你一边聚精会神做功课，室友一旁翻箱倒柜找东西，烦不？这倒也罢，要命的是他还唠唠叨叨问东问西：“见我钱包没？我的手表在哪儿？” 晕！没好气回他一句：“鬼才知道呢！” 对了，咱们今天就是要谈“鬼才知道呢！”

“Up in Annie's room behind the clock!” 是一句戏谑语，常被英国人使用。在你不知道朋友的东西在哪儿、又懒得帮他找时，都可以这么说。话听起来虽有点儿怪，但若搞明白了它的渊源，也就见怪不怪了。

“Up in Annie's room”出自英国军营，原是回应对方“不知道某个兵哪儿去了”的诨话——想一想，军营里怎可能有女孩子Annie呢？而且部队往往安营扎寨在野外，想找舒适的room（房间）来偷情更是不可能。说白了，Up in Annie's room就是指“他去了我们找不到的地方，所以说，别来问我。” 后来，随着时间的推移，也不知为什么“Up in Annie's room”后面又加上了半句“behind the clock”。下次看影片，若见到了这样了的对白，您该明白是什么意思了吧！

A：Where do you suppose my car keys are?（你知道我的车钥匙在哪儿吗？） B：Probably up in Annie's room behind the clock.（鬼才知道呢！）

Burying loved ones deadly expensive

Think purchasing a house in Guangzhou is expensive? Try buying a place to bury your loved ones.

An average grave in this southern city costs 30,000 yuan ($4,390), and a better one may be double that, yesterday's Nanfang Daily reported.

That makes a grave, meter for meter, more expensive than a house.

"Guangzhou has only nine graveyards and graves are in short supply," said Li Guoqing, director of the Guangzhou Funeral and Interment Service Center. "The surging demand is pushing prices so high."

A standard grave ranges from 14,000 yuan to 20,000 yuan per sq m in the city, and those in better locations may cost 200,000 yuan or even one million yuan.

On the other hand, the average price of a house in Guangzhou is 9,000 yuan per sq m, with only very good locations reaching 20,000 yuan per sq m.

"A tomb for my parents would be too expensive if my brothers and sisters didn't pool money together," said a local citizen surnamed Xu.

After trips to all the graveyards in Guangzhou and even in the neighboring Pearl River Delta cities like Dongguan and Foshan, he finally chose one in the suburbs of Guangzhou.

"All my brothers and sisters are in Guangzhou; we think we'd better buy a grave for our parents here," Xu said. "I think it's going to cost more than 70,000 yuan."

Xu plans to bury his parents' ashes before Tomb-Sweeping Day, which falls on the coming Saturday, so he moved their ashes from his hometown in Chaozhou, a city in the east of the province, after the Spring Festival

"It's a tradition in China to lay the dead to rest in a grave," Xu said.

"At least 80 percent of the people in Guangdong intend to bury the dead in graves, despite the efforts of the government to encourage people to plant trees with the ashes or scatter the ashes in the sea," Li said.

He said the situation is similar in other cities across the country, adding that the state's funeral and interment reform encourages environmentally friendly and land-efficient ways of treating the ashes.

Questions:

1. Why are graves, meter for meter, more expensive than homes in Guangzhou?

2. What percent of people bury their loved ones?

3. Name the other ways the government is trying to encourage people to do with their loved ones’ bodies?

Answers:

1. There are only nine graveyards and graves are in short supply.

2. At least 80 percent.

3. Plant trees with the ashes or scatter the ashes in the sea.