1 . A small bowl bought at a yard sale in Connecticut for just $ 35 has been identified as a rare 15th-century Chinese antique.

The blue-and-white bowl was made by China's royal court during the Ming dynasty. It is now expected to sell for up to $500,000, according to Sotheby's auction(拍卖)house in New York, where the auction will take place next month.

The purchase was made last year near New Haven, Connecticut. “I was just hanging around there aimlessly. But when I saw this bowl, I didn't even bargain over the $35 asking price,” the owner said. Shortly after the purchase, he sent photos of the bowl to auction specialists, who identified it as an item of historical significance.

Upon closer inspection, the artifact was found to have originated from the period of Yongle Emperor, who ruled from 1403 to 1424 - a period noted for its distinctive porcelain (瓷器)techniques. It's now valued between $300,000 and $500,000, with the top estimate nearly 14,300 times the amount it was purchased for.

“I was deeply attracted by the techniques. You can see why this bowl is so highly-valued from the very smooth porcelain body, silky glaze(上釉)and special blue coloring, which were never reproduced in later dynasties,” McAteer, an auction specialist, said.

“The Yongle Emperor improved the porcelain techniques and elevated the importance of porcelain from being an ordinary bowl into a true work of art. This small bowl has both practical and artistic value, ”McAteer said.

1. What can we infer about the bowl's owner?

A．He found the bowl by accident.

B．He hesitated during the purchase.

C．He doubted whether the bowl was real.

D．He bought the bowl because it was cheap.

2. What makes the bowl so precious?

A．The blue color on it.	B．The long history it has.
C．The people who made it.	D．The unique techniques used.

3. What does the underlined word “elevated” in Paragraph 6 probably mean?

A．Forsaw.	B．Promoted.
C．Assessed.	D．Acknowledged.

4. What's the best title of the text?

A．An Amazing Bowl	B．A Special Yard Sale
C．The Return of Porcelains	D．A Man Making Fortune

2 . The idea of billions of people going through a few masks a week during this pandemic definitely rings alarm bells, but a team of researchers in Melbourne may have the solution.

They’ve discovered that adding millions of discarded face masks to road-paving (铺路) mixtures would actually lower the cost of the road, while preventing billions of them from landfills. Just one kilometer of road would need three million masks, and the polypropylene (聚丙烯) plastic used to make single-use surgical face masks also increased the flexibility and durability of the road.

The new material is a mixture of about 2% torn masks, with recycled concrete aggregate (RCA)—a material obtained from waste concrete and other minerals from destroyed buildings. This recycled material was found in the study to be ideal for two of the four layers generally required to create roadways. Paving a kilometer of two-way road with the RCA and three million face masks would result in a change of 93 tons of waste from landfills.

The final product then is more resistant to wear than asphalt (沥青), as well as being cheaper too, provided there was a method for collecting masks. The research team did a cost-analysis and found that, at $26 per ton, the RCA was about half the cost of mining raw materials, and as much as a third of the cost of shipping the used masks to a landfill.

The widespread application would be ideal for large infrastructure (基础设施) projects. For example, Washington has the 11th worst roads in terms of unaddressed repairs in the U.S. If the damaged roads in Washington state were repaired with the RCA/mask mixture, it would reuse nearly 10 billion masks, sparing American landfills hundreds of millions of tons of trash.

It’s said that the team is looking for private industry partners or governments willing to give their plastic mask road an opportunity for a large-scale test.

1. What does the underlined word “discarded” mean in paragraph 2?

A．Recycled.	B．Produced.
C．Mixed.	D．Abandoned.

2. What is the new material used to pave ways made of?

A．2% torn masks, concrete and tons of trash.

B．Polypropylene plastic and building materials.

C．Single-use surgical masks and recycled concrete aggregate.

D．Waste concrete and other minerals from destroyed buildings.

3. Why are numbers mentioned in paragraph 5?

A．To tell us what the team has found.

B．To prove this material is cost-effective in paving roads.

C．To explain repairing roads costs a lot of materials.

