The home service industry in Beijing is expected to become more attractive both as a job and as an industry.

Sources at the Beijing People’s Political Consultative Conference said resistance to home service work is melting away from minds of the city’s laid-off workers. The Conference suggested the establishment of municipal (市政的) centers which supervise (监督) property management, household mending and installation, and house keeping services. Modern city life is creating a need for industrialization home services. This will create job opportunities for laid-off workers, said vice director of the Social Judicial Committee of the Conference.

Beijing residents have long desired a home service industry. The demand is expected to drive new economic growth. There are few high quality home help services in Beijing and customers are always complaining.

In the past, few laid-off workers in Beijing desired to work as home helpers, jobs largely taken by young women from the countryside. At the same time, some city residents have not felt safe trusting rural girls with modern household machines or with their small children. Many people would pay more for reliable house keepers who are more familiar with city life, but they have had no way of getting one, even though the city is home to thousands of laid-off workers.

By the end of June this year, there were 30,600 jobless workers in the city. Most of them are women in their 40’s, who are not blessed with particular skills and who have had their work ethics (准则) shaped by the planned economy. Many of them were at a loss when they first realized they had lost their jobs and a way of life they had got used to for decades. They never imagined being laid off by state owned enterprises; they never considered other kinds of employment. For them, the private sector (部门) meant taking risks; house-keeping implied lower social status. Gao Yunfang, 44, is a pioneer who is breaking the ice. She sells the Beijing Morning Post in the morning, and works at two households in the afternoon. She earns 1,000 yuan per month. So she no longer worries about her daughter’s tuition at a university in Shanghai.

1. What is talked about in the passage?

A. Home service.          B. Modern city life.              C. Laid-off workers.      D. Social status.

2. What does the word “ laid-off” in the passage mean?

A. Heavily-burdened.    B. Old                          C. Inexperienced.          D. Jobless.

3.    Why didn’t the laid-off workers like to do home services in the past?

A. Low salary.                                                        B. Lower social status.  

C. Dirty working condition.                              D. Too much extra work.

4.    Why were many laid-off workers at a loss?

A. Because they didn’t get used to the new way of life.     

B. Because they are too old to find a new job.

C. Because they dislike being laid off. 

D. Because they think they lost their social status.