2021年1月16日托福独立写作真题范文 | 如何快速了解一个城市？

Wandering around a new city, first-time visitors may be completely dazed and lost. To familiarize themselves with this city quickly, they may subconsciously pay a visit to historic sites and markets. However, such moves may be either too time-consuming or pointless. In fact, the most desirable way to know this city is to dine in local restaurants or grab a coffee in cafés.

The best way to learn about a place is through its culture. Historic sites, rich in heritage and history, embody a city’s social culture content. Hence, visitors to such places can discover local cultures, meanwhile acquainting themselves withthe city. However, this procedure tends to be time-consuming. In other words, it takes tons of time to carefully go through each piece of collections. In this case, visitors whose time is scarce may hardly have the patience to study those boring and lengthy annotations. Instead, they may just scan over the pictures and relics, and the cursory glance contributes nothing to their understanding behind those collections, let alone learning this city. 

Strolling round the market or shops is less time-consuming, yet it is still not recommendable for visitors who want get to know the city. Local markets or shops, featuring boutiques and specialities, may display a city’s characters. However, visitors may find the displayed characters identical with their hometowns’.  This is because most of the products sold at the market are manufactured in other cities instead of hand-crafted at local market, which makes them become devoid of local characteristics. Hence, for visitors to such places, they may feel like just touring another ordinary shop of their hometown, thus being discouraged from further exploration. 

It thus follows that restaurants and cafes, especially those favoured by the locals, are the best spots to get to know the city quickly. The reason is simple: talking to the locals, the first-time visitors can not only avoid tourist traps, but also find out the locals’ living patterns. Specifically, waiters or local diners tend to have a clear picture of which places are well worth a visit. This is particularly important for visitors who have limited amount of time to know the city, as it helps them to utilize time effectively by filtering out those so-called top-rated or must-see places. More importantly, through observing the locals’ eating habits, many things about this city can be revealed. For example, if most customers eat and talk in a polite manner, chances are that this city’s overall education level is high; if the dietary habits of the customers vary greatly, it might be a migrant city with many non-native workers. Observing these details does not cost too much time, it can however provide a wealth of information about this city. 

In conclusion, compared with historic sites and markets, restaurants and cafés are more preferable for visitors who want to know about the city rapidly.