2 . Born in California and representing the United States before switching to China, teenager Gu Ailing will be most likely to be one of the faces of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

The 17-year-old is a freeskier (自由式滑雪运动员) and grade-A student with an American father and Chinese mother. She grew up and still lives in the United States, but in June 2019 she made the “quite difficult” decision to compete for China. She wrote on Instagram that she was “proud of my heritage and equally proud of my American upbringings (培养)”.

As for the decision to compete on behalf of China, she said it is a “valuable opportunity to help inspire millions of young people in China where my mom was born”.

Gu graduated from a San Francisco high school last year and is focusing on her Beijing 2022 training. It is reported that she scored 1,580 points out of a maximum 1,600 in the SAT (美国大学入学考试), and has been offered a place at Stanford.

Gu started on the snow at the age of 3, was competing in national competitions at 9 and won her first World Cup event at 15. She won two gold medals and a silver for China at the 2020 Youth Olympic Games in Lausanne, Switzerland. On Jan. 30th, 2021, Gu made her debut (首次亮相) at the X Games in Aspen, Colorado and won two golds and a bronze.

“My goal is to win Olympic gold,” she told the official Olympic website. “It’s the top achievement. And that would be rewarding for all the work that I’ve done to achieve greatness in the sport.”

3 . Chinese Teapot Escaping from British Museum Goes Viral

Chinese state media has praised a viral video series telling the story of a jade teapot coming to life and fleeing the British Museum to make its way back home.

The set of three short videos, entitled Escape from the British Museum, shows the teapot turning into a young woman in a green dress, who then engages a London-based Chinese journalist to help her reunite with her family. It appears to have struck a chord (弦) in China after first being released by independent vloggers on Douyin. By Monday evening, it had reportedly received more than 310 million views. The plot line taps into growing Chinese criticism of the British Museum after reports last month that more than 1,500 priceless objects, including gold jewelry, semi-precious stones and glass, were missing, stolen or damaged.

In August the state media Global Times called for the return of Chinese artifacts from the museum “free of charge” in the wake of the controversy. “The huge holes in the management and security of cultural objects in the British Museum exposed by this scandal (丑闻) have led to the collapse of a long-standing and widely circulated claim that ‘foreign cultural objects are better protected in the British Museum’,” it said. It strongly supported the video series for touching on a “powerful message” about the importance of cultural heritage and reflecting “Chinese people’s desiring for the repatriation of the Chinese cultural relics.”

State broadcaster CCTV also gave the short films a glowing review saying: “We are very pleased to see Chinese young people are passionate about history and tradition... We are also looking forward to the early return of Chinese artifacts that have been displayed overseas.”

The museum scandal made headlines around the world and reawakened earlier demands by the Chinese media to restore the country’s relics. The new three-part show has triggered a wave of nationalism among viewers, with many praising the creative plot that reduced them to tears by showing how the teapot experienced the happiness of returning to China to see pandas and watch a flag-raising ceremony on Tiananmen Square.

4 . A 15-year-old student has been praised a hero. Because he had _______ the life of a man who had suffered a heart attack. Sheng Xiaohan hadn’t told students and teachers the story until the man _______ at the school to thank him.

Sheng said he was _______ home at 9:00 pm. after working late at school, when he saw people surrounding a unconscious man on the ground, with a man making _______ to pat (轻拍) on his back.

Then Sheng measured the man’s pulse (脉搏) and found it was _______. “I had learned first _______ since primary school. And the latest time was during military (军事的)_______,” he said. He thought the old man might have_______ a heart attack. Then he tried cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). He pressed down on the man’s chest _______, while asking another man to help with artificial respiration. Sheng kept doing CPR for about six minutes without nervousness until the ambulance ________, and sent the man to the hospital.

“I can’t stop or ask others to replace me in case of any ________,” he added. “During the process, he started to breathe again, which made me ________ to go on.”

Sheng said he didn’t feel tired during the ________, but afterwards his arms were ________. After the experience, he didn’t ________ it as an unusual thing, because he was always ready to help others.

6 . I’ve heard that it’s better to give than to receive. But I’m here to tell you that the ________ of receiving should never be under estimated (低估).

I was nine when my Dad and Mom ________, and took me to my grandparents. I decided at that age, in my loneliness and anger that I’d become unbelievably ________, needing no one.

Believe it or not, I took care of everyone in my life, even when I was in worse shape. Once in a while, ________, someone would do something for me at just the moment.

Once, when I was a single parent, I took my son to see Santa Claus.

When he ________ me to buy the photo that was taken, I opened my wallet, only to find that I didn’t have enough money. When I got to the counter to ________ the photo, I was told that someone inline ahead of me had seen me ________ my change and had paid for me. I rushed out to thank the person whose small kindness ________ so much. I found no one in sight. I wanted to ________ that I didn’t need this and I just didn’t have enough cash on that day. I ________ then that it’s okay. It’s okay to let someone do something for me, ________ I could have done it myself.

I have received the blessings (祝福) of those whose acts of generosity and_______ have found me when I needed them most. I believe that it’s not about my strength and independence. It’s about allowing the giver to be blessed when the gift is graciously (优雅地) ________. For me, it’s about a long lost little girl who is no longer ________. Now I know that ________ and receiving are two halves of a whole, each incomplete without the other.

On February 16, 1861, a big earthquake struck Sumatra, an Indonesian island. The earthquake shook the     1    (west)side of the island, causing a tsunami (海啸). That wall of water crashed into the shore,     2     (destroy) towns and taking thousands of     3    (life).

Recently, though, a team of scientists discovered that another earthquake occurred before this deadly event. According to the record, that earthquake     4    (start) in 1829 and lasted for 32 years but no one felt even one shake. This kind of slow-moving earthquake     5    (call) “silent earthquakes” because no instrument can find them. Scientists have only begun discovering them because    6     the advances in GPS technology in the last twenty years.

To figure out what is going on under the ground, scientists need to study earthquakes. Every earthquake, either small     7     big, can teach scientists something about how much the ground will shake in the future. Unluckily, no one can predict (预测) when an earthquake will hit. Scientists just have to prepare to study all earthquakes     8     strike.

But silent earthquakes like the one in Sumatra change the game for scientists. These silent earthquakes happen all over     9    world. Sometimes, a silent earthquake happens just before a regular one, both of which might be related. By studying silent earthquakes, scientists hope to     10     (well) understand regular earthquakes than before and possibly predict them.