Advanced English
《高级英语》
（第三版）
第一册
主编：张汉熙
外语教学与研究出版社
Lesson 8
Three Cups of Tea (Excerpts)
by Greg Mortenson and David O. Relin
Teaching Points
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I. Background information
II. Introduction to the text
III. Language points
IV. Text analysis
V. Questions for discussion
I. Background Information
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1. Greg Mortenson
2. Three Cups of Tea
3. K2
4. Characters in Chapter 12 of Three Cups of
Tea
1. Greg Mortenson
Born on 27 December 1957, Greg
Mortenson is an American humanitarian, writer
and former mountaineer. He and Dr. Jean
Hoerni co-founded the non-profit Central Asia
Institute and he is its executive director. He
also founded the educational charity Pennies
for Peace. He is the protagonist and co-author
of the No. 1 New York Times bestseller Three
Cups of Tea, published in 2006. The sequel,
Stones into Schools was released in 2009.
In the spring of 1958 when Greg was only
three months old, his parents moved their
family from Minnesota to East Africa to teach
in a girls’ school and four years later helped
establish Tanzania’s first teaching hospital on
the sloped of Mount Kilimanjaro. He and his
sisters attended a school where children were
from more than two dozen different countries.
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Mortenson’s mother founded the
International School Moshi in 1969. From his
parents Greg inherited compassion for the
local poor people. At the age of 11 Greg
climbed to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.
From his parents Greg inherited two things:
love for climbing and compassion for the
poor and unprivileged.
After moving back to the U.S., Mortenson
served in the U.S. army in Germany from
1975 to 1977 as a medic, and received the
Army Commendation Medal. He attended
Concordia College, Moorhead, from 1977 to
1979 on an athletic scholarship. After
transferring, using a GI scholarship, he later
graduated from the University of South
Dakota in Vermillion, South Dakota, in 1983
with an Associate Degree in Nursing and a
Bachelor’s Degree in Chemistry.
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He had long dreamed of finding a cure for
his younger sister Christa’s epilepsy, and
won admission to medical school at Case
Western Reserve University, but his father
died while Greg was still in college, and
the family’s finances were in difficulty.
Greg dropped his plans for medical school
and returned home to help support his
family.
In July 1992, Mortenson’s young sister died on
her 23rd birthday from a life-long struggle with
sever epilepsy. In 1993, to honor his deceased
sister’s memory, Mortenson joined an expedition to
scale K2, the world’s second highest mountain,
Located in the Karakoram Range, K2 is the most
difficult peak in the world and the ultimate test for
mountaineers. After more than 70 days on the
mountain, Mortenson and three other climbers
completed a life-saving rescue of a climber, which
took more than 75 hours.
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The time and energy devoted to this rescue
prevented him from attempting to reach the
summit. After the rescue, he began his
descent of the mountain and became weak
and exhausted. Mortenson took a wrong
turn along the way and ended up in Korphe,
a small village. The village head Haji Ali
gave him food and the warmest quilt and
Mortenson recovered form hunger, cold and
fatigue.
To pay the remote community back for their
generosity and hospitality, Moretenson promised to
build a school for the village where there had been
no for sis hundred years. After a frustrating time
trying to raise money, Mortenson convinced Jean
Hoerni, a Silicon Valley pioneer, to fund the building
of the Korphe School. After talking with Mortenson,
Hoerni asked him to be the director of the Central
Asia Institute. The mission CAI – a non-profit
organization – is to promote education and literacy.
Hoerni appointed Mortenson as the first executive
director of CAI. A promise has turned into a longtime mission.
After the completion of the school in
Korphe, Mortenson went on to build more
schools in northern mountain areas in
Pakistan. In the process of building schools,
Mortenson overcame all sorts of hardships
and on top of these, he survived an eight-day
armed kidnapping by the Taliban in the tribal
areas of Waziristan, escaped a firefight
between Afghan opium warlords and received
hate mail and threats from fellow Americans
for helping educate Muslim children.
Mortenson believes that education and literacy for
children, especially girls, in the remote and
underserved areas is the most important investment
all countries can make to create stability, bring socioeconomic reform, decrease infant mortality, decrease
the population explosion, and improve health,
hygiene, and sanitation standards globally. Mortenson
believes that violence should not be fought with
violence, but that there should be a global priority to
promote peace through education and literacy, with
an emphasis on girls’ education. Later his project
extended to building schools in Afghanistan. His
efforts in building schools in this war-ridden country
are documented in his second book Stones into
Schools.
