Shijing, also The Book of Songs or Shih Ching, is the     1     (early) collection of Chinese poetry. It     2     (make) up of 311 poems dating from the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty to the middle stage of the Spring and Autumn Period. Nowadays, Confucius is generally believed to be the     3     (edit) of the book.

Shijing is rich in content,     4     (describe) love and labour, war and slavery, customs and marriage, ancestor worship and special events. It is called a mirror of social life.

Poems included in Shijing fall into three sections-poems that come from villages belong to Feng; those written to persuade or praise the rulers belong to Ya; those used at religious     5     (ceremony) belong to Song. Ya and Song are flowery and serious in language.     6    , Feng is relatively inspiring and full of passion.

The opening poem of Shijing, “Cooing and Wooing” (《关雌》), is about love,     7     reads:

By riverside are cooing, a pair of turtledoves;

A good young man is wooing, a fair maiden he loves.

It is vivid that the man is longing     8     (win) over the girl.

Shijing enables people to have a better understanding of Chinese civilization and is also     9     beginning of ancient Chinese poetry. Additionally, it is also frequently quoted in other Chinese texts and has always been referred to     10     moral truth and lessons.

Thanks to advances in technology, how we make friends and communicate with them has changed     1     (significant). Nowadays, we can move around the world and still stay in touch     2     the people that we want to make friends with.

Social media tools let us see what our friends are up to and maintain friendships. The digital age also enables us     3     (find) people who share our interests, such as collecting model cars or     4     (play) an unusual instrument. Whatever our     5     (hobby) are, the Internet can connect us with others who also enjoy doing them, even if they live on the other side of the world.

However, the “friends” online don’t necessarily become our real friends. If people always exchange true     6     (person) information online, then these friendships can be real and meaningful. But we need to keep in mind that what we see on social media     7     (be) often not the whole truth about a person. On social media sites, people tend to post only positive updates    8    make them appear happy and friendly and the smiling photos can hide real problems.

    9    , this doesn’t mean that we should throw the baby out with the bath water. Although in recent years technology    10     (change) the way we acquire friends, the meaning of friendship and our longing for friends remain the same.

How is it going? ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Yours,

Li Hua