Have you heard about paper cutting? Paper cutting is an important art form in China. Papercuts have been used for many purposes, and a ________ number of things have become the theme of papercuts, from people to the things that can be found in everyday life such as birds, flowers and animals.

Each papercut ________ the personal ideas of the author. People express traditional culture or their own feelings with different styles of papercuts. For example, when someone marries, we put up some red papercuts on the wall, dressing table or other _________ to express our best wishes.

It is easy to learn paper cutting but very difficult to make it perfect. We need a long-time practice to learn how to use the scissors and how to paint. _______, we need to learn some cutting skills.

At present, in many parts of China, paper cutting skill has become a _______ for women and a symbol of a clever mind.

A video series named Escape from the British Museum was posted online in August of 2023. It has become popular soon and caused a lot of ________ in China’s social media.

Directed by two Chinese vloggers, the video series tells the_________of how a Chinese cultural relic (文物) escapes from the British Museum and finds its way back to China.

In the video series, a woman vlogger plays the ________ of an ancient Chinese jade teapot, while her partner is a reporter who helps the cultural relic ________ to China.

The videos were _______ by a net friend. He suggested making a video to record the difficulties of Chinese cultural relics returning home from the UK.

The two vloggers went to the UK in June and spent three months making the video. They said the story is based on ________ facts. They want to draw attention to the Chinese cultural relics held ________. Most of these cultural relics were taken out of China because of the war in the last century.

Chinese objects have been a _______ of the British Museum. It has a total of 23,000 Chinese relics, ______ valuable paintings, prints, jade and ceramics (陶瓷). About 2,000 of them are on long-term show. For long, Britain ________ their return. But as mentioned at the end of the video, we strongly believe that one day these relics will return to us.

Nowadays, more and more young Chinese get interested in a new way of having fun in their spare time. They enjoy playing a puzzle-solving game known as “an escape room”. In an escape room, a team of players work together to discover useful information, solve puzzles and finish tasks to get out of an enclosed space.

In such a game, different modern technologies, like augmented reality (增强场景), virtual reality and 5G, are used to create a fantastic world. Live actors also communicate with players to make the experience more real. With all of these, players will totally throw themselves into a story and pay their attention to their final goal— getting out of the room in a race against the clock.

He Shu, the director of a popular escape room program, says this game requires speed, problem-solving skills, creativity and patience. It gives players a strong sense of achievement when they complete tasks and break out of a room. It needs their reasoning (推理) skills, physical efforts and good teamwork,” she said. It’s a good ice-breaking tool to make new friends as well as grow closer to the old ones.”

So why is this puzzle solving game so popular? According to a study, the young people nowadays prefer spending more money on experiences than on products. The escape room game provides them with excellent experience. The other reason is just a FOMO (fear of missing out) effect. If you see someone go to a very cool place, you will probably go to ask, “Where is it? I want to go there as well.”

As a teenager, you may sometimes feel lost when having problems with your parents. Chen Zanzao from Shenzhen created a community called Dear Theodosia to help families facing such problems. So far, the number of members     61     to 2,000.

Chen said he     62     by the three-child policy. He and his friend Sina thought it could bring problems like parental favoritism and felt that most families might be     63     to deal with this.

They     64     parenting and people’s needs and found that the parenting style, where parents play a     65     role in their children’s lives, is most healthy for families. They then started the community to help spread the idea.

“We hold discussions to popularize useful information,” Chen said. During the illness season, they held online meetings and reached     66     all over China.

In the discussions, some people felt     67     about sharing their stories. Chen and Sina would do one-on-one conversations after the speech to make sure they got help. “It’s understandable that, at first, they need time to trust us since we are young,” Chen said. “But listening is the key.”

A girl who     68     parental favoritism worried that she was going to make the same mistake with her future child. Chen said. “We helped her realize that she is actually in     69     position to break that tradition and parent differently.”

Chen has realized that the three-child policy brings educational and financial (经济的) challenges. “Many parents were saying ‘I never thought raising a child would be this difficult.’ So I think it’s really important that parents think through     70     they could deal with the responsibility”. Chen added.

Upcycling is the process of changing old materials into something helpful.     71     When you recycle something, old materials need to be broken down so that they can be made into new products which might not be as good. But when you upcycle an object, you needn’t break down materials. You’re simply making it into something else.     72    

    73     Some of the best examples of modern-day upcycling come from the 1930s when people didn’t have many materials. In those days, people kept finding new purposes for old things until they were no longer useful. For example, old coats would be turned into shoes.

Nowadays, economizing (节约) is still a big reason why some people upcycle. Things shouldn’t be thrown away when they can still be turned into something useful.     74     Compared with recycling, which requires energy to break down materials, upcycling just requires your creativity and efforts.

Grace from England collects used tea bags and turns them into clothes. Every day, she drinks tea and then dries the tea bags with the tea still inside. When they’re dry, she takes the tea out and sews (缝) the bags together to make a piece of cloth. In Denmark, Magnus uses old jeans to make covers.     75    

Upcycling is good for the environment and can provide you with something both creative and useful. Why not support the idea by checking your house and creating objects yourself?