D．To praise the hard work the team has done.

4. What can we learn from the text?

A．The material used to pave roads is made of masks.

B．Generally speaking, it requires two layers to create roadways.

C．It remains to be tested whether the solution is practical.

D．The damaged roads in Washington were repaired with the RCA.

3 . For today’s increasingly interconnected food supply chains, “efficient” is what it’s supposed to be: Each country specializes in what it’s best, at and puts it on the global market. Producers and processors within countries specialize, too, as a way to minimize costs. As a result, at least in theory, prices stay low, the world gets fed and everyone wins.

However, the coronavirus crisis demonstrates what is wrong with this approach. When barriers prevent food from reaching its markets, or demand suddenly drops — both of which are happening now — the system falls apart.

Specialization of the food system makes it hard to shift into different markets when disruptions arise. Belgium, a leading exporter of potatoes, lost sales not only to local restaurants but also to other countries because of lockdowns（封锁）. At least the Belgians can try to eat the potatoes at home. That strategy won't work for every crop: Ghana, the world’s top cocoa exporter, lost markets when people stalled focusing on buying essential items instead of chocolate.

The loss in export income in Africa more generally could have a huge impact if the pandemic continues, as many countries there rely heavily on imported wheat and rice. The prices of these grains have soared not only because of rising demand for these grains during the crisis, but also because a few countries — including Russia and Vietnam — imposed export restrictions out of fear that sending food abroad would lead to higher prices at home.

Concentrated markets dominated by just a handful of companies heighten food system fragility. For example, just three meatpacking plants process over 95 percent of Canada’s beef and nearly all of its beef exports. Now, those meat processing plants have had to temporarily shut down because of outbreaks of COVID-19 among workers.

Seeing the spoiled products across the world should force all of us to rethink our “efficient” food supplies. We need to rejuvenate（使恢复活力）local and regional food systems to reduce the vulnerabilities that come with being too reliant on imported and corporate-dominated foods. This doesn’t mean cutting off all trade or abolishing all packaged foods, but it does mean building diversity, and increasing opportunities for small and medium-scale enterprises to flourish in shorter, more sustainable food supply chains that are closer to home.

One place to start is for governments to shift their support from the large-scale, specialized and export-oriented food system to building infrastructure for more diverse local food systems. Around the world, small-scale and organic producers have been overwhelmed with the surge in interest from customers who want to buy directly from farmers during the crisis. But these producers often lack the infrastructure to meet that demand. As governments around the world pass stimulus packages to address the crisis, building more diverse and localized food systems should be an obvious inclusion.

1. In theory, specialization of the food system ________.

A．adapts to changes efficiently	B．balances supply and demand
C．focuses on essential items	D．reduces costs of production

2. The underlined word “fragility” in Paragraph 5 means ________.

A．weakness	B．diversity
C．unfairness	D．complexity

3. What can we learn from the passage?

A．A few countries restrict exports to stabilize local food prices.

B．Grain prices rise due to Africa’s dependence on importation.

C．Ghana might be less affected by lockdowns than Belgium was.

D．Packaged-food consumption should be encouraged to address the crisis.

4. The main purpose of this passage is to ________.

A．expose food security issues during the crisis

B．advocate establishing diverse local food systems

C．discuss the development of a sustainable economy

D．prove the importance of sound government policies

4 . Norway aims to discover new resources beneath the sea, but its push into mining has raised environmental concerms.

Norway could license companies for deep-sea mining as early as 2023. That could place it among the first countries to harvest seabed metals. Copper, zinc and other metals are in high demand for electric vehicle batteries, wind turbines and solar energy centers. However, that could also place Norway on the front line of controversies over the environmental risks of mining the world’s unexplored seabeds.

Norway recently announced it was carrying out an environmental study needed to start mineral exploration and mining. Once that is completed, the govemment plans to have public comments on its environmental study and on a proposal to open areas for exploration and production by the end of 2022.

The demand for minerals is being driven by what are often called “clean” technologies. But the process of getting those minerals from the seabed could cause environmental problems.

