3 . At his peak, Cristiano Ronaldo was considered the best professional footballer in the world. He has made over 1.100 professional appearances and scored more than 800 goals. To see him play, you would say he was born for the game. But that would discount all the struggles and hard work he has gone through to become the player that he is.

Cristiano was born into poverty on the Portuguese island of Madeira. His mother worked as a cook; his father was a gardener. He shared a room with his three older siblings. Ronaldo’s soccer life began with a small club at the age of 12, but shortly thereafter, he was diagnosed with a heart condition that should have ended his career. However, he underwent heart surgery and returned to training a few days later.

At age 16, he left school to focus on soccer full-time. Soon, he was moving up the ranks, getting noticed by scouts (星探) in the Premier League. He had incredible quickness with the ball and was the type of player a club could build an attacking style around. He signed with Manchester United at age 18.

With his success in the league came big reward and fame. But he never forgo t his humble (卑微的) beginnings, or his mother’s sacrifice to raise him. She has been by his side throughout the entire journey. When asked by a journalist why his mother still lives with him, he said, “My mother raised me and she devoted her life to me. She would go to sleep hungry, just to let me eat. We had no money at all. She worked seven days a week and nights as a maid to buy my first shoes so I could be a player. All my success is due to her. She is my refuge (庇护) and my greatest gift.”

Tang Xianzu is a great dramatist, writer and educationalist in the Ming Dynasty. Also regarded as “the Shakespeare of Asia”, he created many classic dramas, of which The Peony Pavilion(亭子) is the     1    (well) known. Today, the drama     2    (come) to the hometown of William Shakespeare.

Tang and Shakespeare have much in common. Both lived in the same time and died in 1616. Although they could never have met, there are common     3    (theme) within their works. “What Tang reflected in his works were also Shakespeare’s concerns. It occurs to me     4     Tang’s play The Peony Pavilion is similar in some ways to Romeo and Juliet,” said Edmondson,     5     researcher of the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham.

A statue in memory of Shakespeare and Tang     6    (build) at Shakespeare’s birthplace garden in 2017. Two years later, a six-meter-tall pavilion, inspired by The Peony Pavilion, stood in a garden near Shakespeare’s birthplace. Visitors walking through the Shakespeare’s birthplace garden want     7    (explore) the connection between the two famous writers.

Edmondson appreciates China’s efforts in     8    (promote) cultural exchanges between China and Britain over the years. When referring     9     Shakespeare’s play Richard III performed in Shanghai, Edmondson thinks     10    (high) of the performance.

6 . French artist Henri Matisse(1869-1954) was described as “a man ahead of his time” . In honor of the artist, an exhibition titled “Matisse by Matisse” will be held in China this year. It follows Matisse’s works across sixty years.

Originally, Matisse aimed to become a lawyer. He attended law school and worked as a law worker until he came down with a disease in1889. To help him kill time on the road to recovery, Matisse’s mother bought him painting tools. His feeling for color was waken up and he decided to become an artist.

Matisse wanted to create his own style. Instead of painting realistic objects people saw he preferred to express his emotions and feelings toward these objects. One way he achieved this was through using bold(大胆的) colors. In his eyes, colors had more meanings than people would usually think of.

Yet his style was so unusual that Matisse was called the “father of Fauvism(野兽派)” . Even so, Matisse never gave up digging out more for art. Matisse once wrote in the book Jazz that “an artist should never be a prisoner of himself”. In the later years of his life when he suffered from cancer and couldn’t paint, he tried a new kind of art: paper cut-outs. He took brightly painted papers, cut them into shapes, and arranged them in designs. That’s what Matisse called “painting with scissors”.

With great creativity, Matisse’s works have been welcomed and used in many forms of popular art. For example, Yves Saint Laurent, an influential European fashion designer, showed a section of his 1981 autumn-winter collection in honor of Matisse’s works. Now his cut-out patterns and stylish colors are still seen on album covers, T-shirts and in ads.

7 . Artists with a Green Message

Chris Jordan

Photographic artist Chris Jordan takes pictures of ordinary objects like bottle caps, light bulbs and aluminum cans and turns them into art by digitally rearranging them to construct one central image. However, it’s the tiny pieces that drive home then environmental message. For example, his 2008 work “Plastic Cups” shows 1 million plastic cups, the number used on airline flights in the U. S. every six hours.

Nele Azevedo

Visual artist Nele Azevedo is best known for her “Melting Men” interventions that she stages in cities across the globe. Azevedo carves thousands of small figures for to watch them melt. Her ice Sculptures are meant to question the role of monuments in cities, but Azevedo says she’s glad her art can also “speak of urgent matters that threaten our existence on this planet.”

Agnes Denes

One of the pioneers of environmental art and conceptual art, Agnes Denes is best known for her land art project, “Wheatfield- A Confrontation.” In May 1982, Denes planted a two-acre wheat field in Manhattan on Battery Park Landfill. The land was cleared of rocks and garbage by hand. Denes harvested more than 1,000 pounds of wheat She says her works are “intended to help the environment and benefit future generations with a meaningful legacy.”

John Fekner

John Fekner is known for his street art and the more than 300 conceptual works. Fekner’s art typically consists of words or symbols spray painted on walls, buildings and other structures that highlight social or environmental issues. His stenciled (用模板印的) message, “Wheels Over Indian Trails, “was painted on the Pulaski Bridge Queens Midtown Tunnel in 1979. It remained there for 11 years until Earth Day 1990，when Fekner painted over it.

8 . Marie Curie, born in Sklodovka, Poland in 1876, led a hard life as a girl. Her parents, both teachers, had small salaries and were quite poor, especially after her mother stopped teaching to raise five children and take care of her poor health. Marie's mother suffered from tuberculosis and died of it when Marie was ten.

When Marie was small, she showed great interest in science. She loved to study and hoped to become a scientist when she grew up. Her parents encouraged her interest in science. Excellent as she was in her studies, she couldn't go on with the advanced education she needed because Poland was then ruled by Russia and women were not permitted to go to college.

In order to continue her education, she smoothed away many difficulties and entered Paris University, where she lived a simple life and studied hard, so she graduated with the highest grades in her class.

After graduation she was engaged in scientific research in Paris University. There she met Pierre Curie, whom she married. Pierre joined her in her research into an unknown phenomenon “radiation”， which a certain scientist had declared that uranium gave off. The Curies spent several years trying their best to find the element that produced radiation. Finally they succeeded in 1902.

Marie Curie won two Nobel Prizes, one for physics in 1906, together with her husband and another scientist; the other for chemistry herself in 1911. Madame Curie was a scientist of great achievement, and the first woman ever to be honored in the Nobel Prize history.