Learning English - Words in the News - Hong Kong's hive of business

Last updated at 10:11 BST, Friday, 19 August 2011

Hong Kong's hive of business

Video

Sorry, you can't see the video.

To see the video in the page you need to enable JavaScript in your browser's preferences.

Report and vocabulary

Transcript: It may be a concrete jungle but Hong Kong has more similarities with the great outdoors than you might think.

14 storeys up a skyscraper, you can find one of the 11 urban beehives around the city.

Like many conurbations, Hong Kong has enough flora for bees to pollinate and harvest nectar from.

Following Chinese tradition beekeepers in Hong Kong don't wear any protective gear.
concrete jungle: a phrase to describe a city with many large buildings and skyscrapers and few green areas
storeys: different levels of a building
beehives: structures where bees live together
conurbations: large urban areas where different towns have grown and joined together
to pollinate: to enable plants to produce seeds and therefore reproduce. Pollination happens when bees, other insects or the wind carry pollen from one plant to another.

Exercise

Use one of the words or phrases below to complete each of these sentences from a 大象传媒 news report. Note that you may have to change the form of a word to complete the sentence correctly.

concrete jungle / storeys / beehives / conurbations / to pollinate

1.
The biggest city close to the epicentre is Concepcion, which forms part of the second largest ______________________ in the country with a population of about one million.

2.
The Magnolia genus is an ancient group of more than 100 plants, and is considered to be among the first flowering plants to have evolved.

Their arrival on the planet pre-dated the emergence of bees, so the early species of magnolia were believed to have been __________________ by beetles.

3.
A toddler who fell 10 ________________ and survived after being caught by a passer-by has been making headlines around the world. But what is the best way to catch a falling child?

4.
In popular culture, New York is the city that never sleeps, the ____________________ in which dreams are made, a place to walk on the wild side.

5.
A Toronto museum is investigating the sudden death of thousands of bees in a glass-enclosed ___________________ exhibit.