Today was my first day back in San Francisco after camping in the Redwood Forest and visiting the wine country of Napa Valley. I have to admit that it d    1     feels good to be back in the city again. And what a city — a city that was able to rebuild itself after the earthquake that o    2     in 1906. There are so many beautiful old buildings — many — sitting on top of big hills, offering great v    3     of the city, the ocean, and the Golden Gate Bridge.

My hotel is near d    4    , in the Mission District, one of the oldest parts of the city. Many of the people living here are from Mexico or Central America. This district used to be a p    5    area of town, but is now a centre for art, music, and food. I    6     fact, an art movement called the Mission School started here. It’s i    7     by graffiti art and comic art. I walked around looking at the s    8     art for a few hours. It was quite modern and l    9     . Afterwards, I ate some delicious Mexican-Chinese noodles from a food truck. A real m    10     of cultures here!

During the Middle Ages, the p    1     of Western art was to teach people about Christianity. T    2    , artists were not interested in painting r    3     scenes. Their works were often p    4     and two-dimensional, and the main c    5     were often made much larger than everyone else to show their importance. This began to change in the 13th century with Giotto di Bondone (1267-1337). While his paintings still had r    6     themes, they showed real people in a real environment. In p    7    , his paintings are set a    8     f    9     other paintings by their realistic human faces and deep emotional i    10    .

As a player, Lang Ping brought honour and   g    1     to our country. As a coach, she led the China women’s volleyball team to m    2     at world championships and the Olympics. As a person, Lang Ping is loved by fans at home and a    3    . When the Chinese team was preparing for the 2015 World Cup, her d    4     was tested. The team that Lang Ping had built was falling a    5    . One of the best players had been injured, and the team c    6     had to leave because of heart problems. Losing two important players was a big c    7    , but Lang Ping did not lose heart. She had faced d    8     before, and she knew that her young players could win if they worked together as a team. Two weeks later, they were world c    9    ! Then in 2016, Lang ping l    10     her volleyball team to Olympic gold in Brazil.

The virtual choir was the idea of award-winning composer and     1     Eric Whitacre.     2     in the USA on 2 January 1970, Whitacre began study music at the University of Nevada in 1988. He     3     in love with Mozart’s classical music     4     he sang for the university choir.     5     by this music, he said, “It was like seeing color for the first time.” He graduated     6     university in 1995, and then     7     a master’s degree in musical composition from the Juilliard School in New York in 1997. Over the next 10 years, Whitacre’s     8     compositions began to become quite     9     among choirs and singers. This     10     to the creation of the virtual choir.

Come and see the Terracotta Army: more than 8,000 statues were made in the third century BCE     1     of the Chinese Emperor Qinshihuang! Each statue has a different face,     2     that each one is a copy of a real soldier. The statues fill only one part of the emperor's huge tomb, which still has not been     3    . More than 700,000 people worked for nearly 40 years to build this tomb. However, no one    4     knew about the tomb or the terracotta statues until 1974, when some farmers discovered the tomb while they    5    .

When she was five years old, Lin Qiaozhi was deeply affected by her mother's death. At age 18, she chose to study medicine instead of following the traditional path of     1     (marry) like the majority of girls. Eight years later, Lin graduated from Peking Union Medical College(PUMC). She            2     (immediate)became the first woman ever to be hired as a resident physician in the OB-GYN department of the PUMC Hospital. Within six months, she was named a chief resident physician, a position that usually took four years to achieve.

After working for a few years, she was sent to study in Europe and then, in the US. She greatly impressed her American     3     (同事)and they invited her to stay. However, she     4     (拒绝)the offer. In 1941, Dr Lin became the first Chinese woman ever     5     (appoint) director of the OB-GYN department of the PUMC Hospital. Dr Lin opened a private     6     (诊所)to help people in need and charged very low     7     (费用) and often reduced costs for poor patients. At times she was even seen     8     (ride) a donkey to faraway villages to provide medical care.

The new People's Republic of China saw Dr Lin Qiaozhi playing a key role. In 1954, she            9    (elect) to the first National People's Congress and held many important positions.

Though she never married, she was known as the “mother of ten thousand babies”, having delivered over 50, 000 babies in her lifetime. And she didn't     10     (退休)until the day she died.