This time yesterday, Mr Zhang was having a birthday party at home. It was his     23     (ninety) birthday. He said to his family members, “Most people change houses during their lifetime, but I     24     (live) in this house since I was born. I’ve got three children and all of them were born in this house too. Most of the time it has     25     (be) a happy place. The street is very different from when I was young. At that time, there were no cars and all the children used to     26     (play) in the road. Some children still do, but it’s not the same—you’ve got to be very     27     (care) nowadays with the traffic. None of the people that live in the street now is as     28     (old) as I am—many of them have died; others have moved to another area. I go out less now and I’m getting much     29     (deaf). But none of these is important. I’ve got my children and my grandchildren, and they are everything to     30     (I).”

At the end of the party, on the dinner table, Mr Zhang’s daughter laid two big bowls of noodles which     31     (eat) up in a minute by the whole family.

“Happy birthday!” everyone said     32     (happy) to Mr Zhang.

The small town of Hay, on the River Wye, sits between England and Wales. It was a quiet place until 1961.That year, a man named Richard Booth came back from a trip to the US with a lot of secondhand books. He bought the town’s old fire station and changed it into a shop to sell them. For the next 10 years, he bought more empty shops and made them into bookshops too. Hay became the world’s first “book town”.

With the money he made, Booth bought the town’s old castle（城堡）. On April 1, 1977, he jokingly called himself King of Hay and said the town was now a country! Some local people thought he was a little crazy.

But he wasn’t crazy at all. The joke made more people come to Hay and buy secondhand books. By the 1980s, there were 1 million books on sale in the town’s over 30 bookshops. Then in 1988 the first literature（文学）festival began in the town. Writers from all over the world came to talk about their new books, along with scientists, reporters and even the President of the US! Now there are book towns in Europe, Australia, Canada and even Malaysia. No one could believe that everything started from the little town with only 1300 people.