If you’re a fan of ships, don’t miss China’s first home-grown large cruise ship (邮轮) — “Adora Magic City”. The ship is 323.6 meters long, with 135,500 GT tons. It has the beauty of both traditional Chinese art and the Western style.
It can carry up to 5,246 passengers and provides them with rich and colorful activities. It has 16 floors and a total of 40,000 square meters of public living and relaxing space. People can shop at a large duty-free (免税) store on the cruise ship. It’s around 2,000 square meters in size. People on the ship will also enjoy movies and special food. There is even a kids’ playground with some water-play things and a big area for children to enjoy the sunshine.
The Adora Magic City began its first trip on January 1, 2024 and the trip lasted for seven days and six nights. The ship traveled 1,119 nautical miles, carrying more than 3,000 passengers. Longer lines will be planned in the future. “We expect the ship to become ‘a floating (漂浮的) name card at sea’,” said a Chinese government officer.
1. Both traditional Chinese art and the Western style can be seen on the Adora Magic City.2. The large duty-free store on the ship is around 40,000 square meters.
3. People can’t see a movie on the Adora Magic City.
4. The first trip of Adora Magic City is less than 8 days.
5. The text introduces some facts of Adora Magic City.
2 . Banana is a kind of popular fruit. It tastes good and you needn’t wash it before eating. However, British scientists say that the fruit may disappear by 2050.
One reason for this is climate change. Scientists collected information from 27 countries and areas. They produce 86 percent of the world’s bananas. Scientists found in the past 60 years, the temperature rise has really made the average production (平均产量) of bananas increasing year by year.
However, if temperatures keep rising, this advantage will disappear. Ten of the countries, including India, the world’s biggest producer of bananas, will produce fewer bananas. By 2050, the fruit may die out.
Don’t bananas like to grow in hot weather? In fact the perfect temperature for growing bananas is between 24℃ and 32℃. If temperatures get too high, they will stop growing.
Diseases (疾病) are another danger to bananas. Bananas are grown by shoot cuttings (茎段) instead of seeds. This means that all banana plants have the same genotype (基因型). In other words, if a disease is able to kill one plant, it could kill them all.
One serious disease is called Panama. It spreads easily. It has spread across South Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Australia. If one banana farm suffers from (感染) the disease, it will take 30 years until it is able to grow bananas again. Scientists haven’t yet found a way to treat this disease.
1. What does the underlined word “climate” in Paragraph 2 mean in Chinese?| A．降雨量 | B．气候 | C．土壤 | D．环境 |
| A．Bananas are widely grown in India now. |
| B．The best temperature to grow bananas is 33℃. |
| C．The higher the temperature is, the better bananas will grow. |
| D．Bananas will disappear because of the cold weather. |
A． | B． | C． | D． |
| A．Bananas won’t be as tasty as before. |
| B．All countries in the world can grow bananas well. |
| C．A disease is able to kill one plant, but it couldn’t kill them all. |
| D．Panama can make a banana farm stop producing bananas for a long time. |
| A．How to Grow Bananas | B．Let’s Protect Bananas |
| C．Bananas Might Go Away | D．The Bananas’ Growing Conditions |
3 . The elephant-foot drum is a very special instrument for the Dai people. The drum-making skill was listed as a national intangible cultural heritage in 2011.
The elephant-foot drum dance is very popular among the Dai people. It can be danced by one or two people or a group of people. It is often performed during festivals. This form of dance was at first used to scare off evil and welcome the new year. Now it is a way for the Dai people to show their joy as well as their village culture. It also shows that the Dai people are kind, friendly and inclusive (包容的).
Xie Wenping, who is 32 years old, learned how to make these drums from his grandfather. “I was determined (下定决心的) to make more and better drums when I grew up,” Xie said.
But making an elephant-foot drum is no easy task. “Making an elephant-foot drum takes about 30 steps and one month,” Xie explained. First, Xie needs to choose the right wood and shape it like an elephant’s leg. Then he needs to hollow out the inside and cover it with cowhide (牛皮). The cowhide needs to go through many steps before it can be used on the drum. After that, Xie paints the drum with special patterns and adds a protective layer (保护层) on top. The last steps are tuning (调音) the drum and making it look nice. “A good elephant-foot drum should sound loud and strong when you beat it,” Xie said.
