Shangri-La

Would you like the chance     1    (discover) a place of mystery and beauty in the southwest of China?     2    your answer is “yes”, consider a trip to Shangri-La!

The world-famous Chinese Shangri-La

The word “Shangri-La" first appeared in a classic novel by James Hilton. Today, Shangri-La has become a common English word meaning heaven on the earth. Hilton described a beautiful kingdom.

Which place could     3    (official) take the name of this wonderful land? There were arguments over which tourist spot would win the name of Shangri-La. Many years after the book was     4    (publish), some people realized that the Shangri-La of the novel was a perfect match for Zhongdian in Yunnan Province.

What will you see in Shangri-La?

Three snowy mountains tower     5    the land. Below the mountains, the sunshine reflects on many lakes,     6    (make) them shine like diamonds against the rich countryside. The     7    (surround) forests are home to many birds and animals. In this     8    (peace) land, people live in perfect harmony     9     nature, far away from the noise and worry of the outside world.

Nature has provided Shangri-La with     10    (end) natural treasures, making the land a happy home for the local people.

Artist Song Peilun is known    1    “The Father of Yelang Valley” after spending the last two decades turning a village into an artistic village.

Yelang was an ancient political centre first    2    (describe) in the 3rd century BC, and it was centered in    3    is now western Guizhou Province, China. Experts believe that many ancient    4    (culture) were rooted here,    5    there are unfortunately no buildings left standing in the great valley. Inspired by Crazy Horse, a mountain monument in the US slate, Chinese artist Song Peilun devoted his life to building a memorial to the artistic culture of Yelang Valley.

It was in 1996    6    Song quit his job as a professor and purchased a 200,000 square meter plot of land in a mountainous forest area. Then he began to follow his dream.

When he first arrived in the area, most of the locals    7    (mine) in the mountain and selling the stones to make ends meet，but he convinced many of them to help him instead.

So far, Song Peilun and the villagers    8    (turn) the forest land that he bought into an artistic village full of stone sculptures,    9    were inspired by Chinese Nuo culture. It is now a    10    (relative) popular tourist attraction.

Lions, tigers and other animals are staying awake at night     1     (avoid) human beings, a new study finds.

Scientists have known that human activities can lead to changes in nature. Many animals may move around less or travel to far places to keep away     2     people. By being awake at night, animals can also be on guard against possible enemies and spend less time     3     (look) for food.

The latest research found even activities like farming and camping can     4     (fright) animals and cause them to become more active at night.     5     had been studied were lions in Tanzania, tigers in Nepal and monkeys in Brazil. Researchers compared     6     (careful) how much time those animals were active at night in areas of human activities, such as hunting and farming. It was human activities that caused     7     increase of about 20 percent in night-time activities, even in creatures that usually sleep at night. Results     8     (publish) in the journal Science two months ago.

The new findings are     9     (usual) because no one else has looked at it in such detail before. Ecologist Marlee Tucker was     10     (surprise) that any kind of human activities is enough for animals to see people as a threat.

Even the dirt on the ground is likely to make climate change worse. Researchers have shown that warmer temperatures are heating the soil, causing microbes     1     (become) more active and release more of the soil's carbon into the atmosphere, contributing to even higher temperatures.

Scientists found a sharp increase in carbon released into the atmosphere by bacteria and fungi in soil from 1990 through 2014. Researchers explain that the carbon comes from     2     the microbes eat, such as the dead plants and leaves. With temperatures     3    (rise), the microbes eat more. And the more they eat, the more carbon they make into carbon dioxide and release into the atmosphere.

Surprisingly, soil lets off about nine times more carbon than human-caused activities, which is in     4     (agree) with what we originally     5     (think). But that is part of a natural cycle: The amount of carbon released into the air is about     6     same as the carbon oceans and plants take in.

    7    , carbon which is released from fossil fuel causes an imbalance. Burning coal, oil and natural gas puts     8     carbon into the atmosphere than nature can take in. The additional carbon heats the air and soil. And     9     the air and soil get hotter, the earth will release yet more carbon that it has been holding.

If something is not done, we are really in trouble, said Rattan Lal of Ohio State University. He held a     10    (believe) that proper soil conservation should be taken into consideration, including avoiding turning the soil, covering off-season crops and leaving crop deposits on the ground.