China covers large areas and has a great population. 【小题1】 Recently, another difference between northerners and southerners became a hot one: the way they shop at markets.

【小题2】 It is normal for them to buy half a Chinese cabbage, two potatoes and 0.25 kilograms of beef at a time.

However, one may be laughed at if he does this in the north. 【小题3】 Also, you can buy a very small amount of fruit, such as a single apple or pear, each time in the south. 【小题4】 But shop owners in the north hardly offer such service. And many fruits are sold in baskets and boxes.

The difference could be due to (由于) the different weather. Food can be kept for a long time in the north, as it is usually cold and dry there. 【小题5】 But the hot and wet weather in the south make southern Chinese buy just enough food for one meal or one day, or else the food may go bad.

Do you like eating ice-cream? The earliest ice was eaten in China many years ago. People put fruit juice into ice. Later, this idea spread to Italy. Nero, the emperor of Rome between 54 AD and 68 AD, liked to eat ice between violin lessons. He ordered runners to run to the mountain to get snow and then quickly run back to the palace. And the snow was mixed with fruit juice and honey.

Around 1660, coffee shops serving ice-cream were very popular in Paris. Most of the coffee shops were owned by Italians. The first successful one was opened by a man from Italy named Francesco Procopio.

Ice-cream was probably passed to America in the early 1700s. Dolly Madison, the wife of President Madison, was the first one to serve her guests ice-cream in the White House.

Before ice-cream was sold in stores, it was made and frozen(冷冻) at home. It took lots of work to mix cream, eggs, fruit, ice and salt, and then to freeze it. Nancy Johnson, an American woman made the hand-turned ice-cream freezer(冷冻机) in 1846. Five years later, Jacob Flusell opened the first ice-cream store in Baltimore, Maryland.