1 . What’s the effect of poetry on our brain? Scientists have been investigating the neuronal (神经元的) connections and brain circuits that can work in the reading of poetry for some time. And, even though the research has only just begun, the results are already fascinating.

Poetry has the oldest recorded texts in literature. Although it’s impossible to say exactly when it began to be used in the oral tradition, we dare to say that it’s accompanied humanity forever. This gives us an idea of the impact that poetic language can have on our emotional and cognitive state. The emotional response to literature in general shares areas of activation with music. However, more areas of the right hemisphere (半球) seem to be related to poetry. The researchers measured the goosebumps resulting from the tingling (强烈感受) sensation in reading poetry. This type of sensation has also been proven to result from music. However, the tingling sensations produced by poetry activate different areas of the brain compared to those activated by music.

Dr. Eugen Wassiliwizky’s team collected data on behavioral responses in people reading or listening to poetry. They proved that poetry is capable of causing emotional responses and rich emotional experiences. In addition, a poem expresses the poet’s ideas. From a psychological view, poetry is a game of language that manages to group words in a surprising way. We could compare this with how a chef combines ingredients that seem impossible to combine, producing extraordinary results. Poetry is based on rules of construction. It sets up a rhythm, which then breaks, before finally returning to it. The play on the meanings of words, sometimes several meanings in just one word, is extremely intellectually inspiring. We can read a poem a thousand times, and still find its new meanings.

Generally, our passage through the wonderful world of poetry is cut short by a rather reduced exposure during childhood and the overly analytical approach of this literary genre (类型), which is given in most schools. Although, the studies that experts have conducted on poetry get a lot of interesting results, poetry still holds a mystery that science hasn’t yet been able to investigate. For example, why a perfect cadence (抑扬顿挫) and rhythm can lift the spirit of people is the new challenge for the research.

Angel

Shijing, also The Book of Songs or Shih Ching, is the     1     (early) collection of Chinese poetry. It     2     (make) up of 311 poems dating from the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty to the middle stage of the Spring and Autumn Period. Nowadays, Confucius is generally believed to be the     3     (edit) of the book.

Shijing is rich in content,     4     (describe) love and labour, war and slavery, customs and marriage, ancestor worship and special events. It is called a mirror of social life.

Poems included in Shijing fall into three sections-poems that come from villages belong to Feng; those written to persuade or praise the rulers belong to Ya; those used at religious     5     (ceremony) belong to Song. Ya and Song are flowery and serious in language.     6    , Feng is relatively inspiring and full of passion.

The opening poem of Shijing, “Cooing and Wooing” (《关雌》), is about love,     7     reads:

By riverside are cooing, a pair of turtledoves;

A good young man is wooing, a fair maiden he loves.

It is vivid that the man is longing     8     (win) over the girl.

Shijing enables people to have a better understanding of Chinese civilization and is also     9     beginning of ancient Chinese poetry. Additionally, it is also frequently quoted in other Chinese texts and has always been referred to     10     moral truth and lessons.

10 . Science fiction pioneer and writer Wu Yan won the National Outstanding Children’s literature Award for his latest work China Orbit. The book focuses on the development of the Chinese aerospace industry, and it was inspired by the planning and preparation for China’s first but canceled manned spacecraft, “Shuguang 1”, also known as Project 714, during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

“I collected many historical documents and stories and started writing decades ago, Wu remembered. Partly based on Wu’s own experiences in the 1970s, the book is a combination of reality and fiction, and in some ways his own memoir (传记) was added into the science fiction. This innovative and unique writing method makes the book stand out and has even stirred up a debate on how to categorize it. Is it science fiction, popular science, children’s literature, or aerospace literature?

His fellow science fiction writer Liu Cixin, author of The Three-Body Problem, sees it more deeply, and believes China Orbit is not really children’s science fiction or popular science. He thinks it is too complicated to be classed under a single category. He speaks highly of China Orbit as a unique science fiction novel that vividly shows a child’s real-life experience in a military of a specific era.

In Wu’s opinion, China is a big market for children’s science fiction, but it still lacks extraordinary works. He warned people not to try to earn quick money from it after The Three-BodyProblem frenzy (狂热) and movie blockbuster (轰动) The Wondering Earth because Chinese science fiction still has a long way to go. We need to build Chinese science fiction step by step, with an accumulation of really great works. We need to innovate, and treat it as part of building China’s new culture.