Up to 2010, the Central Asia Institute has
successfully established 145 schools in Pakistan and
Afghanistan, which have provided education to over
64,000 students, with an emphasis on girls’
education.
In 2010 the New York Times reported that
Mortenson’s approach of building schools as a way
of improving the situation in Pakistan and
Afghanistan is being embraced by the U.S. military.
Top military officials are reading his book Three Cups
of Tea, and General Petraeus has had meeting with
him. The article reported that in 2009 Admiral Mike
Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
attended the opening of one of Mortenson’s schools
in a remoter village of Afghanistan.
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Mortenson received the Star of Pakistan, Pakistan’s
highest civilian award granted by the Government of
Pakistan in 2009. He was nominated for the Nobel
Peace Prize in 2009. In Novmber 2009, U.S News
&World Report magazine featured Greg Mortenson as
one of America’s Top Twenty Leaders in 2009.
Mortenson has won dozens of awards, and has been
granted honorary doctorates by more than a dozen
universities.
Greg Mortenson’s wife is Dr. Tara Bishop, a clinical
psychologist, whose father was a National Geographic
photographer and a climber. They live in Montana with
their two children.
2. Pakistan
Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of
Pakistan is a sovereign country in South Asia.
It sits at the crossroads of the strategically
important regions of South Asia, Central Asia
and the Middle East. It has a 1,046-kilometre
coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf
of Oman in the south and is bordered by India
to the east, Afghanistan to the west and north,
Iran to the southwest and China in the far
northeast.
A Map of Pakistan
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Pakistan is a federal parliamentary republic consisting
of four provinces and four federal territories. With a
population exceeding 170 million people, it is the sixth
most populous country in the world and has the
largest Muslim population after Indonesia. It is an
ethnically and linguistically diverse country, with a
similar variation in its geography and wildlife.
Pakistan's post-independence history has been
characterized by periods of military rule, political
instability and conflicts with neighbouring India. The
country continues to face challenging problems,
including terrorism, poverty, illiteracy and corruption.
Pakistan is a democratic parliamentary federal
republic with Islam as the state religion.
Administrative divisions
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Pakistan is a federation of four provinces: Punjab,
Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, as well
as the Islamabad Capital Territory and the Federally
Administered Tribal Areas in the northwest, which
include the Frontier Regions. The government of
Pakistan exercises de facto jurisdiction over the
western parts of the disputed Kashmir region,
organised into the separate political entities Azad
Kashmir and Gilgit–Baltistan (formerly Northern Areas).
The Gilgit–Baltistan Empowerment and SelfGovernance Order of 2009 assigned a province-like
status to the latter, giving it self-government.
The map of the four provinces and four federal territories of Pakistan.
3. Three Cups of Tea
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“Three Cups of Tea is one of the most
remarkable adventure stories of out time.
Greg Mortenson’s dangerous and difficult
quest to build schools in the wildest parts of
Pakistan and Afghanistan is not only s
thrilling read, it’s proof that one ordinary
person, with the right combination of
character and determination, really can
change the world.” -- Tom Brokaw
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“Greg Mortenson represents the best of
America. He’s my hero. And after you read
Three Cups of Tea, he’ll be your hero, too.”
– U.S. Representative Mary Bono
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Three Cups of Tea has been a freshman, honors, or
campus-wide required reading selection in over
eighty universities and hundreds of schools. It is also
required reading for senior U.S. military commanders,
Pentagon officers in counter-insurgency training, and
special Force deploying to Afghanistan. More than
two hundred communities have used Three Cups of
Tea as a “One Book” common read, and it is being
published in over thirty-one countries.
(Source: “Afterword” of Three Cups of Tea)
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In Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission
to Promote Peace…One School at a Time,
Greg Mortenson, and journalist David
Oliver Relin, recount the journey that led
Mortenson from a failed 1993 attempt to
climb the world’s second highest mountain,
to successfully establishing schools in
some of the most remote regions of
Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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By replacing guns with pencils, rhetoric with
reading, Mortenson combines his unique
background with his intimate knowledge of the
third-world to promote peace with books, not
bombs, and successfully bring education and
hope to remote communities in central Asia.
