Are you familiar with pop star Jay Chou’s Blue &White Porcelain? Its original lines, just     1     the composer Fang Wenshan described, were inspired by Ru porcelain (汝瓷).

Ranked best among famous kinds during the Song Dynasty (960-1279), Ru porcelain is known for its unique pale blue glaze (釉). Oceans     2     Ru porcelain flooded onto the market around the year of 1100, but the     3     (exist) of Ru ware now is actually rare. Thanks to the efforts of Ru porcelain inheritors, people can now appreciate it     4     (close) at hand than before.

Born in Ruzhou, Henan province, Li Chao has spent a decade     5     (better) crafting skills. Ru porcelain goes through 72 steps, the    6     (one) of which is knead (揉) mud. Any small errors could lead to disaster, said the 41-year-old inheritor. He then stressed that a Ru porcelain inheritor must be patient enough. Every item of artwork     7     (full) deserves our admiration.

Techniques of making Ru porcelain will     8     (lose) with senior inheritors gradually passing away. So,     9     Li spares no effort in doing is introducing it to wider masses.     10     (achieve) this goal, he creatively uses Ru porcelain in making daily ware popular among young people. Now he’s aiming to expand the market by introducing it to the whole world.

“Only when I take the needle out and touch the silk thread, I feel     1    (full)comfortable,” says Zou Yingzi, an inheritor of Su embroidery(刺绣), an ancient craft that originates from the garden city of Suzhou in Jiangsu province.

The day before the interview,     2     53-year-old woman worked more than 10 hours, until late into the night, on a large piece of Su embroidery. A piece measuring around half a meter can take her months     3    (complete). From Zou’s mother to her grandmothers, all the women in her family are good at needlework, particularly Su embroidery, which features rich stitches(缝针)and the creative use     4     silk threads dyed in various colors.

Su embroidery has a history of more than 2,000 years. A piece of fabric with silk embroidery     5    (find) from a tomb in the area showed that the craft dates back to the Spring and Autumn Period(770-476 BC). In ancient times, needlework was a must-learn skill for women,     6     had to make clothes for their families. It was a tradition that mothers should make wedding clothes with exquisite(精美的)embroidery for their     7    (daughter).

Zou     8    (recall)that, when she was little, her grandmother was busy every day, making wedding clothes and quilts for granddaughters. At the age of 6, she started to help her mother to make Su embroidery items, all of which     9    (sell)to support the family.

She had a dream to become a     10    (paint). Now, the needle helps her to realize that dream.