2 . When I was a boy, I played the piano six hours a day. I love the instrument. My mother________ me to read notes, and my father showed me how to control the ______. At first I played on clunky (沉闷的) Chinese keyboards ______, but the best we could afford. Later my parents bought me a Swedish piano, but I broke half the keys on it playing Tchaikovsky.

To be a serious ______, I would have to move to Beijing where millions of pianists in China were competing for fame. To remove to Beijing with me, my father ______ a great sacrifice. He quit his concertmaster’s (首席小提琴手) job and my mother still stayed in Shenyang to keep working to ______ us. Before we ______ Beijing, they both warned me, “Being a pianist is hard. Can you live without your mother?” I said, “I want my ______!” But I knew I needed to be in Beijing.

Suddenly my father and I were newcomers—outsiders. The only apartment we could afford was in an unheated building, with five families ______ one bathroom. My father became an house-wife mostly.

I was miserable, but not from the poverty or ______. My new teacher in Beijing didn’t like me. “You have no _____, ” she often told me. “You will never be a pianist.” And one day, she ____ me.

I was just nine years old then and I didn’t want to be a pianist anymore, I wanted to go home to my mother. For the next two weeks I didn’t touch the piano. ______, my father didn’t push. He just ______. That day I told my father what he waited to hear—that I wanted to study with a new teacher. ______ that time on, everything turned around.

4.

A．scientist

B．genius

C．musician

D．doctor