Three Cups of Tea is at once on an
unforgettable adventure and an inspiring true
story of how one man really is changing the
world – one school at a time.
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In 1993 Mortenson was descending from his
failed attempt to reach the peak of K2.
Exhausted and disoriented, he wandered
away from his group into the most desolate
reaches of northern Pakistan. Alone, without
food, water, or shelter he stumbled into an
impoverished Pakistani village where he was
nursed back to health.
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While recovering he observed the village’s
84 children sitting outdoors, scratching
their lessons in the dirt with sticks. The
village was so poor that it could not afford
the $1-a-day salary to hire a teacher.
When he left the village, he promised that
he would return to build them a school.
From that rash, heartfelt promise grew one
of the most incredible humanitarian
campaigns of out time.
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In an early effort to raise money he wrote
letters to 580 celebrities, businessmen, and
other prominent Americans. His only reply
was a $100 check from NBC’s Tom Brokaw.
Selling everything he owned, he still only
raised $2,400. But his efforts changed when
a group of elementary school children in
River Falls, Wisconsin, donated $623.40 in
pennies, inspiring adults to begin to take
action.
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The 283 foot Braldu Bridge was completed in
1995 and the Korphe School was completed
in 1996. Since then, he’s established 78
schools. In pursuit of his goal, Mortenson has
survived an armed kidnapping, fatwas issued
by enraged mullahs, repeated death threats,
and wrenching separations from his wife and
children. Yet his success speaks for itself.
4. K2
K2 (8,611m) is the second-highest mountain on
Earth with a peak elevation of 8,611 meters. It is part
of the Karakoram Range, and is located on the border
between China and Pakistan. The name K2 was
actually given by mistake the British surveyor Thomas
Montgomerie who named Masherbrum (7821m) K1,
thinking it was the highest peak in the Karakoram
Range, and when he saw Chogori (乔戈里峰) he
named it K2, which is actually higher than K1. K2 is
known as “the Savage Peak” among climbers, due to
the difficulty of ascent and the highest fatality rate.
K2 in Gilgit–Baltistan is the second-highest mountain on Earth, with a peak
elevation of 8,611 metres. It is part of the Karakoram range
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The Karakoram, or Karakorum (simplified
Chinese: 喀喇昆仑山 )is a large mountain
range spanning the borders between Pakistan,
India and China, located in the regions of
Gilgit–Baltistan (Pakistan), Ladakh (India), and
Xinjiang region, (China). It is one of the
Greater Ranges of Asia, a part of the greater
Himalaya while north of the actual Himalaya
Range.
5. Characters in Chapter 12 of Three Cups
of Tea
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Mortenson: Greg Mortenson is the co-author
of the book. This book is about how he built
schools in remote areas in Pakistan.
Haji Ali: Chief of Village Korphe, an old man
who played a key role in leading the villager
in building the Korphe School. He died in
2001.
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Twaha: Haji Ali’s son. His wife died in giving
birth, and he has a daughter.
Tara: Dr. Tara Bishop is Mortenson’s wife.
She is a psychotherapist. She met
Mortenson when he was having a difficult
time raising money for the first school. Her
father was a National Geographic
photographer and a mountain climber.
Sakina: Haji Ali’s wife
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Sher Takhi: Korphe’s mullah, religious leader, who
supported building a school to educate girls
Hussain: a strongly-built climbing porter who
performed the execution of the ram for the celebration
Hoerni: Jean Hoerni (1924-1997) was a Silicon
Valley pioneer. Born in Switzerland and educated
there, he moved to California in 1952. He provided
the fund for building the Korphe School, and later
founded the Central Asia Institute with an endowment
of $1 million to continue providing services for them
after his death. He appointed Mortenson as its
Executive Director.
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Jahan: Twahs’s daughter. She was nine when the
Korphe School was built and one of the first girls who
graduated from this school. She attended Girls’
Model High School in Skardu.
Makhmal: a mason who participated in the
construction of the school
Hussein: a teacher of the Korphe School
Tahira: Hussein’s daughter who was ten when the
school was built. She graduated with Jahan in the
Korphe School’s first class and also attended Girls’
Model High School in Skardu.
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Changazi: a trekking agent and tour operator who
organized Mortenson’s K2 expedition. He was a
capable man and Mortenson thought he could
arrange to get the school supplies he had purchased
carried up the Braldu Valley. Changazi managed to do
that but he turned out to be a dishonest man and stole
the supplies. Only after a hard time and great effort
did Mortenson retrieve part of the supplies.
