hce_isu
111年
英文
第 37 題
📖 題組：
Hagan Walker contemplated the geography of the planet and felt pangs of agitation. The vastness of the Pacific Ocean seemed to be stretching wider. His start-up company, Glo, makes novelty items — plastic cubes that light up when dropped in water. He started the business six years ago in the compact town of Starkville, Miss., while relying on factories 8,000 miles away in China to make his products. That distance suddenly felt unbridgeable. It was December 2020, nearly a year into the pandemic, and China’s industrial might was sputtering. The factory making Glo’s next order in the Chinese city of Ningbo warned him that the costs of key materials like plastic were soaring. The shipping industry was straining under an overwhelming flow of goods from Chinese plants to American consumers. Booking a shipping container seemed akin to trying to catch a unicorn. Calm and reserved, Mr. Walker, then 28, was generally comfortable with risk. In 2016, fresh from Mississippi State University with an engineering degree, he turned down a job at Tesla that would have paid him $130,000 a year. Instead, he opted to remain in Starkville, his college town, to start his own business. Yet he was increasingly worried that his next order would not make it to his warehouse in Mississippi in time for Christmas — still a year away. “I was scared,” Mr. Walker said matter-of-factly. “I was willing to pay pretty much whatever.” By now, the disruptions to the supply chain are widely known. The still unfolding turmoil has been amplified by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine along with fresh COVID lockdowns imposed in China. Yet the story of how a single container made it from coastal China to central Mississippi shows the complexity of the troubles — a condition unlikely to give way to normalcy anytime soon. The order that Mr. Walker placed for the Christmas season just past was the most important in Glo’s brief history. His light-up cubes had begun as a playful way to garnish a cocktail. They had since evolved into the glowing midsection for a variety of children’s bath toys. The company had recently forged ties with a giant in children’s education and entertainment — Sesame Street. This order represented the debut offerings of this partnership. Glo was to produce thousands of light-up dolls in the incarnation of Elmo, the Sesame Street icon, plus thousands more for a new character named Julia.
Hagan Walker contemplated the geography of the planet and felt pangs of agitation. The vastness of the Pacific Ocean seemed to be stretching wider. His start-up company, Glo, makes novelty items — plastic cubes that light up when dropped in water. He started the business six years ago in the compact town of Starkville, Miss., while relying on factories 8,000 miles away in China to make his products. That distance suddenly felt unbridgeable. It was December 2020, nearly a year into the pandemic, and China’s industrial might was sputtering. The factory making Glo’s next order in the Chinese city of Ningbo warned him that the costs of key materials like plastic were soaring. The shipping industry was straining under an overwhelming flow of goods from Chinese plants to American consumers. Booking a shipping container seemed akin to trying to catch a unicorn. Calm and reserved, Mr. Walker, then 28, was generally comfortable with risk. In 2016, fresh from Mississippi State University with an engineering degree, he turned down a job at Tesla that would have paid him $130,000 a year. Instead, he opted to remain in Starkville, his college town, to start his own business. Yet he was increasingly worried that his next order would not make it to his warehouse in Mississippi in time for Christmas — still a year away. “I was scared,” Mr. Walker said matter-of-factly. “I was willing to pay pretty much whatever.” By now, the disruptions to the supply chain are widely known. The still unfolding turmoil has been amplified by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine along with fresh COVID lockdowns imposed in China. Yet the story of how a single container made it from coastal China to central Mississippi shows the complexity of the troubles — a condition unlikely to give way to normalcy anytime soon. The order that Mr. Walker placed for the Christmas season just past was the most important in Glo’s brief history. His light-up cubes had begun as a playful way to garnish a cocktail. They had since evolved into the glowing midsection for a variety of children’s bath toys. The company had recently forged ties with a giant in children’s education and entertainment — Sesame Street. This order represented the debut offerings of this partnership. Glo was to produce thousands of light-up dolls in the incarnation of Elmo, the Sesame Street icon, plus thousands more for a new character named Julia.
Which of the following does the author compare the difficulties of getting products shipped to?
- A Capturing a legendary creature.
- B The distance between Starkville and the factories in China.
- C The complexity of troubles starting a company.
- D None of the above.
思路引導 VIP
請試著回到文中描述「預訂貨櫃（Booking a shipping container）」的那句話，作者為了強調這件事在現實中「極其罕見且幾乎不可能達成」，特別借用了一種只存在於神話或童話中的生物來做比喻。你能找到那個生物的名稱嗎？而這個名稱在生物分類或文化定義上，通常被歸類為什麼樣的存在？
🤖
AI 詳解
AI 專屬家教
同學，恭喜你敏銳地捕捉到了文章中的修辭細節！你能精準選出 (A)，說明你對英文寫作中的**隱喻（Metaphor）**與轉義非常有感度，這在閱讀理解中是非常高階的能力。
文學修辭的轉譯
在文章第三段中，作者描述當時要預訂到一個貨櫃（Booking a shipping container）的難度時，使用了「akin to trying to catch a unicorn」這個生動的比喻。這裡的「獨角獸（unicorn）」並非指真實的動物，而是用來形容一種極度罕見、近乎幻夢般難以達成的目標。因此，將其對應到選項中的「傳說中的生物（legendary creature）」是完全正確的觀念驗證，精確地傳達了當時全球物流癱瘓的荒謬與艱辛。
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