你好呀，欢迎收听：英语考试Cat 🐱🐱🐱🐱

Do you think it's good to use chocolate as gifts to others?

Hmm, well, I think it probably depends on whom we're giving gifts to. In general, the older generation is less likely to appreciate gifts like chocolate. But for young people I think it’s totally fine because who doesn’t like the taste of chocolate, especially good chocolate? In fact, I guess you could say it’s a universally accepted gift between friends, lovers, colleagues, and even acquaintances, kind of a safe bet.

• the older generation 老一辈
• appreciate 欣赏；感激
• universally accepted 普遍接受的
• acquaintance 熟人
• kind of 有点
• a safe bet 安全的做法；万无一失

Why do you think chocolate is popular around the world?

Well, probably because everyone, or at least most people in the world, loves the taste of chocolate, and because chocolate can have such a wide variety of tastes and flavors, and even for those who aren’t too fond of sweet chocolate, there’s always dark chocolate. I can’t stand it myself, but different folks, different strokes.

Other than that, chocolates are often perceived as something sweet and nice, and when used as a gift, normally are not cheap, so a good quality box of chocolates is like giving, or you could say that it actually is, an edible luxury. There’s that Italian chocolate, I forget the name, but it’s really famous in China, and it has a milk chocolate shell sprinkled with crushed walnuts and a rich deep gooey chocolate inside. Ah, to die for!

• a wide variety of 各种各样的
• dark chocolate 黑巧克力
• different folks, different strokes 萝卜青菜、各有所爱
• perceived as 被看作；视为
• edible 可实用的
• sprinkled with 撒上了
• rich 浓郁的
• gooey 软软黏黏的
• to die for 渴望

Do you like eating chocolates?

Yeah, sure, especially those chocolates I just mentioned. Unlike all other types of candies, chocolate has a unique flavor, and its rich taste stays in your mouth for a while, even dark chocolate, which I mentioned before, that bitter taste can stay in your mouth for quite some time. Sometimes I might snatch a chocolate bar when I do my grocery shopping trips, but only once in a while.

• rich taste 浓郁的味道
• bitter taste 苦涩的味道
• for quite some time 一段时间
• snatch 抓

Did you often eat chocolate when you were a kid?

No, in fact, never. I can’t recall ever tasting chocolate in my childhood. Back then, chocolate was perceived as something ‘high-end’ in my neck of the woods and so we never even thought about it.

I hardly ever saw them in grocery stores in my town and if I did, they were like those cheap foil-wrapped round chocolates which actually I never tried. I did spot proper boxed chocolates in bigger supermarkets in a nearby town but they were expensive and so I never bought one and so never ate it as a kid.

• perceived 被看作
• high-end 高端
• in my neck of the woods 在我（家乡）那个地方
• spot 看到