In order to hold a simple, safe and yet splendid Winter Games, the opening ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games     1     (be) not lengthy or marked with a large-scale (大规模的) performance. The Olympic cauldron (主火炬) at the snowflake-themed ceremony was small,    2     the flames conveyed significant messages of greener Olympic Games.

The use of     3     (advance) technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine vision, 5G and cloud broadcasting added to the novelty of the opening ceremony. The performances,    4     carried forward the theme of global peace and shared future for humankind, focused on environmental     5     (protect), human health and physical fitness.

To reduce the carbon footprint of the Winter Games, all the Olympic venues were run on clean energy. For example, about 70 percent of the materials     6     (use) in the Games were obtained through renting, including new sporting equipment, furniture in the Olympic village, technical devices. Also, the medal platforms     7     (make) of recyclable and environmentally friendly materials.

More     8     (important), thrift (节约), a traditional Chinese virtue, can hep build a healthy social environment for China to realize     9     (it) targets of peaking carbon emissions before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060. All this made the 2022 Winter Games an important Olympics to focus     10     achieving carbon neutrality.

5 . Elsa Desmond knows she is not going to win a medal at the Beijing Winter Olympics. But she is ________ as the first women’s luge (无舵雪橇) Olympian from Ireland. She was the 26th to ________ the line in the first run of the women’s race on Monday night, ________ than any of the other athletes, which did not ________ her. She celebrated with a large smile on her face.

Although she did not win in Beijing, she has already won some ________. She had been given many reasons why she could not compete: she is too short, she did not start ________ at a young age, and she could not balance a(n) ________ job with competing in a sport. The biggest difficulty simply might have been that Ireland did not have a luge organization. So, she ________ one herself; she had to ________.

And now, ________, she is a luge Olympian. “I’m a doctor in general surgery, I have all these really visible challenges, but I think everyone has worked as ________ as they can to be here.” She has delayed parts of her job to compete in the Olympics, but her ________ gave her the time off. And her co-workers are becoming big luge fans, extremely proud of her.

Desmond has ________ two demanding jobs: sliding a few months out of the year and living a life in medicine. There was a(n) ________ last season when she had to take important medical examinations in hotels in Germany where other sliders were staying. “I had to ________ signs on my door saying ‘Do not disturb, exam in ________’ in about six different languages.”

Desmond got the ________ of representing her country in Beijing, and being one of two people ________ Ireland’s flag during the opening ceremony on Friday. “I don’t think I can ________ words how excited I was to lead out the team. I really hope that I can make my country ________.”

The 2022 Winter Paralympics mascot (冬残奥会吉祥物) Shuey Rhon Rhon has won global recognition since it made its first public     1    (appear). Created by a group of artists from Jilin University of Arts in northeast China’s Jilin Province,     2     lovely mascot went through a designing process of 32 versions in more than 300 days.

Shuey Rhon Rhon features the shape of a traditional Chinese lantern, and symbolizes the spirit of hospitality (热情好客) and peace, as the first “Rhon” in Chinese means“to include”, and the second means “to melt, to warm”. In ancient times, lanterns     3    (use) for lighting in China.

The joyful-looking mascot sends a     4    (hope) message to the world and symbolizes the fighting spirit of the disabled athletes     5     casts light on humanity. Shuey, meaning snow, suggests promising harvest seasons, while the Ruyi pattern on top     6    (carry) the meaning of happiness.

“One major task was to bring the unique lantern to life, as most Olympic and Paralympic mascots were based     7     animal figures, not objects. “Guo said.” It was the     8    (difficult) and most confusing task in the designing process. ”

The artists decided     9    (decorate) it with paper cutting of pigeons (鸽子) after experimenting with other animal figures, and then realized that the shapes of two pigeon tails could outline a famous landmark of Beijing, the Temple of Heaven, thus     10     (add) more cultural and historical characteristics to the design.

China kicked off the 2022 Winter Olympics with a visually stunning opening ceremony.

    1     a lively, snowflake-themed show that emphasized youth and “ordinary people,” the Games were declared officially open, prompting a burst of fireworks over the “Bird’s Nest” National Stadium in central Beijing. The final step was to deliver the ceremonial flame, a moment that often     2     (carry) symbolic weight based in part on who is selected for the task. Chinese officials chose two athletes, one of     3     was Dinigeer Yilamujiang, a Uyghur cross-country skiier from Xinjiang.

The pair placed the flame inside a giant snowflake, a closely watched moment with symbolic weight in more ways than     4     .

With temperatures appropriately below freezing in the Chinese capital, the ceremony began with an opening sequence     5     (focus) on youth and spring. The Olympics started on the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, China’s     6     (big) holiday, also known as Spring Festival.

The ceremony overall was a scaled-down affair compared with past years, and drives by both the IOC and the Chinese government     7     (promote) sustainability and rein in excess.

Though it began and ended with fireworks, there were only about 10 percent as many as the last time Beijing hosted the Olympics in 2008. Renowned Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou, who directed that ceremony     8     this one, told Chinese state media that the performers in this year’s show would be “ordinary people.”

In contrast to the epic 2008 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing,     9     ran for about four hours, this year’s grand display     10     (simplify) and shortened to less than 100 minutes because of the pandemic and the cold weather, according to Xinhua.

Only 3,000 performers took part, compared with 15,000 in 2008, Xinhua said.