Environmentalists including Britain’s David Attenborough have called for a temporary (暂时的) stop to deepseabed mining until more is known about how it affects sea life. The environmental group Greenpeace called for a total ban in a recent report. In another report, the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy, known as the Ocean Panel, also called for greater knowledge about the effects of deep-sea mining. The Ocean Panel is cochaired by Norway and has 14 member states that want to shape policy on the world’s oceans.

Norway is known as a major oil producer. But, the country of 5. 4 million people wants to find something to replace its top industry that is better for the environment and can grow in the future.

The move toward deep-sea mining follows three years of expeditions(探险). The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, which carried out the work, said it found copper, zinc, cobalt, gold and silver. The expeditions also discovered large armounts of lithium and the rare earth metal scandium used in electronics and metal mixtures.

1. What does the underlined word “controversies”in paragraph 2 probably mean?

A．Power.	B．Benefits.
C．Arguments.	D．Popularity.

2. What does Norway plan to do after finishing the environmental study?

A．Decide mining areas.	B．Ask for people’s opinions.
C．Start seabed mining at once.	D．Take action to protect nature.

3. What is the attitude of environmentalists towards sea mining?

A．Unsupportive.	B．Positive.
C．Unclear.	D．Uncaring.

4. Which agrees with Norway’s aim of mining metals?

A．Earning more money.	B．Controlling the areas.
C．Developing clean energy.	D．Learning about sea resources.

6 . When he was two years old, Ben stopped seeing out of his left eye. His mother took him to the doctor and soon discovered he had cancer in both eyes. After possible treatments failed, doctors removed both his eyes. For Ben, vision was gone forever.

But by the time he was seven years old, he had developed a technique for feeling the world around him: he clicked with his mouth and listened for the returning echoes. This method enabled Ben to determine the locations of open doorways, people, parked cars, garbage cans, and so on. He was echolocating: bouncing his sound waves off objects in the environment and catching the reflections to build a mental model of his surroundings.

Echolocation may sound like an improbable feat for a human, but thousands of blind people have perfected this skill, just like Ben did. The event has been written about since at least the 1940s, when the word ''echolocation" was first invented in a science article titled “Echolocation by Blind Men , Bats, and Radar.”

How could blindness give rise to the amazing ability to understand the surroundings with one's ears? The answer lies in a gift on the brain; huge adaptability.

Mother Nature filled our brains with flexibility to adapt to circumstances. Just as sharp teeth and fast legs are useful for survival, so is the brain's ability to reset, which allows for learning, memory, and die ability to develop new skills.

In Ben's case, his brain's flexible wiring repurposed his visual cortex for processing sound. As a result, Ben had more neurons available to deal with listening information, and this increased processing power allowed Ben to interpret soundwaves in shocking detail. Ben's super-hearing proves a more general rule: the more brain area a particular sense has, the better it performs.

1. How did Ben “see” after he had his eyes removed?

A．By using a walking stick.	B．By asking others for help.
C．By inventing a new system.	D．By echolocating surroundings.

2. What does the underlined word “feat” in Paragraph 3 probably mean?

A．Skill.

B．Task.

C．Sense.

D．Invention.

3. What can we learn from Ben's case?

A．He laughs best who laughs last.	B．Actions speak louder than words.
C．God shuts one door but he opens another.	D．Man becomes learned by asking questions.

4. In which column of a magazine can we read this passage?

A．Culture Shock.	B．Human Biology.
C．Scientific Technology.	D．Environmental Protection.

7 . Arguster grew up on his family’s farm in a remote village. Planting cash crop — cotton, they were breaking even and had to make ends meet. In his childhood, there were nine kids at home. All the boys were in one room with two beds. Two slept at the head while two slept at the foot. Therefore, there was one thing about their feet — washing them before crowding onto the bed.

When there was a hole in Arguster’s jeans, his mother would put a patch on it. However, the hole kept going. It was the naughty kids, Arguster included, that took the jeans out, hung them on a line and shot them to put holes. Aware of that, however, Ben, the father, didn’t rebuke them, knowing it might be the only way to bring laughter to his kids.

