【推荐1】Facing huge mountain fires, a young man from Chongqing was not scared. Instead, he stepped forward to fight against them.

On the evening of August 17, 2022, Yu Qiupeng, a student from Chongqing Industry and Trade Polytechnic, was walking in a park. Suddenly, he saw a fire in the near mountain. Without a second thought, he set out to join the fight against the fire.

Because of traffic control, Yu had to walk to the fire scene. As soon as Yu arrived there, he started working with other volunteers. When cleaning a water pipe, Yu accidentally burned his hand. But he didn’t stop. After hours of hard efforts by firemen and volunteers, the fire was finally controlled.

However, the next evening, hot embers (余火) at two sites of the mountain fire burned again. Once again, Yu joined the volunteer group to put out the fire. This time, the work was more difficult. Yu needed to transport necessary things on the burned slope. He carried a backpack full of things and went back and forth more than 10 times.

What Yu did has won high praise online. While people were trying to find the brave young man, Yu’s hometown of Nanchuan, Chongqing also caught fire because of continuous high temperatures. The 18-year-old headed to the fire scene for a third time.

When his teacher asked, “Did you know how dangerous it was?” Yu said, “I didn’t think about it. I just thought as a member of the society, I must do something to help.”

【推荐3】Many parts of China had heavy rains and serious floods this year. It made us think back to the time in 1998 when the worst floods happened.

Hubei got better after the fight against COVID-19. Just weeks after that, Hubei tried its best to face up to the heavy floods. Many other places had the same problem. For example, the flood problem in Hubei’s neighbouring provinces of Jiangxi and Anhui was also serious. Quite a lot of people came to the Yangtze River area to help build dikes (堤坝) to fight the floods.

The worrying fact is that heavy rains and floods are becoming so common (常见的) , not only in Asia but also in other parts of the world. Heavy rains and floods aren’t the only serious natural disasters. Cyclones, serious droughts (干旱) , and quickly melting ice cover in the Arctic and Antarctic are all very common now.

This madness of nature is called climate (气候) change. China is one of the first countries to get to know the bad results of climate change. It is doing a lot of things to fight it, such as cutting pollution and creating a greener environment. However, one country’s power (力量) is limited. It needs the whole world to work together.

It’s up to us humans to decide how the world will develop in the future. Let’s play a part in the fight against climate change by building a green world together.

Rivers are the cradles（摇篮）of human civilizations（文明）. China has many rivers.     1     Each of them has a drainage area（流域面积）of more than 50 square kilometers.

    2     Bringing water and rich soil and connecting all of China, they are the “mother rivers” of the Chinese civilization.

Chinese rivers can be peaceful yet wild, too. They make many areas “a land of fish and rice ”, and sometimes bring floods（洪水).

Chinese people have been trying to keep rivers healthy for thousands of years.     3     Local government leaders are responsible for solving the problem of river pollution. In August, the Ministry of Water Resources planned to treat 700, 000 hectares（公顷） of degraded（退化的）natural forest and almost 1.4 million hectares of desert land by 2025.     4    

Through these actions, our rivers have seen many good changes in recent years.     5    

【推荐3】You may have seen some great computer-animated (电脑动画的) films, like Toy Story, Finding Nemo, or Frozen. Computer animation is common in today’s world. But animation has been around for over 100 years. It has changed a lot over time. ________

Early animations were created by hand. At the beginning of the 1900s, Winsor McCay, who is considered the father of animation, worked alone and animated his films by himself. He drew every picture separately and had them photographed, one at a time. Hundreds of photographs were needed to make a one-minute film. It took him more than a year and 10, 000 drawings to create a five-minute animation called Gertie the Dinosaur. It was shown in theaters in 1914.

After celluloid (a special material) was developed, animation became easier. Instead of drawing each picture separately, the animator could make a drawing of the background. However, the background remained motionless, and only the characters moved.

Walt Disney took animation to a new level (水平). In 1928, he introduced the first Mickey Mouse cartoon. It was the first talking cartoon. Later, he added sound and music to his films and produced the first full-length animated film in 1937, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Toy Story, which came out in 1995, was the first computer-animated film. Computer animation was also used for special effects in films such as Star Wars and Avatar. If you’ve seen Life of Pi, you may be surprised to learn that the tiger was done by animation. To create the illusion (错觉) of movement in these films, a picture was put on the computer and then quickly replaced (取代) by a similar picture with a small change. While this technique is similar to hand-drawn animation, the work can be done much faster on the computer.

These days, more and more interesting films are being created by computers. With the fast development of computer technology, what will animated films be like in the near future? Let’s wait and see!