Even though making these drums can be repetitive (重复), Xie always feels encouraged when he sees his grandfather’s smile while making them. “Over the years, the number of craftspeople (工匠) skilled in making elephant-foot drums has gone down,” Xie said. “I feel like it’s my job to keep this tradition alive.”
To make it easier for people to enjoy the elephant-foot drum outside of Yunnan, Xie came up with the idea of making a smaller version (版本) of the drum and designing key chains that look like the drum.
1. What is the purpose of the elephant-foot drum dance now?| A．To compete with other villages. | B．To show their sadness and losses. |
| C．To show their friendliness and culture. | D．To scare off evil and welcome the new year. |
| A．easy | B．challenging | C．creative | D．the most exciting |
| A．The number of craftsmen is increasing. |
| B．The number of craftsmen is going down. |
| C．Its place has been taken by modem drums. |
| D．The tradition is no longer popular among the Dai people. |
| A．thought out | B．listened to | C．paid attention to | D．gave up |
| A．An Elephant-Foot Drum Maker | B．Making the Elephant-Foot Drum |
| C．Elephant-Foot Drum: A Cultural Treasure | D．The Art and Culture of Elephant-Foot Drum Dance |
School stress is something most students have to learn to deal with.
Deal with stress at once.
Find out where your stress comes from.
Is there a certain person, situation or environment causing you to feel stressed out?
If you don’t know how to deal with your stress, find someone to help you. If you’re at school, you may ask a teacher or a friend for help. If it’s a problem that you need help with right away, talk to someone in your classroom. If you’re not in a hurry, think about asking your parents or your teachers for help.
Move away from the situation if you can.
You can take a break by taking a walk outside. You can also make up a story about forgetting something in your car.
| A．Ask for help. |
| B．Do more exercise. |
| C．It will give you a reason to walk outside. |
| D．Get to know the way your body experiences stress. |
| E．My problem is that I can’t get on well with my family. |
| F．The first thing is to find out more about what’s causing it. |
| G．And it’s important to find a good way to deal with your stress. |
The popular TV series Meet Yourself (有风的地方) show the beauty of some intangible cultural heritages (非物质文化遗产) in Dali, Yunnan province. Let’s take a look at a few things.
Wood carving (木雕)
Jianchuan wood carving has a history of over 1,000 years. It has rich culture meanings. The carving usually uses patterns like flowers, plants and dragons. This type of wood carving is widely used in people’s buildings. Each piece of wood carving carries great efforts from the masters.
Tie-dyeing (扎染)
Tie-dyeing is an old dyeing skill. It started as early as in the Tang Dynasty for a small part of people. But now, tie-dyeing has modern things on clothing and bags, selling at home and abroad.
Flower cake
Flower cake is no doubt the most popular snack of Yunnan province. It has a history of more than 300 years. Even the Qing Dynasty emperor Qianlong was its big fan. The most special part of the cake is that it has flowers in the cake.
These traditional skills not only stand for Chinese wisdom, but also add colors to our modern lives.
1. Jianchuan wood carving has rich culture meanings.2. We can know that tie-dyeing isn’t an old dyeing skill.
3. The flower cake has a history of more than 3,000 years.
4. These traditional skills only stand for Chinese wisdom.
5. The passage mainly introduces some intangible cultural heritages in Dali.
6 . With the development of science and technology, our daily life is becoming more colorful and more convenient.
| The Bookless Library | Can you imagine walking into a library and finding all books have turned into computers? The world first bookless public library plans to open in San Antonio, Texas. Computers will take the place of books. |
| Google Glass | Google Glass is a pair of glasses with a battery (电池) hidden inside the frame (边框). It can carry out many of the same tasks as smart phones. The glass has a hidden camera and a tiny screen. It is designed to take hands-free photos or videos of anything people are doing. |
| A New Kind of Shirt | Hate washing clothes? You’re going to love this kind of shirt made by an American clothing company, Wool & Prince. This shirt can be worn for 100 straight days without washing! The Wool & Prince shirt never needs ironing (熨烫). |
| An Underwater Hotel | It looks like a spaceship but it is actually a picture of an underwater hotel. A company plans to build in the sea which is about 18 meters below the surface. The whole building is underwater and you can get to it by swimming and diving. |
