Music has always been an important part of Chinese people's life. People enjoy listening to music at home and in concert halls. As time goes by, music changes.

Traditional music is part of our culture. It often     16     with us for a long time. Young musicians learn songs from older musicians and the music changes very little. Modern Chinese music , which is loved by many young people, however , is     17    pop music. That means the songs will be popular for a short time and then replaced by new songs. Today's musicians write new songs every year and we hear new songs on the radio every day.

Music could only be heard live（直播）    18       radio and TV were invented-that is, you had to go places where musicians gave performances. The best musicians were very busy, so it was difficult and often expensive to hear really good music. For most people, the best     19     to hear good music was during a festival or at a wedding. Today, people hear music here and there.

Music, traditional or modern , Chinese or international, seems to be a world language that everybody can     20     and enjoy. Music changes and styles come and go, but nothing changes our love for good music.

When you cut your skin, you bleed (流血). If a person loses a lot of blood , he will become ill and may die. Blood is very important. People have always known that. At one time, some people even drank blood to make them strong!

When doctors understand how blood goes around inside the body, they try ways of giving blood to people who need it. They take blood from the healthy people and give it to people who need it. This is called "blood transfusion" . The blood goes from the arm of the healthy person into the arm of the sick person.

But there are two problems. First, it does not always work. Sometimes people die when they have blood transfusion. Later, doctors find that we do not all have the same kind of blood. There are four groups---O, A, B and AB. We all have blood of one of these groups. They also find that they can give any kind of blood to people of group AB. But they find that they must give A-group blood to A-group people and B-group blood to B-group people. I have O-group blood and the doctor told me that I could give blood to anyone else safely.

There is another problem. To give blood of the right kind, doctors have to find a person of the right blood group. Often they can not find a person in time. If they have a way to keep the blood until someone needs it, they can always have the right kind of blood. At first they find they can keep it in bottles for fifteen to twenty days. They do this by making it very cold. Then they find how to keep it longer. In the end they find a way of keeping blood for a very long time.

We call a place where we keep money a "bank". We call a place where we keep blood a "blood bank". One day, when you grow up, you may decide to give blood to a "blood bank". In this way you may stop someone from dying. Or perhaps one day you may become ill. You may need blood. The "blood bank" will give it to you.

Mark was walking home from school one day when he noticed a boy ahead of him had dropped all of the books he was carrying. Mark helped the boy pick them up. Since they were going the same way, he carried them for the boy. As they walked, Mark knew the boy's name was Bill. Mark _______ discovered that he loved computer games, baseball and history and that he was having lots of ________ with his other subjects.

They arrived at Bill's home first and Mark was invited in for a Coke and to watch some television. The afternoon passed ________ with a few laughs and some shared small talk, and then Mark went home. They ________ to see each other around school, had lunch together once or twice and then both ended up from the same high school. Just three weeks before they finished school , Bill asked Mark if they could have a talk.

Bill reminded him of the day years ago when they had first met. "Did you ever wonder why I was carrying so many things home that day?" asked Bill. "You see. I ________ out my locker because I didn't want to leave a mass for anyone else. I had planned to ________ from home and I was going home to pack my things. But after we spent some time together playing and laughing, I realized that if I had done that, I would have lost a new friend and missed all the fun we would have together. So you see, when you picked up my books that day, you did a lot more, you ________ my life."

About ten men in every hundred suffer from color blindness in some way. Women are l________. Only about one in two hundred is affected by this matter. Some people say it is s________ to be driven by woman.

There are different f________ of color blindness. In some cases a man may not be able to see deep red. He may think that red, orange and yellow are all shades（色调）of green. Sometimes a person cannot tell the difference between blue and green. An unlucky man may s________ see everything in shades of green-a strange world indeed.

Color blindness in humans is a strange thing to e________. In our eyes there are millions of very small things called "cones". These help us to see in a bright light and to tell the differences between colors. There are also millions of "rods", but these are used for seeing when it is nearly dark. They show us shapes but no color.

Some insects have favorite c________. Mosquitoes (蚊子) like blue but do not like yellow. A red light will not attract insects, but a blue lamp will. In a s________ way human beings also have favorite colors. Yet we are lucky. With the help of the cones in our eyes we can see many beautiful colors by day, and with the help of the rods we can see shapes at night. One day we may even learn more about the invisible (看不见的) colors around us.

When I was young, I had an old neighbor , Dr. Gibbs. He never invited us to play in his yard. But he was a very kind person.

Dr. Gibbs had some interesting ideas about planting trees. He never watered his new trees. Once I asked why. He said that watering plants would spoil(毁坏) them. If you watered them, each young tree would grow weaker and weaker. So you had to make things difficult for them and pick out the weaker trees early.

He talked about how watered trees grew shallow(浅的) roots, and how trees that weren't watered had to grow deep roots in search of (寻找)water under the earth by themselves. Deep roots were very important. So he never watered his trees.

Dr. Gibbs died several years after I left home. When I came back home, I walked by his house and looked at the trees that I watched him plant about 25 years ago. They were very big and strong. I planted some trees a few years later and carried water to them for a whole summer. After two years of caring too much, whenever a cold wind blows in, they shake a lot.

Every night before I go to bed , I check on my two sons. Mostly I hope that their lives will be easy. But now it's time to change my idea. I know my children are going to face difficulties. There's always a cold wind blowing somewhere, so what we need to do is get roots that reach deep into the brave heart. When the rains fall and the winds blow, we can face them strongly and won't be beaten down.