Vietnam War, America sprayed close to 20 million gal. of Agent Orange, a herbicide that defoliated forests and left behind a residue of dioxin. The U.S. military also left behind 28 hot spots where Agent Orange had been used or stored that have not been properly contained. The Vietnamese say the dioxin is responsible for such disabilities as muscular and skeletal disorders and such birth defects as mental retardation. Studies at the University of Hanoi indicate a higher incidence of these problems among people who were exposed to dioxin.
Q: 試翻 "The Vietnamese say the dioxin ... as mental retardation."

3. I have just returned from a trip up and down Vietnam with two colleagues from the Aspen Institute that was sponsored by the Ford Foundation, which under its president, Susan Berresford, and Vietnam director, Charles Bailey, has led the way in finding practical solutions to the Agent Orange problem. In the areas around the Da Nang airport, which is on the site of a former American air base, high levels of dioxin have been detected. We walked the barren ground around the air base and went to a house near one of the ponds, which belatedly were closed for fishing once tests showed the levels of the poison.
Q: 試翻 "We walked the barren ground ... the levels of the poison."