【蛇餐 - Snake Set】

Source: Student Post Dec. 28, 2008 – Jan. 3, 2009

原文：

Early in the afternoon, the street famous for its snakes had most of its shops still closed, waiting for nightfall.  While the street was relatively quiet compared to what I had read about it being like in the past, filled with snake charmer and people hawking snake blood all over the place, I was not at all disappointed by the snake restaurant.

At the very front of the restaurant, at least 20 snakes crawled around in a large cage.  I didn’t know what kind of snake they were at first and wondered if they were deadly hundred pacers, but it turned out that they were just rat snakes.  I eagerly anticipated drinking snake blood, but hoped that they would not kill the snake in front of me.  If I had to I wouldn’t mind watching a snake being killed, but I’d prefer not to.  Fortunately, this restaurant had snake blood already available, so they didn’t have to kill a snake just for me.

The set I ordered included snake blood, venom, gallbladder and snake soup with snake meat in it.  The bright read blood, mixed with alcohol, had very little flavor apart from the alcohol.  The cloudy white venom was a bit stronger, and the yellow-with-green-flecks gallbladder tasted extremely bitter.  Compared to the other parts of the set, the soup and meat seemed quite ordinary, tasting like fish.  I’d be willing to have the snake soup again, but now that I’ve done it once, I don’t think I’ll order blood, venom and gallbladder again any time soon.

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生字：

hundred pacer(s): 百步蛇。

rat snake(s):錦蛇。

gallbladder: 膽囊、在此文指蛇膽。 

實用字彙：

hawk (hawks, hawking, hawked)

1. If someone hawks goods, they sell them by walking through the streets or knocking at people’s houses, and asking people to buy them.
2. You can say that someone is hawking something if you do not like the forceful way in which they are asking people to buy it.

這些沿街叫賣的人就叫hawker。

venom

1. (怨恨、痛恨、惡毒) You can use venom to refer to someone’s feelings of great bitterness and anger towards someone. i.e. “What a filthy trick,” she said with great venom.

venomous

If you describe a person or their behavior as venomous, you mean that they show great bitterness and anger towards someone. i.e. He heaped abuse on Waite and made venomous personal attacks.  

文法：

此文運用到一些分詞構句：

While the street was relatively quiet …, filled with snake charmer and people hawking snake blood all over the place…

Compared to the other parts of the set… meat seemed quite ordinary, tasting like fish.

這兩個句子皆含現在分詞(Ving)，用來形容前面主詞主動執行或進行某項動作。舉第一個例子來說：原本的句子含兩個獨立的子句：(1) The street was filled with snake charmer and people, (2) and the people were hawking snake blood all over the place.

寫分詞構句時，將連接詞(and)、重複的主詞(the people) 刪掉，將動詞(were hawking)改為分詞。因為人們(people)主動叫賣，所以用現在分詞(hawking)代替。 

學生在寫英文作文時，分詞構句的運用常常是表現對英文句子靈活運用的一種手段。簡言之：用的好、用的漂亮，對文章有大大加分的作用；用的不好，反會弄巧成拙。然而，許多英文母語人士告訴Nicole，英文寫作最好還是保持”Simple and Direct”的原則，一篇短文若充斥太多分詞，搞得一個句子“漏漏長“亦會產生負面印象。故，Nicole建議台灣學子，分詞構句要學，但是適量運用即可（一篇約400字的作文，出現一到兩次）。就像走進去一間房間，少了富麗堂皇的裝飾品，重點的主題傢具才能被凸顯出來！