Craftsmen enjoy their brush with success

NANCHANG — Zhou Pengcheng, 76, has dedicated his life       1     the centuries-old intangible cultural heritage of making writing brushes.

Zhou, who hails from Wengang township in East China's Jiangxi province, has been engaged in this ancient handicraft for more than six decades.

Wengang's long-standing tryst with brush pens dates back to 1979. Over the decades, the town has grown into one of the country's biggest brush-pen markets,     2     (attract) tens of thousands of buyers from across China.

In Chinese culture, writing brushes     3     (count) among the "four treasures of study", and Wengang is known as the "hometown of China's writing brush".

More than 400 brush-making enterprises and over 2,200 brush workshops are located in     4     township. And almost every family in the town makes     5     living through the brush manufacturing industry.

Zhou     6     (work) in the sector since he was 8 years old. "In the 1970s, writing brushes made in Jiangxi were not so well recognized by people in China and the rest of the world,     7     spurred me on to improve and adjust brush-making techniques according to the needs of customers," says Zhou, adding that he finally succeeded after about eight years of hard work.

The craft of making writing brushes in Wengang involves 128 steps. The local brushes have proved popular in overseas markets, such as Asia, Europe, and the United States, and particularly in Japan and the Republic of Korea.

"I found calligraphy     8     (fascinate), especially the power and visual impact of Chinese calligraphy," says Alister Inglis, professor of Chinese language and literature at Simmons University. The foreign teacher takes an interest in     9     the shape, length and bristles of the brush reflect the type of written characters.

In June, Wengang's brush-making skills were listed as a national intangible cultural heritage, says Wu Shaoyun, Party chief of the town.

"Since the beginning of this year, we have mainly focused on how     10     (transform) the brush-making industry into a cultural industry. We have been working hard to improve the techniques and further inherit this craft," says Wu.

Currently, the town is eyeing a new boom in the digital era. It has launched tailored services to better meet customer needs in areas of culture, tourism and e-commeice.

Su Xiao, 49, and Xu Guangchun, 42, are like-minded souls on the streets of Beijing, checking surveillance cameras and     11     passersby, with a near-constant barrage of calls on their phones.

They are on the lookout for senior citizens with Alzheimer's disease, a hard-hitting disease that can easily     12     a patient's memory and other major mental functions.

Seven years ago, Su and Xu co-founded the Beijing Voluntary Emergency Rescue Service Center, which     13     a public welfare campaign to help families find their lost elders in 2016.

Su, an outdoor sports lover, is a seasoned mountain rescue     14    . On New Year's Day of 2016, he was on his way to a nearby ski resort where he ran into a listless and pale elderly woman who was holding a sack and     15     in the cold under a bridge.

She was mumbling, saying that she was about to buy noodles for her son, and this    16     Su of his grandmother, an Alzheimer's patient.

Su reported the situation to the police and they found a scrap of paper with a     17     number in her pocket. It turned out that days had passed since she lost contact with her her family and she had traveled more than 40 kilometers from her home in southwestern Beijing to an unfamiliar neighborhood in the east of the city.

According to statistics     18     by a white paper released in 2016 by the Zhongmin Social Assistance Institute, about 500,000 senior citizens get lost each year, with about 80 percent over the age of 65. Alzheimer's disease is one of the top reasons for them going missing.

Su and his rescue team watch surveillance videos first to sort out clues before further rescue efforts, and rely on the elderly person's experiences in their childhood and youth as clues when looking for them.

He once managed to find an 80-year-old along a river in a suburb of Beijing,     19     on the elderly person's childhood life experience of living on a riverboat.

The youngest person they have found was in their late 40s, Su said, adding that patients aged under 60 are difficult for family members and other people to spot, not to mention those who dismiss the illness as ominous and are     20     to confide in their neighbors, relatives or friends.

Su and Xu's "lost and found" service has sent more than 320 elderly back home safe and sound. More than 500 volunteers, including some family members of people they have found, have joined the rescue team.

"The farther we walk, the closer the lost elders get to their homes," Su said.

The Clean Meat Revolution Is Coming

"If we can grow meat without the animal, why wouldn't we?"

This _______ wasn't from a science fiction writer or the head of The Humane Society of the United States. _______, this came from Tom Hayes toward the end of his tenure (任期) as the CEO of Tyson Foods. Yes, that Tyson. Synonymous with "chicken," Tyson is by far the largest producer of meat in the U. S.

Why would the CEO of Tyson want to _______ the animal from meat production? In part because meat production will be more _______ that way — by growing meat without bones, feathers, or hair, we can get more meat with the same resources. And good things too, as United Nations scientists say that raising and killing animals for food is "one of the major _______ of the world's most pressing environmental problems, including global warming, land degradation, air and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity." With a growing world population, there are simply not enough resources to _______ current meat production to feed everyone.

Companies around the world are rapidly _______ the cost of animal-free meat — meat grown directly in facility _______ to a brewery (啤酒厂), rather than as part of an animal. This "cell-based meat" is the meat everyone is used to, right down to the DNA. In addition to being more efficient, there will be no waste pollution. And because the meat will be grown in clean conditions, it won't _______ the use of antibiotics.

With all these ________, the answer to "why wouldn't we?" becomes even more obvious. Although there are technical challenges to increase production to be cost-competitive with ________ meat, no scientific breakthroughs are necessary to bring meat without the animal to our plates.

Perhaps the main question now is which country will lead the way. The governments of Japan, the Netherlands and Israel have already invested in research and startups ________ producing this kind of meat. Given the magnitude of the global problems that clean meat can help address, those efforts abroad deserve to be ________.

And then just a few weeks ago, the U. S. Food and Drug Administration and the U. S. Department of Agriculture formally announced their plan for joint oversight of clean meat production within their current regulatory framework.

This announcement ended months of ________ and speculation (猜测), giving leading clean meat companies like Memphis Meats and JUST a clear signal that they will have a straightforward and fair path to market in the U. S. Given the many challenges humanity faces, it is, ________ to know we have an incredibly beneficial innovation within reach — one that won't require anyone to give up the foods they love.