Đề thi thử HSK 7–9 – Đề 13

Văn bản gốc · Tiếng Anh

Patience used to be a public virtue. People waited for letters, for harvests, for a train that might be late by an hour and nobody thought the world had ended. We have replaced that waiting with a kind of permanent rush. A parcel that arrives tomorrow feels late; a reply that takes an afternoon feels like neglect. Speed has become the only proof that we still care. The cost is not only restlessness. When every delay is treated as an insult, we lose the space in which a thought can ripen. A decision that needed a night of sleep is now squeezed into a lunch break. We call this efficiency, yet the work that follows is often brittle: it looks finished and later cracks. The same hurry spills into friendship. We send a short message instead of sitting down, then wonder why we feel unknown. A slower hour is not a luxury. It is the condition under which attention can settle. A book read without glancing at a screen, a walk taken without a destination, a conversation allowed to wander — these are not delays in living. They are living. If we cannot bear them, we have not become more capable. We have only become less able to stay.

Văn bản gốc · Tiếng Anh

Along the old shipping route, a small harbour town once lived by loading coal and unloading grain. The work was loud, dirty, and reliable. When the larger ports took the traffic, the town did not collapse overnight. It simply grew quieter, and the young people left for cities where the wages were higher and the streets were dry. What remains is a stretch of water that still freezes in winter, a row of warehouses with peeling paint, and a handful of families who refused to sell. Planners now speak of revitalising the waterfront: cafes, galleries, a path for visitors who want a view without the labour. The proposal is not wicked. It is incomplete. A harbour that remembers only its postcard will forget how it once fed people. The town's chance, if it has one, is to keep a working edge. Let some boats still come in. Let a workshop still mend nets. Visitors who stay a few days rather than an hour may then see more than a stage. They may see a place that still knows how to carry weight — and the people who never left may still recognise it as home.