1. Where is the world first bookless public library planed to open?
| A．In Gray, Indiana. | B．In Anchorage, Alaska. |
| C．In San Antonio, Texas. | D．In Los Angeles, California. |
| A．It can take photos and videos. | B．It can be used for drinking. |
| C．It can be used for seeing a film. | D．It can read a book like a man. |
| A．The traditional clothes. | B．The Nike Clothes. |
| C．The Wool& Prince shirt. | D．A coat with a battery. |
| A．By walking into it. | B．By swimming or diving. |
| C．By taking a spaceship. | D．By driving a special car. |
| A．New Vehicles | B．New Problems |
| C．New Libraries | D．New Inventions |
7 . 
As one kind of the most ancient characters, Chinese characters have played an important role in the development of Chinese culture. At first, ancient Sumerian (苏美尔语) and ancient Egyptian symbols existed (存在), but only Chinese characters remain today. The history of the Chinese language can be examined by looking at how these characters developed.
Chinese writing began thousands of years ago. According to an ancient story, a man named CangJie invented Chinese writing. One winter day while he was hunting, he saw the footprints of animals in the snow and noticed that the appearance of each one was different. Then he had the idea that he could use different shapes to represent (代表) different objects. The first Chinese characters were drawings of physical objects. Some characters have been simplified (简化) and others have been made more difficult over time.
However, as a whole, the characters have developed from drawings into standard forms. The character for a mountain was at first three mountaintops together. This became one mountaintop and three lines, and over time turned into the character used nowadays.
Sometimes to express ideas, some characters were made by combining (结合) two or more characters together. For example, “rest” was made up of the characters for a man and a tree. The character “prisoner” was formed with a “man” inside a square. Other characters were developed for directions and numbers. It is easy to distinguish (区别) their meanings by looking at them, for example, the characters for “up” and “down”, which are opposites of each other.
Though these kinds of characters indicate (表明) meanings, one of their shortcomings (缺点) is that they do not show how they should be pronounced. Therefore, a method was developed to have one part of a character represent the meaning and the other suggest the pronunciation. Many Chinese characters used today were made this way.
In the 1950s the Chinese government introduced simplified Chinese characters in the hope to make learning to read and write more understandable to the general population, which would increase literacy (读写能力) across the country. And now they have widespread use in China’s mainland.
1. The writer introduced the Chinese characters by ________.| A．giving examples | B．providing causes | C．expressing opinions | D．comparing facts |
Not all characters were developed from drawings of objects.
| A．Paragraph 5 | B．Paragraph 4 | C．Paragraph 3 | D．Paragraph 2 |
| A．亦 | B．竹 | C．明 | D．桐 |
| A．To make Chinese characters popular throughout the world. |
| B．To make people remember Chinese in a new way. |
| C．To make more people fall in love with Chinese. |
| D．To make Chinese easy to read and write. |
| A．Chinese characters have turned into standard forms, which are easier than before. |
| B．The first Chinese characters were invented by Cang Jie hundreds of years ago. |
| C．Chinese characters existed at the very beginning and remain today like other ancient symbols. |
| D．Chinese characters we use today have been accepted by large numbers of Chinese people. |
We have had lots of technology and it has changed our lives a lot. There is no doubt that humans will continue to use more and more technology. Here are some examples of modern technology that will change our ideas and will affect our lives greatly.
Global Positioning System (GPS)
It’s a system that uses radio signals (信号) from satellites (卫星) to show exact information. It tells you where the user is on the earth in all weather conditions. It’s made up of the following parts: satellites, control equipment on land and receivers.
Space Technology
Russian and American scientists have worked together for the International Space Station (ISS) for a long time. They hope the ISS will provide a long-lasting lab. Such a lab will bring humans limitless advantages. It’s even hoped that one day space technology will take humans to their new houses in space.
Underwater Robot
Hercules is a kind of underwater robot with some high-technology equipment. It will be used to search for ancient ships which were destroyed into the deep sea during journey long ago.
