My time here in China is going     1     (good). I love my new school and classmates. Over the October holiday, my parents and I plan to go to Xi’an to see the Terracotta Army. I’ve heard that it is an     2     (amaze) sight.

To me, the story of the Terracotta Army is unbelievable. More than 8,000 statues     3     (make) in the third century BC to guard the tomb (坟墓) of the Chinese Emperor Qinshihuang! Each statue (雕像) has a different face, and researchers believe that each one is a copy of a real soldier. The statues fill only one part of the emperor’s huge tomb, which still has not been     4     (complete) dug up. More than 700,000 people worked for nearly 40 years to build this tomb.     5    , no one in modern times knew about the tomb until 1974. Some farmers discovered the tomb by accident while they were digging a well!

We plan to visit several other     6     (place) in Xi’an. My dad and I are both looking forward     7     going to the Shaanxi History Museum, because my dad loves history and this museum is known     8     a “Chinese treasure house!” We’re also going to the Xi’an City Wall and a few other famous sights.

We’re taking the train, leaving the day before the October holiday     9     (begin). We are arriving at 9:30 p.m. and will start sightseeing right away, so I hope we will sleep well on the train!

Do you have any plans for the coming holiday? Hope to hear from     10     (your) soon.

Yours,

Richard

We are staying in Hunan Province. I’m having a wonderful time here in Zhangjiajie, a city     1     is famous for the strange shapes of its mountains and rocks. Some of the rocks look like humans while others look like wild animals. Last night, we     2     woken up by some noise. We came out silently and found it was from a hungry monkey.

This morning,     3     I was walking along the river, I pulled some leaves off a tree. Lingling said it was wrong. I apologized and promised not     4     do that again. Tomorrow we’re going to Dongting Lake,     5     second largest freshwater lake in China. I can’t wait to fly there!

Jimmy started painting when he was four years old.     1     he was six, he was already very good at it. He painted many beautiful and     2     (interest) pictures, and people paid a lot of money     3     them. They said, “This boy’s going to be famous when he’s a little     4     (old), and then we’re going to sell these pictures for a lot more money. Then we     5     get rich.”

Jimmy’s pictures     6     (be) different from other people’s because he never painted on the whole piece of paper. He painted on one half of it, and     7     half was always empty.

“That’s very clever,” everyone said, “Nobody else does that!”

One day somebody     8     (buy) one of Jimmy’s pictures and then said to him, “Please tell me this, Jimmy.     9     do you paint on the bottom half of your paper, but not on the top half?”

“Because I’m small,” Jimmy said, “and my     10     (brush) don’t reach very high.”