2 . The Symbolism of Chinese Foods

China is a country with a long history, and food has played an important role in the development of Chinese culture. Every year many traditional festivals and events are celebrated with special foods. Some of these foods have particular meanings, such as good luck, best wishes, unity and commemoration (纪念).

Spring Festival(Chinese New Year)is the most important traditional festival in China. So New Year foods usually symbolize good luck and best wishes.

·Year cake (niángāo) means “increasing prosperity (繁荣)” because the name sounds the same as “year high” or “yearly increase”.

·Dumplings mean “wealth”, due to their traditional gold / silver ingot (锭) shape.

Lantern Festival is the first full moon night in the Chinese calendar year, and the full moon as well as the food symbolizes family reunion.

·Sweet round sticky rice balls in soup (tāngyuán) mean “togetherness and reunion”.

Dragon Boat Festival is an important celebration in China to commemorate Qu Yuan, a famous patriotic poet of China in ancient times.

·Glutinous rice dumplings (zòngzi) wrapped in bamboo leaves symbolize Qu Yuan commemoration.

Mid-Autumn Festival is the second most important traditional Chinese festival. It is a time for family members and loved ones to get together to celebrate family reunion. Therefore, people celebrate it by preparing foods with family-reunion symbolic meanings.

·Mooncakes mean “family unity”, as they’re round, like the harvest moon.

·Pomeloes (yòuzi) mean “family unity” and “abundance”, as they’re round, too, and the Chinese sounds like the word for “to have”.

Yangko, a rural Chinese folk dance with a history     1     (date) back thousands of years, originates from farming life in ancient times. The dance relates to sacrifices to the farmland god when people prayed for a good harvest. As time passed, the     2     (origin) dance developed, taking in various artistic forms and skills, including opera, acrobatics and martial arts, and eventually turned into the type of Yangko     3     is seen today.

    4     (preserve) this Chinese folk culture, it was included in the inaugural(首批的)items of national intangible cultural heritage in 2006. It is     5     (common) performed in northern China during festivals, especially for Chinese New Year and the Lantern Festival. Performances or competitions     6     (organize) in towns and villages to express people’s joy and their hope for a better life.

Yangko employs drumming, Suona, dancing and singing. Content is based     7     folk stories and legends. Costumes are richly-colored and opera-styled, enabling     8     (character) to be easily identified. During a performance, the actors will dance and sing, following lively rhythms. Highly. skilled and interesting acts such as stilt(高跷)walking     9     carrying a wedding sedan chair(花轿)are also included. As a part of traditional Chinese culture, Yangko     10     (concentrate) the group consciousness of the Chinese people, and has outstanding historical and cultural value.

5 . Since childhood, London-based artist Josh Gluckstein has been fascinated by the incredible diversity of our planet’s wildlife and inspired to make sculptures of animals from found materials. He often uses abandoned or recycled materials like clothing from junk shops or wood from old furniture. An important aspect of his practice is concern for the environment. “I have traveled through Asia, Latin America and East Africa, and have been fortunate enough to have some incredible wildlife encounters,” he says. “However, on my travels, even in the most remote locations, I was shocked by the huge amounts of plastic waste.”

Mach of the garbage that washes up on shorelines around the world is due to an unregulated (未受监管的) system in which richer countries export waste to developing countries because it is often cheaper than developing better infrastructures (基础设施) to handle it. Many of the thousands of shipping containers exported each year are often dumped illegally.

“I remember going to the Galapagos Islands and visiting a beach famous for a large population of sea lions. It was indeed incredible to see them in the wild, but on every inch of sand not covered by sea lions, there were plastic bottles and cans. It was a heartbreaking sight. I knew I wanted to create artworks that didn’t create waste or harm our planet,” Gluckstein says.

Gluckstein hopes his works will raise people’s awareness about the importance of protecting endangered species. His new series called “Gold” focuses on illegally hunted animals by applying gold leaves to their bodies. He plans to donate some of the sales of his sculptures to the world Wide Fund for Nature.

Every Sunday, June, a six-year-old girl, tied her sports shoes and walked to Grandpa’s house. Grandpa lived around the block(街区), and June was allowed to walk there by herself. Grandpa often told her stories. They also ate ice cream together while they talked. Sunday was June’s favorite day.

This Sunday, June got dressed. She put on one sports shoe, but she could not find the other shoe. “Mommy, where’s my shoe?”

“I’m sure it’s in your room. Look carefully until you find it. You can’t go until you have both shoes on,” June’s mother said.

June sat on her bed and looked around. Her room was quite messy. There were clothes on the floor and papers on the desk. She wasn’t sure where to start.

Then June remembered a story Grandpa told her. When he was little, he lost a coin that he planned to use to buy his mother a candy. He walked back over every place he had been to that day until he found it. He had to go in order so he wouldn’t miss anything.

June stood up. “I’ll start in the corner and go around the room in order,” she thought. “That way I won’t miss anything.”

June began in the corner where her desk was.

June quickly put on her shoe and ran out of the door to Grandpa’s house.

8 . Those in the food industry understand the difficulty that comes from working with people. No matter how much you try, some customers are never _______. If you make one mistake, some people are likely to lose _______. This situation took place at a McDonald’s in suburban Atlanta.

A customer approached the drive-through window _______. He threw a drink back at the pregnant fast food worker who handed it to him. Most would find that unthinkable. Yet, he felt _______ because the drink was not what he wanted.

Bryanna was the _______ in this incident. It was so _______ to her that she couldn’t even figure out what was happening. She was _______ and covered in ice and soda.

The customer next in line who witnessed what happened was Feroza Eyed. She _______ the incident via Facebook after things took place. “I’ve never seen anyone _______ that way, especially to do that to a pregnant worker, which was just ________.”

When Feroza approached the drive-through, she ________ the fast food worker a cash tip to comfort her. She had yet another ________— set up an online registry for Bryanna’s baby. Feroza ________ maybe she could raise $300 or $400 for Bryanna to buy something nice. But by 24 hours later people had donated $1,700. Feroza was just obviously going crazy with ________.

Through this, Feroza and Bryanna have become friends. It’s just ________ to see such love and happiness.

Microsoft-backed OpenAI is developing software capable of generating minute-long videos based on text prompts (提示), the company announced on Thursday.

The software, named “Sora” after the Japanese word for “sky,” is currently available for red teaming (红队测试),     1     helps identify faults in the: AI system. Additionally, it is intended for use by visual artists,     2     (design), and filmmakers to provide feedback on the model, the company stated.

“Sora is able     3     (generate) complex scenes with multiple characters, specific types of motion, and accurate details of the subject and background,” the statement said, adding that it can create multiple shots within a single video.

In addition     4     generating videos from text prompts, Sora can also animate     5     still image, as mentioned in a blog post by the company.

The video generation software follows OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot, which     6     (release) in late 2022 and created. a buzz around generative AI with     7     (it) ability to compose emails and write codes and poems.

Sora is still a work-in-progress, with the company     8     (acknowledge) that the model may sometimes struggle with spatial (空间的) details in a prompt and encounter difficulties in following a specific camera route.

OpenAI also mentioned that they are developing tools to determine whether a video is generated by Sora.

The new tool is not yet     9     (public) available, and OpenAI has revealed     10     (limit) information about its development process. OpenAI mentioned in a blog post that it is talking to artists, policymakers and other stakeholders before releasing the new tool to the public.