TOCFL Advanced Literary Excerpts 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: In advanced Chinese literary excerpts, 諷刺 (fěng cì) is a frequently tested rhetorical device. An author employing 諷刺 in a TOCFL passage would most likely:
- Directly praise the subject using elevated honorific language
- Use irony or mockery to criticize social customs or individuals indirectly (Correct answer)
- Employ emotionally neutral, documentary language to record historical events
- Use vivid personification to celebrate nature's beauty
Correct answer: Use irony or mockery to criticize social customs or individuals indirectly
諷刺 means satire or irony — using indirect, often humorous or cutting language to expose and critique flaws.
Question 2: Ba Jin's novel 'Family' (家), the first volume of the Torrent Trilogy, primarily critiques:
- The corruption of Western-educated Chinese intellectuals returning from abroad
- The oppressive nature of the traditional Confucian extended family system (Correct answer)
- The failure of the 1911 Republican Revolution to modernize Chinese society
- The exploitation of rural peasants by urban landlords during the warlord era
Correct answer: The oppressive nature of the traditional Confucian extended family system
Ba Jin's 'Family' powerfully depicts how the rigid Confucian extended family system stifles individual freedom and destroys the lives of its younger members.
Question 3: When a TOCFL advanced passage uses the classical allusion 臥薪嘗膽 (wò xīn cháng dǎn), the author is most likely describing a character who:
- Has achieved sudden, unexpected success through good fortune
- Endures hardship with patient determination in order to achieve revenge or a goal (Correct answer)
- Sacrifices personal ambition for the benefit of friends and family
- Withdraws from public life to pursue solitary scholarly pursuits
Correct answer: Endures hardship with patient determination in order to achieve revenge or a goal
臥薪嘗膽 (sleeping on brushwood, tasting gall) refers to King Goujian of Yue who endured extreme privation to motivate himself to seek revenge — symbolizing patient endurance toward a goal.
Question 4: In classical Chinese prose, 排比 (pái bǐ) is a rhetorical technique that involves:
- Inserting a parenthetical digression to explain a key term
- Using a series of structurally parallel phrases or clauses for emphasis (Correct answer)
- Reversing the expected word order to create poetic tension
- Repeating a single key word at the beginning of successive lines
Correct answer: Using a series of structurally parallel phrases or clauses for emphasis
排比 is anaphora or parallelism — using three or more structurally similar clauses in succession to build rhythm and rhetorical force.
Question 5: A TOCFL reading passage describes a character using the idiom 班門弄斧 (bān mén nòng fǔ). In context, this most likely means the character is:
- Skillfully demonstrating mastery to impress qualified experts
- Displaying incompetence in front of someone far more skilled (Correct answer)
- Humbly requesting instruction from a renowned teacher
- Boasting about achievements that were actually accomplished by others
Correct answer: Displaying incompetence in front of someone far more skilled
班門弄斧 means 'wielding an axe at the gate of Lu Ban (master carpenter)' — showing off one's limited skills before an expert, implying presumptuous incompetence.
Question 6: Eileen Chang's (張愛玲) writing style in works like 'Love in a Fallen City' is best characterized as:
- Revolutionary socialist realism focused on worker-peasant struggles
- Psychological realism with sharp, ironic observations of urban bourgeois life (Correct answer)
- Romantic idealism celebrating heroic resistance against Japanese occupation
- Stream-of-consciousness modernism modeled on James Joyce's techniques
Correct answer: Psychological realism with sharp, ironic observations of urban bourgeois life
Chang is renowned for her psychologically acute, often ironic portrayals of Shanghai and Hong Kong's middle-class society amid historical upheaval.
Question 7: In a TOCFL advanced literary passage, the term 白描 (bái miáo) as a narrative technique refers to:
- Flowery, ornate language that embellishes descriptions with metaphor and allusion
- Plain, unadorned description that sketches character or scene with minimal ornamentation (Correct answer)
- The use of white space in classical manuscripts to signal a change of topic
- A type of dramatic monologue in which a character reveals inner thoughts
Correct answer: Plain, unadorned description that sketches character or scene with minimal ornamentation
白描, literally 'white sketch' (from ink-line drawing without color fill), means spare, direct description using simple language without elaborate embellishment.
TOCFL Advanced Literary Excerpts 3
In advanced Chinese literary excerpts, 諷刺 (fěng cì) is a frequently tested rhetorical device.
An author employing 諷刺 in a TOCFL passage would most likely: