Shi Jing, also called the Book of Songs, is the oldest existing     1     (collect) of Chinese poetry. When Chinese musician Fang Jinlong read Shi Jing, he was interested in the stories in the poems. Because he couldn't     2     (full) understand the ancient Chinese language     3     (use) in the poems, he turned to experts to explore the poems.

Then he decided to portray the poems with musical language by inviting composer Ma Jiuyue     4     (create) an album. Titled Music and the Book of Songs, the album was released on Jan. 18, 2021,     5     (feature) 10 original songs composed by Ma. They     6     (perform) by Fang and won great popularity.

The 10 songs are based     7     10 poems from Shi Jing, including Qiong Yao, which conveys gratitude to people who are eager to help others, and Swallows, which sends farewell messages to friends.

“Young people gave warm feedback about traditional Chinese music     8     they had watched my performance. It has inspired me to create more works for them, which helps popularize traditional Chinese music,” says Fang.

“The 10 pieces sound     9     (enjoy) and easy. For the listeners, it's a fresh way to comprehend poems from Shi Jing,” says Ma. “We spent three years working on     10     project. There are so many meanings in the poems and we want to display them as deep as possible with music," Ma says. "It's our mutual goal to have traditional Chinese music reach a wider audience.”

Charles Darwin, a young man just out of university in 1831,    1    (offer) a job on a ship on a voyage of discovery around the world. Life on board was tough. Darwin was    2    (terrible) seasick and was only happy when he was ashore collecting plant samples and observing animals. It was to be the most important journey in his life. It    3    (last) for five years. 

Darwin studied nature in South America and in a group of small islands in the South Pacific. On each island there were birds. They were very similar,    4     the shape of their beaks, and even their eating habits varied. Darwin wondered why they were different. Then he realized that over millions of years, all plants and animals have gradually changed into the forms we see today.    5     we call “the survival of the fittest” he named “natural selection”. He also called this slow process of change “evolution”. 

By 1846,he had published an article describing his voyage. Darwin spent the years    6     followed developing his theories and making them perfect. In 1859, he published them in The Origin of Species. It caused a huge    7    (argue). His The Descent of Man, 1871, pointed out that mankind    8    (come) from the same ancestor. Other scientists agreed with his ideas and took up    9    (he) cause. The church prohibited the    10    (teach) of The Theory of Evolution in some countries. However, today most people believe that Darwin is right.

Unlike most of her fellow postgraduates, who found jobs in big cities, Zhang Xiaoyang, after graduation from Zhejiang University three years ago, chose to go to DunHuang Academy,     1     (land) a job as an archaeologist.

Despite being the world’s largest treasure of Buddhist art, living conditions in Dunhuang, which sits in the Gobi Desert in Northwest China’s Gansu province,     2     (be) tougher than in China’s big cities. People working here have to battle with sand and wind and suffer from     3     (lonely).

Zhang,     4     her late 20s, has an intense routine. Assigned two stressful tasks, she spends most of the day       5     (work) with the excavation team in Tianwangtang. At night. she writes academic reports on the discoveries in Cave 254, which     6     (create) during the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-534).

“Dunhuang is a place of magic. For those who once planned to work here     7     (temporary), maybe it will be a few years     8     they move to bigger cities. But I’m totally fascinated by the site and amazed at     9     the ancient people lived in the desert around then. So I have decided to stay for decades,” said Zhang Xiaoyang.

Her story is featured in The Master of Dunhuang,     10     three—episode documentary, currently available on the streaming site Tencent Video, which has gained a lot of attention online.

The reasons why people write poetry are different and poets use many different forms of poetry to express     1     (them).

Some of     2     first poems a young child learns in English are nursery rhymes, which are usually the     3     (tradition) poems or folk songs. They have a strong rhythm and a lot of repetition. Despite the fact that some of them may not make sense and even seem contradictory, they are easy to learn and recite. List     4     (poem), one of the simplest kinds of poem, have a flexible line length and     5     (repeat) phrases which give both a pattern and a rhythm to the poem. Another simple form of poem is the cinquain,     6     is made up of five lines. This kind of poem can convey a strong picture in just a few words. Haiku is a Japanese form of poetry that consists     7     17 syllables and     8     (be) very popular with English writers. It is easy to write. English speakers like Tang poetry in particular. A lot of Tang poetry     9     (translate) into English already. With so many different forms of poetry     10     (choose) from, why not have a try and write poems of your own?

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.

Li Daiyu and her cousin Liu Qian were on a trip to Canada to visit their cousins in Halifax. They decided     1     (fly) to Vancouver first and then take the train. The thought of crossing the whole country by rail was     2     (excite) for them.

They spent two days in Vancouver. There they took a boat ride,     3     (visit) an island and saw the beautiful mountains looking out over the city.

Then they boarded the train to Lake Louise, where the blue water took     4     (they) breath away with its exceptional beauty. They spent the night and then headed north to Jasper.     5     (look) at the spectacular scenery, they both agreed it was the most awesome journey     6     they had ever taken.

From Jasper, they caught the train bound     7     Toronto. One of the train’s first stops was in Edmonton, whose daily     8     (temperature) in winter average -10℃. From Edmonton, the train headed southeast across the great Canadian Prairie.

After another day on the train, they     9     (eventual) reached Winnipeg. They travelled through the night and the next morning they reached Toronto,     10     capital of Ontario. Their trip from Vancouver to Toronto had taken four days in all.