Arguster’s first lesson in economics was taught by Ben. The childish kid had worked and made a little extra money. He couldn’t help admiring himself, “I make six dollars! Six dollars! Man! I’m on the top of the world!” With a great thrill, Arguster decided to go to fair, where he played games, ate cotton candy... When asked by Ben how much he had spent, with his head down, Arguster replied, “Daddy, I spent it all...” Looking at his messy hair, Ben sighed, “Boy, you spent all your money and haircut’s gone up to 75 cents. I’m afraid...” From then on, Arguster always kept enough money to get himself a haircut.

Ben taught his kids how to do the right thing and wanted them to do the right thing, which Ben tried to pass on to his kids, in his own way. Ben started a syrup mill(糖坊). People in the community brought their cane and millet for Ben to grind up (磨碎) for syrup. When people paid with buckets of syrup, Ben refused. Arguster got confused, “Daddy, why don’t you let these people pay you?”

“Because we got enough syrup to last for a long time! Son, these people don’t have money to pay. That’s the only way they can pay.”

1. Why should the kids wash their feet before going to bed?

A．Because they turned dirty after playing on the farm.

B．Because they crowded on a small bed with feet close to others’ heads.

C．Because the beds were made of cotton which was easy to spot.

D．Because they had to make ends meet, making them seldom bathe.

2. What does the underlined word “rebuke” in Paragraph 2 probably mean?

A．Question.

B．Oppose.

C．Amuse.

D．Criticize.

3. What might happen to Arguster after he spent all the money he earned?

A．He worked and earned money again for his haircut.

B．He had his hair cut with the money Ben gave him.

C．He waited for the price of haircut to decrease.

D．He borrowed money from his mother for his haircut.

4. What’s Ben’s attitude towards people in the community?

A．Strict.

B．Casual.

C．Considerate.

D．Mean.

9 . A Universal Greeting: Shaking Hands

A handshake seems to be a normal gesture. In fact, in the 9th century BC, an ancient site during the ruling of Shalmaneser III clearly shows two figures holding hands.The Iliad,usually dated to the 8th century BC, mentions that two characters “taking each other's hands and expressing their loyalty," Centuries later, Shakespeare once wrote of two characters who shook hands and swore to be brothers in the bookAs You Like It.Shaking hands seems to be an ancient custom whose roots have disappeared in the sands of time.

Historians who have studied ancient etiquette books note that the modern handshake did not appear until the middle of the 19th century, when it was considered a slightly inappropriate gesture that could only be used between friends. But what if Shakespeare had written about handshaking hundreds of years earlier?

According to author Torbjorn Lundmark in hisTales of Hi and Bye: Greeting and Parting Rituals Around the World,the problem comes in differing definitions of the handshake. The early handshakes mentioned above were part of making deals or peace; King Shalmaneser 111 referred to a rebellion in which he signed a treaty with the King of Babylon. In theIliad,Diomedes and Glaucus shook, hands when they realized they were guest-friends, and Diomedes declared: "Let's not try to kill each other." Shakespeare was similarly referencing settlement of a conflict.

The modern handshake as a form of greeting is harder to trace. As a Dutch sociologist Herman Roodenburg — the chief authority for the history of handshaking — wrote in a chapter of ananthologycalledA Cultural History of Gesture,“More than in any other field, that of the study of gesture is one in which the historian has to make the most of only a few clues”.

One of the earliest clues he cites is a 16th-century German translation of the French writer Rabelais'sGargantua and Pantagruel.When one character meets Gargantua, Rabelais writes, “He was greeted by countless hugs and countless good days." But according to Roodenburg, the 16th-century German translation added references to shaking hands.