Parvi: CAI’s Pakistan-based manager and account
Haji Mehdi: chief of Askole, someone like a Mafia
boss who forced Korphe Villager to give him 12 big
rams
II. Introduction to the text
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The text “Three Cups of Tea” is Chapter 12 taken
from the book of the same title.
What happened before this chapter is like this: in
1993, Mortenson joined an expedition to climb K2,
which, at the height of 8,611 meters, is the world’s
second highest mountain, and the most difficult to
climb.
He had a personal reason for this climbing – to
honor his young sister Christa, who suffered
meningitis in childhood and died from a massive
seizure on her 23rd birthday. Mortenson intended to
place her necklace on the summit of K2. However,
when he was a few hundred meters away from the top,
mists covered up K2, and Mortenson lost his way and
contact with the rest of the team. Exhausted, he had
to retreat from K2 but took wrong turn. He drifted for
several days along an unfamiliar route and finally
found himself in a small village called Korphe not
marked on his climbing maps. In Korphe, he was
treated with the utmost hospitality.
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He spent several days recovering in the poor and
remote village built on a shelf jutting out from a
canyon. To repay their generosity, Mortenson gave
away his climbing supplies as gifts and used his
medicine and medical skills to cure some illnesses
suffered by the villager, who called him Dr. Greg.
Walking around the village, he was always followed
by some fifty friendly children who had never set
eyes upon a foreigner before. He wanted to visit their
school, and asked the village head to take him there.
But there was no school house.
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“He was appalled to see eighty-two children,
seventy-eight boys, and the four girls who
had the pluck to join them, kneeling on the
frosty ground, in the open.” He was told that
these children shared a teacher with a
neighboring village who just came three days
a week. For the other three days, the children
learned their lessons by themselves just in
the open. “I’m going to build you a school,”
Mortenson said. “I promise.”
Yet, Moetenson was not a rich American as
some of the local people thought. In California
where he was based, he had no house, but
just an old car to sleep in and a storage
space for his mountaineering gear. He was a
medical worker but his job was sporadic. He
consulted with local experts who told him that,
using local materials and the labor of local
draftsmen, he would need $12,000 to
complete the school.
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To fulfill his promise, he wrote and posted
580 letters asking for help to raise a fund to
build a school in a remote village in Pakistan.
He got only one response and one check,
from Dr. Jean Hoerni, a climber when young
and now a scientist who invented a type of
integrated circuit that paved the way for the
silicon chip.
With the money Mortenson returned to
Pakistan the next year, 1994. In building the
school he was to encounter considerable
odds – he had to find local friends to help
him bargain with businessmen for cheaper
prices so that every rupee counted; for three
days he traveled with the building materials
on a truck from the city where he had bought
them to a place near Korphe on treacherous
roads, not to mention dust, hunger, sleepless
nights and other hardships; he had to
recover his supplies
which had been stolen by a dishonest person;
he had to negotiate with people from another
village who wanted to use the materials to
build a school for their own village, etc.
Finally he reached the bank of the Braldu
River with the supplies, only to find his road
was interrupted by the torrent of the river.
Haji Ali, village chief, told him they must build
a bridge before building the school.
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Back home, what awaited Mortenson was the
departure of his girlfriend who could not bear long
separations, and the loss of his job at the medical
center. In spite of all these frustrations, Mortenson
persisted in his promise. Funds were raised and a
bridge was built. That year in California, Mortenson
met a young woman named Tara Bishop whose
father was a National Geographic photographer and
also a mountaineer. She had heard about Greg and
stuck up a friendship with him immediately, which
quickly developed to love and led to marriage.
Tara fully understood what Greg was doing
and gave her unreserved support. In 1995,
Mortenson returned to Korphe to build the
school. Before he left the previous year, he
had given Haji Ali enough money to hire
labor to cut stones and he expected some
progress in the building project. But when he
got back to Korphe what he saw was
disappointing. This is where Chapter 12
begins.
III. Language points
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1. He had arrived here in mid-October, nearly a month
after … expect him. (Para. 3)
He told Haji Ali he would return in mid-September
but arrived one month late because he had just got
married and the marriage delayed his departure for
Korphe.
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2. Allah (Para. 8)