1. GPS can’t tell you where the user is on the earth on rainy days.2. Control equipment on land is a part of GPS.
3. The ISS has carried people to other planets.
4. Hercules will be used to search for the ancient ships in the sea.
5. The purpose of the passage is to tell us technology is changing the world.
9 . Why did ancient Chinese emperors call themselves zhen (朕) or guaren (寡人)? Research shows that the word zhen used to be a first-person pronoun. Before the Qin Dynasty, it meant “I” or “me” and everyone from farmers to state rulers could use it. The word can be found in books like Li Sao and Shi Jing.
However, when the state of Qin defeated all the other six states and unified China, Qinshihuang, the first emperor in Chinese history, changed how this word could be used. He made it a rule that the word zhen could only be used by the emperor himself. Since then, it has been kept only for rulers.
Chinese emperors also called themselves guaren, In ancient China, emperors regarded themselves as the “Sons of Heaven”, and believed they had a “Mandate of Heaven” to rule. However, if the “Son of Heaven” was found to have poor morals (德行), they would lose the mandate, So, the rulers used the phrase guaren or guadezhiren, meaning “a person who doesn’t have morality”. In this way, they could show their modesty (谦虚). In Chinese culture, people should not talk proudly about their own abilities and beliefs. Modesty is seen as a virtue (美德). Ancient rulers hoped to win people’s hearts by calling themselves guaren.
However, historical records show that guaren lost its popularity after the Tang Dynasty. The emperors of the following dynasties used zhen more often.
1. Why does the writer start the passage with a question?| A．To attract (吸引) readers’ interest. | B．To describe a famous person. |
| C．To help readers understand an idea. | D．To tell the background of the writer. |
| A．The state of Qin. | B．Chinese history. | C．The word zhen. | D．The phrase guaren. |
| A．Because they were lonely. | B．Because they had poor morals. |
| C．Because they were sons of heaven. | D．Because they wanted to win people’s hearts. |
| A．Before the Qin Dynasty, zhen meant “I” or “me” and only rulers could use it. |
| B．In ancient China, emperors regarded themselves as the “Sons of Heaven”. |
| C．In Chinese culture, people should talk proudly about their abilities and beliefs. |
| D．Historical records show that guaren was still popular after the Tang Dynasty. |
| A．Art. | B．History. | C．Sports. | D．Science. |
10 . What will life in the future be like? And what will we be able to do in the future?
Genetic engineering (基因工程) may help us make the perfect human. Babies may grow up to play basketball like Yao Ming. Also, we may be able to bring the dead back to life. Maybe people will be able to meet and talk with their dead family members.
Over the next 20 to 50 years, it will become harder to tell (分辨) if a person is dead or alive. Perhaps humans will be able to make copies of ourselves, so we will appear to be alive long after we are dead. Humans may be able to find ways of putting the life of a person into a new body.
Nanobots (纳米机器人) will be important. We will use them when we are sick. For example, when we have a stomachache, we will swallow (吞下) a nanobot and it will tell the doctor what’s happening in our stomachs by taking a video with its camera.
In the future, computers may have feelings. They may be able to think better than us. We may be more and more interested in computers and spend all our time in front of computers. Perhaps we will forget our real needs. Perhaps we will weigh 250 kgs!
1. Why does the writer give examples in Paragraph 2?| A．To describe what babies will be like. |
| B．To tell why we use genetic engineering. |
| C．To describe how to bring the dead back to life. |
| D．To tell how genetic engineering may help humans. |
| A．Everyone in the future will be made into robots. |
| B．Nobody will be alive over the next 20 to 50 years. |
| C．It will become harder to tell if a person is dead or alive. |
| D．Humans will be able to live a long life in another world. |
| A．It will tell the doctor what to do. |
| B．It will help to cut off the stomach. |
| C．It will send medicine directly to the stomach. |
| D．It will tell the doctor what’s wrong through a video. |
| A．Computers may have feelings. |
| B．Computers will weigh 250 kgs. |
| C．Computers may think better than people. |
| D．People may spend all the time on computers. |
| A．Life in the future | B．People never die |
| C．The world of robots | D．Super future computers |
