Read the following passage i actually began as a way to prevent strong emotional attachments. couples were assigned for the sole purpose of species survival. children were reassigned to new families regularly. the puppeteers went to great lengths to make sure we were isolated and fractured. but what they hadn't counted on was that this common tragedy would unite us -- that instead of turning against one another, we would rally together. i was not allowed to raise my own son and daughter. but i would do my best to love and raise every displaced son and daughter who came through my home. which two central ideas in this story are most closely related? o a. the limits of human endurance and personal identity o b. government control and the resilience of the human spirit c. the universal need for acceptance and family dynamics d. abuse of power and the potential of technology

about what?

lo

the words “strangest” and “unusual” suggest that the narrator is about to tell the story of an odd or puzzling group of people.

word count 168

serve the people! ,” smoothly translated by julia lovell, offers an initial sample of yan lianke’s writing to an english-speaking audience. a bluntly drawn, mildly erotic fable, it teases mao zedong by poking fun at a true believer who obeys the chairman’s precepts too literally. to a western sensibility, the broad strokes of yan lianke’s humor would seem to pose little risk of inciting rebellion, whether of the flesh or of the body politic. but then, part of the book’s attraction is that it doesn’t have a western sensibility. it lets the reader see — or rather, intuit — what jokes chinese officials don’t consider funny, and how very little it takes for a writer to be branded an incendiary in 21st-century china, more than three decades after the death of mao, a decade after the death of deng xiaoping and seven years since china entered the world trade organization, a move that would seem to signal a willingness (however wary) to mingle with the rest of the world.