The Islamic name for God. Prior to Mohammed,
Allah was the supreme but not the sole deity In Arabia.
It was Mohammed’s mission to proclaim Allah as the
sole God, the creator and sustainer of all things.
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3. “What is one winter more?” (Para. 8)
What does it matter if we have to go without a
school for another winter? Haji Ali fully foresaw all the
difficulties in building the first school in their poor and
remote village which had existed without a school for
six hundred years, and he knew patience was as
essential as hard work.
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4. … and a bubble of happiness rose up so forcefully
that he couldn’t keep it to himself. (Para. 9)
A metaphor, a vivid way of saying that he felt so happy
that he must share his happiness with his friend.
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5. It had stood for nearly five hundred
years … a foothold in Baltistan. (Para. 26)
Baltistan came under the control of the
Tibetan King Songtsen Gampo in the 7th
century. Under Tibetan cultural influence, the
Baltis began to adopt Tibetan Buddhism from
Indian Buddhism. The history of Islam in
Baltistan starts with the arrival of Ameer
Kabeer Syed Ali Hamadani (a legendary Sufi
Saint in Muslim History) from Iran during the
15th century.
Baltistan is a region in northern Pakistan
and India, now called Gilgit-Baltistan,
bordering the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous
Region of China. It is situated in the
Karakoram Mountains just to the south of K2.
It is an extremely mountainous region, with
an average altitude of over 3,350m. It is
inhabited principally by Balti of Tibetan origin.
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6. During his visits he had kept a respectful
distance from the mosque… (Para. 27)
Mortenson kept a distance from the
mosque, not out of disbelief but out respect.
He didn’t know how the religious leader
would feel about a non-Muslim proposing to
build a school to educate the girls in Korphe,
which was not in accordance with Islamic
tradition.
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7. “Usually you have to drag a ram to make it
move,” Mortenson says. (Para. 31)
The book Three Cups of Tea is co-written by
Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. The
third-person narration is employed throughout
the book. But in many places direct speech by
Mortenson is used to add vividness and
authenticity to the descriptions.
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8. Gently, he turned the animal’s head toward
Mecca … his test of loyalty. (Para. 32)
1) Mecca: the birthplace of Mohammed and
the holiest city of Islam. It is to Mecca that all
pious Muslims are enjoined to make the
pilgrimage, at least once during their lifetime.
The pilgrimage is called the Haji and the title
Haji means one who has made the pilgrimage
to Mecca.
2) Abraham: in the Old Testament, the founder and
first patriarch of the Hebrew people. Chosen by
Jehovah to establish a new nation, Abraham
emigrated with his wife, Sarah, from Ur to Canaan.
There he had two sons: Ishmael by Sarah’s servant
Hagar and Isaac by Sarah. Jehovah and Abraham
made a covenant, according to which Jehovah
promised that He would be God to Abraham and his
children and that they would inherit and dwell in the
land of Canaan. Jehovah tested Abraham’s loyalty
by commanding him to sacrifice Isaac.
Abraham was preparing to obey but was
topped at the fatal moment by an angel
and commended by Jehovah, who
confirmed the terms of the covenant.
Three world religious, Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam, belong to monotheism, faith in
a single God, which is characteristic of the
Abrahamic religions.
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9. Koran (Para. 32) （伊斯兰教）《古兰经》，
曾译《可兰经》。
The Koran, or the Qur’an, is the religious
text of Islam. It is widely regarded as the
finest piece of literature in the Arabic
language. Muslims hold that the Koran is the
verbal divine guidance and moral direction for
mankind.
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10. In the Koran, the story appears in much the
same manner … and the Bible. (Para. 32)
The major source of monotheism is the narrative
of the Hebrew Bible, the source of Judaism.
Judaism may have received influences from various
non-biblical religions present in Egypt and Syria.
This can be seen by the Torah’s reference to
Egyptian culture in Genesis and the story of Moses.
Thus there are many similarities between the Koran
and the Old Testament of the Bible.
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11. “Watching this scene straight out of the Bible
stories … same root.” (Para. 32)
The scene in which Korphe villagers sacrificed the
ram before Allah exactly resembled the Bible story
about Abraham that Mortenson had learned in
Sunday school. He was amazed at how much the
different faiths had in common and how one could
trace their separate traditions to the same root. There
may be two opposing attitudes toward a different
religion. One only sees the differences, which may
result in confrontation and clashes. The other
emphasizes similarities and the same root, which
could lead to mutual respect and understanding.

