Once there was a king and his daughter. The king asked his daughter how much she loved him. She said that she loved him as much as the loved ______. Her answer made the king very happy. Salt is simple thing, ______ it is very important. So the king thought his daughter cared a lot about him.

Salt has many______. Bodies need salt. If we don’t have enough, our bodies can’t work properly. We put salt on icy roads to make them ______.   We also use salt to produce other products, like paper and glass. But for many years, salt’s most important job was to ______ food. Like other living things, most bacteria(细菌) need water to live. Salt takes in plenty of water, so most bacteria(细菌) can not live _______a salty environment. As a result, salt protects food and many other things. For much of humans history, this ability has made salt _______ Every ancient culture from Egypt to China depended on salt. Even today, the hard working useful people are ______ as “the salt of the earth”.

For centuries, salt was also hard to   ______. It’s usefulness, together with rarity(稀有) made it very expensive. Salt could even be used like   ______. In fact, the word salary (薪水) comes from the word salt.

Today, salt is used more widely and it still plays an important role in our life.

A Discussion

Host: Hello! I’m Gavin from All Talk 970 FM. Welcome to our program. Today our topic is part-time jobs. Are they good for school children or not?

Headmaster: Certainly not. Children have got two full-time jobs already: growing-up and going to school. Part-time jobs make them so tired that they fall asleep in classes.

Mrs. Black: I agree. I know school hours are short, and there’s a lot of homework to do, too. Children need enough sleep.

Mr. Black: Young children perhaps, except some boys, stay at school until they’re eighteen or nineteen. A part-time job can’t harm them. In fact , it’s good for them. They can earn pocket-money by themselves. And they can see something of the world outside school.

Businessman: You’re quite right. Boys learn a lot from a part-time job. And we shouldn’t forget that some families need the extra money. If the students don’t take part-time jobs, they can’t stay at school.

Host: Well, we have got two for , and two against. What do our listeners think of it?

Around the world people enjoy sports.     36    

Many people like to watch others play games.     37     Often they get very happy when “their” player or team wins.

Some sports are so interesting that people everywhere go in for them. Football, for example, has spread around the world. Swimming is popular in all countries near the sea or in those with many rivers. What fun it is to jump into a pool or lake! And think of people in cold countries.     38    .

Some sports or games go back thousands of years, like running or jumping, Chinese wushu, for example, has a very long history.     39     Neither of them is a hundred years old yet. People are inventing new sports or games all the time. Water-skiing is one of the newest in the family of sports.

People from different countries may not be able to understand each other, but after a game together they often become good friends.     40     One learns to fight hard but fight fair, to win without pride and to lose with grace.

A Bite of China is the name of a TV program on CCTV-1 and CCTV-9. It’s made by our country’s best     41    , three of whom have won international prize. It     42     three years ago, showing traditional specialty dishes in different places of China. It’s causing a speeding storm. And more importantly, it     43     you rich knowledge of geography, history and culture when Chinese eat.

The program     44     us the beautiful and perfect ways of food-making. And it’s not     45     about dishes, it also gets people from different places to tell stories about their experience with food.

As the program serves us a window allowing the world to better understand China, they want to help people all over the world     46     the beauty of Chinese food, and learn Chinese customs and social realities (现实) as well.

The TV program is very popular     47     people both at home and abroad. After the program, many Chinese     48     have increased in business. Visitors have come a long way to enjoy the food mentioned in the program. The program also helps people to speak out about their food safety.

Gao Ya, a Chinese who lives in     49    , wrote, “the taste of home, memories of childhood, joys of work and dream of life, I     50     by each simple story. And this made me sadder because we are losing a lot of these knowledge, those traditional ways of activities are dying out because of the modern life.”