A popular saying suggests that Cleland's statements against bowing were actually a wish to go back to a potentially traditional method of greeting in Europe. As the centuries progressed, handshaking was replaced by more hierarchical ways of greeting — like bowing. According to Roodenburg, handshaking survived in a few remote places, like in Dutch towns where some would use the gesture to make peace after disagreements. Around the same time, those who valued equality also made use of handshaking. Then, as the Continent's hierarchy was weakened, handshaking became a common practice among people of the same rank, as it is today.

1. Why does the author mention Shakespeare in the first two paragraphs?

A．To prove that the history of handshaking is hard to find.

B．To illustrate that handshaking is a very old custom.

C．To show readers that handshaking is common in fiction.

D．To explain the value of handshaking in communication.

2. What can we learn about handshaking from the passage?

A．The origin of handshaking as a form of greeting is easy to trace.

B．Citizens usually shake hands to show friendliness in Holland.

C．It was used only between friends and to reach an agreement.

D．It is a common practice between people of different social positions.

3. Which of the following is similar in meaning to "anthology"in Para. 4?

A．the science of mental ability	B．a collection of selected literary passages
C．a daily written record of experiences	D．all the living things of a particular region

4. What can be inferred from the last paragraph of the passage?

A．The handshake has disappeared in some remote parts of the Netherlands.

B．Handshaking has different meanings in different European countries.

C．Most Europeans prefer to shake hands rather than bow.

D．Handshakes are now common between people of different positions.

10 . It’s easy to assume that a vacation to Bali will cost a small fortune. There are plenty of accommodations, food and local transportation, and even the spas offer massages and treatments at value prices. However, you can easily spend a week or two in Bali for under $2,000, without having to sleep on the beach. Here are a few things to consider when planning Bali on a budget.

What is the best time to visit Bali on a budget?

If you’re on a budget, consider visiting Bali during the lower, wetter season, which runs from October through March. The crowds will be fewer, and both hotel rates and flights from abroad are often cheaper, except during the holiday period between mid-December and early January, when crowds swell. The only trade-off for the lower prices is the wet season. This time of year isn’t always ideal for sunbathing, and serious rainfall can make outdoor activities, such as whitewater rafting and visiting waterfalls and rice terraces, less than appealing. That said, even during rainy season, it doesn’t usually rain all day long. Expect bursts of sunshine between the storms.

What is the cheapest way to get around Bali?

The absolute cheapest way to get around Bali is by local bus, but it can take a long time. There are also tourist buses, including hop-on, hop-off options, that travel between different hubs across the island. Bali is well-served by taxis, both of the car and motorbike variety, and the prices tend to be affordable by international standards. Most drivers will offer you a fixed rate for full-day hires or to get from point A to point B, rather than using a meter.

Remember to bargain; doing so is particularly easy when a driver is on his own rather than at a taxi stand.

How much does food cost in Bali?

If you’re into fine dining, you can end up spending a large chunk of your budget on food. Eating at the average restaurant geared towards tourists is the best way to have a meal in Bali on a budget. A good meal should cost you around 100,000 rupiah (around $7), but if you’re willing to subsist mostly off of local specialties such as nasi goreng (fried rice) and eat at local restaurants, you can expect to pay around 30,000 rupiah ($2) to get fed. Best of all, most hotels and guesthouses in Bali come with free breakfast, and many offer heavier options of noodles and meat that may keep you full until lunch.

1. Which of the following situation can be best described by the underlined word trade-off in paragraph 2?

A．Jack got a reward after he returned the lost bag to its owner.

B．Lily spent much money buying some handicrafts at the local fair.

C．Wendy cancelled her trip in order to prevent the spread of the virus.

D．Sam was scolded by his parents for what he did in school last night.

2. Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?

A．It’s better for outdoor enthusiasts to visit Bali during the off season.

B．Passengers had better fix the price with drivers before the taxi pulls out from the station.

C．If on a tight budget, one is advised to visit Bali at the end of December every year.

D．It’s relatively economical to eat merely at average restaurants tailored to visitors.

3. In which column of a magazine can you most probably find this passage?

A．City and Transport.	B．Travel and Recreation.
C．Nature and Environment.	D．Food and Health.