12. Baltoro porters (Para. 33)
The Baltoro Glacier, at 62 kilometers long,
is one of the longest glaciers outside the polar
regions. It is located in Baltistan, in the GilgitBaltistan region of Pakistan, and runs through
part of the Karakoram mountain range. The
Baltoro Muztagh lies to the north and east of
the glacier, while the Masherbrum Mountains
lie to the south.
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13. These faces ringing the fire did not need to
be taught so much as they needed help. (Para.
37)
Synecdoche: the naming of a part to mean
the whole. Here “faces” stand for “men”.
Mortenson felt that his job was to help the men
who surrounded the fire in a circle rather than
to teach them.

14. … during that night of dancing, the school
reached critical mass… real to him. (Para. 37)
Although he knew they could see the completed
school standing before him in his mind because
these people with whom he was singing and dancing
told him they had a history and a rich tradition and
they knew what they were doing. He began to
understand them better and thus have more
confidence in them. The minimus size required to
start something. That night he realized with
confidence that the school would be built.

15. Hoerni had suggested the name. The
scientist envisioned … the Silk Road. (Para. 38)
Hoerni founded the organization and
suggested the name. He imagined that the
project of building schools could develop fast
just like one of his semiconductor companies in
the Silicon Valley in California, extending its
mission to build schools and operating the
many countries whose names end with “stan”
scattered along the separate routes of the Silk
Road.
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“stans”: the Persian suffix “stan” means
“land”. There are many countries in
Central Asia whose names contain “stan”,
such as Pakistan, Afghanistan,
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrghyzstan,
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, etc.
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The Silk Road: The Silk Road (or Silk Routes) is an
extensive interconnected network of trade routes
across the Asian continent connecting East, South,
and Western Asia with the Mediterranean world, as
well as North and Northeast Africa and Europe. The
Silk Road gets its name from the lucrative Chinese
Silk trade, a major reason for the connection of trade
routes into an extensive transcontinental network.
The English term “the Silk Road” has come into
general use in spite of the fact it was a network of
routes, few means the only item traded along them.
China traded silk, spices, teas, and porcelain; while
India traded ivory, textiles, precious stones, and
pepper.
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16. “Getting the construction going was like
conducting an orchestra …” (Para. 41)
Simile, comparing getting the construction
going to conducting an orchestra. The work
seemed simple but in fact rather complicated,
needing someone to direct the work and the
participation of different people. In the
following sentences Mortenson describes how
the work was done. Paragraph 41 is mainly a
description of a process, that is, how
something is done step by step.
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17. Paragraph 42 and 43:
Paragraph 42 and 43 use direct speech by
two girls – Hussein the teacher’s daughter
Tahira, and Haji Ali’s granddaughter Jahan –
to show why they were excited about the
building of the school and how they
participated in the construction.
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18. One clear afternoon at the beginning of
August, Haji Ali … take a walk. (Para. 43)
Haji Ali’s asking Mortenson to take a walk
was quite unusual when everybody was
working so hard. So he must have wanted to
have a serious talk with Mortenson. This
sentence also serves as transition linking
what has happened and what will happen.
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19. “These mountains have been here a long
time – what to do …” (Para. 47)
These words show Haji Ali’s respect and
awe for the mountains which had been there
for a long time. What Haji Ali meant was that
there was a connection between humans and
the earth. As Helen Norberg-Hodge put it in
the quotation placed before Chapter 12, there
was “an interconnectedness that ancient
cultures have never abandoned.”
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20. “We’re the country of thirty-minute power lunches
and two-minute football drills.” (Para. 53)
We in America do everything quickly, without much
patience. We discuss business over lunch that only
lasts 30 minutes and do football drills that only last
two minutes.
Power lunch: important lunchtime business meeting,
a meeting over lunch that gives somebody the
opportunity to cultivate an important contact or
discuss high-level business matters, 商务午餐

