The most prominent object was a long table with a tablecloth spread on an epergne or centre-piece of some kind was in the middle of this cloth: it was so heavily overhung with cobwebs that its form was quite "what do you think that is? she asked me, again pointing with her stick; "that, where those cobwebs are? " "it's great cake. a bride-cake. mine! "

what does the cake most likely symbolize?
a . hunger
b. lost love
c. great joy
d. romance

B. Lost love

Explanation:

The fact that the centre-piece was a bride-cake tells us it is related to love. A marriage symbolizes the peak of love that a couple feels. In other words, the couple wants to see that love materialized in someway, the tradition is a marriage. As the cake is overhung with cobwebs we can infere that the wedding never took place, it's purpose was never achieved. The cobwebs represent all the time that has passed since the marriage was supposed to be realized. All the time the bride has been waiting, the hope that someday love will return to her life. We can say this because the cake is still in the middle of the table, it is a centre-piece, meaning it is still very important.

word count 168

serve the people! ,” smoothly translated by julia lovell, offers an initial sample of yan lianke’s writing to an english-speaking audience. a bluntly drawn, mildly erotic fable, it teases mao zedong by poking fun at a true believer who obeys the chairman’s precepts too literally. to a western sensibility, the broad strokes of yan lianke’s humor would seem to pose little risk of inciting rebellion, whether of the flesh or of the body politic. but then, part of the book’s attraction is that it doesn’t have a western sensibility. it lets the reader see — or rather, intuit — what jokes chinese officials don’t consider funny, and how very little it takes for a writer to be branded an incendiary in 21st-century china, more than three decades after the death of mao, a decade after the death of deng xiaoping and seven years since china entered the world trade organization, a move that would seem to signal a willingness (however wary) to mingle with the rest of the world.