【推荐1】Are you tired after studying hard？American country music will take you away for a while. The guitars and songs will take you to mountains and fields there.

Country music talks about everyday life and feelings. It's the spirit of America，easy to understand，slow and basic.

Country music developed in the Southern United States. It was the folk music of the American countryside. Many of the songs tell about the lives of farmers. They talk about love，crops(庄稼) or death.

Rural life can be hard，so the words are often sad. At first，people played the music only at family parties. But it became more popular. In the 1920s，people played country songs on the radio，and they made them into records.

When people moved to towns and cities to look for work，they took their music with them. Country music continued to change and became popular across America.

John Denver was one of America's most famous country singers in the 1970s. His song Take Me Home，Country Roads is well­known and people still play it today.

I love music. I spend my life playing and writing music.     1     I just can’t live without it. Some people get along quite well without music. But it’s true that music plays an important part in our life. For example,     2     And the music at railway stations and airports makes people’s waiting time seem shorter. Some people like to sit by the sea and listen to the sound of the sea.     3     These sounds are also pleasant to our ears. So music has meaning for everyone in some ways.

    4     People can get relaxed after a day’s hard work by listening to music. When we feel upset, good music can help us ease (缓解) our bad feelings.     5     Through music a child goes into a world of beauty, learns to care for others and develops his or her mind.

【推荐3】Have you ever heard Gaoshan Liushui, a Chinese traditional piece of music? Do you know why Gaoshan Liushui is often played in many occasions (场合)? It has something to do with “zhiyin” culture, which values close friendship. Do you know the story behind it? It’s the story of Yu Boya and Zhong Ziqi in the Warring States Period.

Boya was good at playing the guqin. One day, he was playing music on his way home on the boat, To Boya’s surprise, Ziqi, a woodcutter who happened to pass by, could understand exactly what he wanted to express through his music. After a long talk, they became good friends. Since Boya had to return to his state, they agreed to meet again in the following year.

Unluckily, when getting back to visit Ziqi, Boya heard that his friend had died from an illness. Boya was so sad. In front of Ziqi’s tomb (墓), he played again the music he had played when they first met. The feeling of the music was so strong that it was as if the rivers and the mountains were crying. When finishing playing, Boya broke his guqin into pieces. From then on, Boya never played again. But the famous music piece Gaoshan Liushui he played for his friend has been passed down.

“Zhiyin” culture has new development in the new period. And Gaoshan Liushui is performed in many important occasions. The musical performance not only shows the beauty of Chinese traditional culture, but also expresses China’s willingness to develop its friendship with people from around the world.

【推荐1】Peter Chen is an old man who loves traditional Chinese culture. He showed a poem (诗) by Xin Qiji in one of CCTV’s programs and got popular among people. The performance was the perfect connection (联系) of ancient Chinese poetry culture and modem music, and the beauty of traditional Chinese culture was perfectly shown, too. So the performance shocked people deeply.

The excellent traditional Chinese culture is not only the “root (根源)” and “soul (灵魂)” of the Chinese nation, but also our deepest cultural soft power. Many classic works are still encouraging us all the time.

Let excellent traditional Chinese culture live and warm up, and this is the key step to carry it forward well. The programs in CCTV are good examples. They make more and more Chinese people pay attention to the excellent traditional culture and show Chinese spiritual strength (精神力量) and cultural confidence.

To provide rich spiritual food for people, we should carry forward our excellent traditional culture, especially the deep power of the traditional culture and national spirits. We should try harder to let the excellent traditional Chinese culture be handed down forever.

【推荐3】Chinese traditional paper cutting is an art of cutting out pictures from paper with the help of a pair of scissors or a knife. In 2009, the Chinese paper cutting was added to the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity（人类非物质文化遗产代表作名录）.

Paper cutting originated（起源）in China, which is thought to have begun in the 4th century with the invention of paper. But long before that,      ▲ , Chinese people already used similar skills to cut on leaves, leather and silk. Therefore, it’s really a long art form that has been practiced in China through many centuries.

The subjects of the paper cuttings can be anything, from historical events and fairy tale characters to plants and animals. The paper cuttings are so vivid that they look like real ones. Paper cutting may sound easy, but actually it’s difficult to do well.

Modern Chinese artists have never stopped trying in different ways. Li Baofeng is a 54-year-old folk artist. “Traditional paper cuttings are often made with red paper, which seems to be a little boring. So I want to make something new,” says Li. She has made works in different colors which have amazing effects.

By combining the techniques（技艺）of traditional paper cutting with modern computer-designing, artists today can produce 3D paper cuttings. They also use more techniques such as chromatic printing（彩色印刷）, woodblock printing（雕版印刷）and air brushing（喷绘）to create livelier works.

Through centuries, Chinese paper cutting has also been introduced into many other countries in Asia and Europe. Now more and more people love paper cutting works and buy them as gifts for their friends.

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【推荐1】The sun provides sunshine for plants, animals, and people here on Earth. Energy from the sun is called solar energy. It comes in the form of light or heat. Solar energy makes you feel hot. People have used solar energy for thousands of years. Houses were built with windows so that sunlight can get inside and provide heat. The sun’s energy can also be used to heat water and even food.

We can also turn the sun’s light into electricity. This is done with solar panels(太阳能电池板). Solar panels are made up of silicon(硅). When the sunlight reaches the solar panel, the electron(电子) in the silicon, moves and flows through wires in the solar panel.

Using this technology, we can run even cars. But what happens when clouds block the solar panels? The electrons in the silicon will stop moving. But this doesn’t mean that solar energy can only be used on bright sunny days. Solar panels can have batteries to store(储存) electricity for a rainy day. When the sun is shining, the electricity flows from the solar panel into the batteries. This stored electricity can be used at night or on cloudy days.

Solar energy is not as expensive as before. The sun produces more energy in one second than people have used since the beginning of time. Just imagine what we could do if we used the sun’s energy to power our Earth.

【推荐2】Has anyone told you that it’s fun to play with English words? For a long time these “words within words” in English have been used to surprise and educate us…and they often make us laugh too. Now we go to learn about them.