21. “Our leaders thought their ‘shock and awe’
campaign … it even started.” (Para. 53)
“Shock and awe” (technically known as
rapid dominance) is a military doctrine based
on the use of overwhelming power, dominant
battlefield awareness, dominant maneuvers,
and spectacular display of force to paralyze
an adversary’s perception of the battlefield
and destroy its will to fight.
The doctrine was written by Harlan K. Ullman and
James P. Wade in 1996 and is a product of the
National Defense University of the United States.
Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, officials in the
United States armed forces described their plan as
employing shock and awe. The term “shock and
awe” is typically used to describe only the very
beginning of the invasion of Iraq, nor the larger war.
So the idea that “we Americans think you have to
accomplish everything quickly” is pervasive in
American’s daily life as well as in their politics and
military actions.

22. “Haji Ali taught me to share three cups of
tea, to slow down … building projects.”（Ｐara.
53）
This is the most important lesson Mortenson
had ever learned in his life. He realized that
sharing three cups of tea had a symbolic
meaning – building relationships, developing
friendship and trust. In a modern society like
America, people are alienated and almost all
relationships have become impersonalized,
business-like.

23. Paragraph 53:
In Paragraph 53 Mortenson reflects on the
American way of life. He comes to see that
he, from a modern and prosperous society,
had something to learn from the people he
had come to help. This paragraph echoes the
quotation by Helena Norberg-Hodge:
“ It may seem absurd to believe that a
“primitive” culture in the Himalayas has
anything to teach our industrialized society.
But our search for a future that works
keeps spiraling back to an ancient connection
between ourselves and the earth, an
interconnectedness that ancient cultures have
never abandoned.”

24. “And then the most amazing thing of all
happened.” (Para. 55)
The next sentences and the next paragraph explain
that the most amazing thing was that Sher Takhi, the
village’s holy man, led the column of men by carrying
the first load. This was amazing for two reasons:
firstly the holy men in these areas are not supposed
to do physical labor which is regarded as losing face;
secondly, he had polio as a child and he must have
walked in agony under the heavy loads.

25. “but he was smiling like he’d just won a
lottery.” (Para. 71)
Haji Ali was smiling although they had
lost twelve large rams, almost half of the
wealth of the village. Twelve rams were
indeed a high price to pay. Superficially
Haji Mehdi won in the conflict and got what
he demanded. But Haji Ali won the
opportunity of education for boys and girls
which was priceless.

26. “Long after all those rams are dead and
eaten this school … forever.” (Para. 72)
Antithesis: contrasting “today” and “forever.”
These philosophical remarks prove Haji Ali’s
vision and wisdom.

27. Para.76: the ending of this chapter
This chapter titled “Haji Ali’s Lesson” ends
with Haji Ali’s and Mortenson’s remarks. Only
at the end of the story do we learn that Haji Ali,
who gave everything to support the building of
the school, was an illiterate. He said this was
the saddest thing in his life and that he would
do anything to make sure that children in
Korphe would never have this feeling but enjoy
the education they deserved. In the last
paragraph, Mortenson reflected on what he
learned from Haji Ali.
From the moment he promised to build a
school to the completion of the first school, he
had made great efforts and met with
numerous difficulties and hardships. But now
he realized that all this was nothing compared
to the sacrifices Haji Ali was prepared to make
for his people. Mortenson saw that Haji Ali
was fully aware of the value of education and
willing to make any sacrifice for this purpose.
He was a very wise man indeed.
Text analysis

1. Genre: A piece of narration
The content: The selected chapter
describes how the very first school was built.
It also illustrates the meaning of “three cup of
tea,” the title of the book.
The theme: That day, Haji Ali taught me
the most important lesson I’ve ever
learned in my life.…Haji Ali taught me to
share three cups of tea, to slow down and
make building relationships as important
as building projects. He taught me that I
had more to learn from the people I work
with than I could ever hope to teach them.
(para. 53)
The meaning of the title of the book: Three
Cups of Tea

The title is from the Balti tradition:
“If you want to thrive in Baltistan, you must
respect our ways. The first time you share
tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The
second time you take, you are an honored
guest. The third time you share a cup of tea,
you become family, and for our family, we are
prepared to do anything, even die.” (para. 52)
Comment on Haji Ali
Haji Ali is the village head of Korphe in Pakistan. The author thinks
he is the wisest man he has ever met.
Some quotes from Haji Ali:
a. If you want to thrive in Baltistan, you must respect our ways.” (para.
52)
b. We may be uneducated. But we are not stupid. (para. 52)
c. Long after all those rams are dead and eaten, this school will still
stand. Haji Mehdi has food today. Now our children have education
forever. (para. 72)
d. I can’t read anything. This the greatest sadness in my life. I’ll do
anything so the children of my village never have to know this
feeling. I’ll pay any price so they have the education they deserve.

VI . Questions for Discussion



1. In which paragraph is the meaning of
“three cups of tea” explained? Do you think
“three cups of tea” has a metaphoric
significance? If yes, what is it?
2. What is the significance of Haji Ali’s lesson
to us?
3. What can we learn from Haji Ali?