【推荐1】Sophie Chen is a 14-year-old girl from Taiwan.When she was 6 years old, she did something amazing.

She finished a 2,100-kilometer bike journey from Xi' an, the capital city of Shanxi, to Turpan,a city inXinjiang, with her parents. It took them two and a half months. Sophie became the youngest child in the world to have biked along the Silk Road. Chinese novel Journey to the West inspired her to do so.

That is not all. Sophie wrote a book about the long journey with her father Jack Chen,a professional outdoor explorer. On April 26, the book's English version（版本）Biking the Silk Road: 6-year-old Sophie's Fantasy Tour came out in Beijing.

Now Sophie studies at Ta Hwa High School. She sees the journey as a special experience in her life.① She became more hardworking and learned history and geography better because of it.

On the way, she met many friendly local people and saw amazing things. She even picked grapes! "The grapes in Xinjiang were so big and sweet.② 我在台湾从来没有见过像它们这样的葡萄。" she said.

Still, it was not easy. "The biggest challenge was the bad weather and road conditions," she said. She wrote in the book, "It was terribly hot in the Gobi Desert. I almost got sunstroke and could never have enough to drink."

Sophie has biked in other countries, such as the United States and Turkey. This summer holiday, she plans to ride a bike from Greece to Portugal in Europe.

Kate was walking home from school. Everything was bad at school. In the morning, she got to school late. In the math test, half her answers were not right and she forgot to do her English homework. The teacher wrote a message in her notebook for her parents to sign.

She knew her parents would be angry with her. She also knew she had a lot of schoolwork to do. Just thinking about these, she was sad.

After she got home, her mother gave her a hug (拥抱) and said, “How was your day, dear?” Her little brother Peter came to her and said, “Hi, sister! I miss you”

4.凯特感觉好多了. Of course, her mom would be angry with her poor grades (成绩). But she loves her and that is more important. And her little brother always thinks she is smart and beautiful.

At that time, Kate felt lucky to have such a great family and she didn’t worry about her poor grades because the family could comfort (安慰) her when she was sad and she still remembered her mother’s words: “5. Failure (失败) is the mother of success. It doesn’t matter if you don’t pass the exam this time, keep trying your best and you will succeed next time.”

On a farm lived a father and a son. The father always got up early and read books outside the house. One morning, the son came up to his father and said, “Dad, I read books at night but forgot most of them the next morning. What’s the good of reading?”

The father didn’t answer the question. He gave his son a basket that was used to carry coal (煤). He said, “Get some water, from the river with the basket and then I’ll tell you the answer.”

The son felt surprised but he did as his father said. He tried many times but every time the water leaked (漏掉) from the basket.

An hour later, the son came back with nothing and told his father it was hard to get water with the basket. The father said with a smile, “Yes, you’re right, my son. The basket can’t carry water. But can you see the basket is different?” The son then found the dirty basket became clean. The father said, “Reading is like carrying water with the basket. Although we can’t remember all we read, we have changed when we read.”

Have you ever visited Longmen Grottoes（石窟）or Yungang Grottoes? Around 1, 800 years ago, Chinese artists made statues in mountains. Over the years, these statues have gone through earthquakes, floods and wars. Now in the 21st century, however, they are facing an even bigger problem: tourism. Too many tourists go to visit those grottoes every year and this certainly does harm to the grotto statues. How?

Over many centuries, these grotto statues slowly corrode（侵蚀）because of the acidic content （酸性物含量）of air, water and so on. But when they are open to the public, the corrosion process speeds up.

According to a study, the carbon dioxide that visitors breathe out has made the air more acidic. Also, visitors bring in microorganisms（微生物）. Even their body heat can increase the grottoes’ temperature.

Bad behaviour can cause harm to the grotto statues as well. Too many visitors touch the grotto statues and cause their surfaces to change colour.

When we visit the grottoes, we can often see a sign saying, “No Flash!”or “No Photos!” This is because the strong light can be bad for the statues, especially those with colour. The light can easily make them lose colour.

To protect those ancient cultural treasures, recently China has asked the workers who take care of those grottoes not to allow too many visitors to come every day. And to keep a balance between protecting relies and educating the public, some grotto sites have also created their own digital（数字的）museums.

Title: Grotto Statues Are in     1    

The Globe Theater (环球剧场) in London is very famous because people can see most of William Shakespeare’s plays there. It has a history of more than four hundred years. At that time, the theater was an open air playhouse. Shakespeare wrote many plays for it. There were three floors in the theater. It had about 3,000 seats. The poor watched the darma in a pit. What was a pit? It was a place around the stage (舞台). Its tickets were cheaper. People could pay only a penny to stand there to watch a drama. The seats on the third floor were for rich people because the tickets were much more expensive.

In 1613, a fire damaged (毁坏) the theater. Later, people repaired (修复) it for some time. In 1977, a new globe theater came out. It is the same size as the old one. There is also a shopping center there. You can do some shopping before the plays start or after the plays end.