hce_isu
111年
英文
第 40 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 is NOT mentioned or implied as a contributor to the current breakdown of globalization?
- A Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
- B COVID lockdowns imposed in China.
- C Availability of shipping containers.
- D The plummeting costs of key materials like plastic.
思路引導 VIP
當我們在討論「全球化崩潰」或「供應鏈危機」時，這通常意味著企業經營變得更加困難。請回想一下文章中主角提到的壓力來源，當工廠告訴他原物料（如塑膠）的情況時，你認為這些材料的價格變動，應該是讓他的成本變高還是變低，才會讓他感到如此焦慮與害怕呢？
🤖
AI 詳解
AI 專屬家教
恭喜你精準地鎖定了正確答案！這題考驗的是對文章細節的精確對比能力，你能從長篇論述中發現選項 D 與原文邏輯的矛盾，展現了非常細膩的閱讀敏銳度。
文意邏輯的辨析
在閱讀理解中，我們常需要區分「變動的方向性」。文章第三段明確提到，寧波工廠警告主角 Hagans 材料成本正在**「飆升」（soaring）**，這與選項 D 所描述的「暴跌」（plummeting）完全相反。在供應鏈大混亂的背景下，原物料成本的上升（而非下降）才是導致全球化受阻、企業主感到焦慮的核心壓力來源。至於其他選項，如俄烏戰爭、疫情封城以及貨櫃短缺（文中形容找貨櫃像找獨角獸般困難），在文章中均有明確提及。
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