Recently, Chinese netizens expressed amazement at a map full of dotted signs. Wu Yunjie is the map maker, who is     1     (passion) about cultural relics. Clearly marking the country’s historic sites was once his pursuit, and now with perseverance and commitments     2     (come) the great moment he looks forward to.

In 2020, Wu started collecting information. Many historical sites cannot be located     3     (specific) and some information is not fully disclosed, for     4     he spent much time carrying out on-site visits.

Though facing difficulties, Wu has joy in this job. Now, the map includes nearly 10,000 historical landmarks using different colors     5     (represent) different categories: Red signs show the cultural relic sites under state protection, while green signs stand for the     6     ( protect) historical sites by the provinces. Scattered like stars in the sky and     7     (tower) on the ground, numerous ancient tall architectures are also marked on the map.

The cultural relics recorded on the map account     8     less than 2% of the over 760,000 immovable cultural relics. “If possible, I’d like to document many cultural relics that     9     (lose) overseas for such a long time. Those treasures may not be able to return to their homeland at the moment,     10     the stories they carry are what we need to see.”

During China’s dynastic period, emperors planned the city of Beijing     1     arranged the residential areas according to social classes. The term “hutong”,     2     (original) meaning “water well” in Mongolian, appeared first during the Yuan Dynasty.

In the Ming Dynasty, the center was the Forbidden City,     3     (surround) in concentric (同心的) circles by the Inner City and Outer City. Citizens of higher social classes     4     (permit) to live closer to the center of the circles. The large siheyuan of these high-ranking officials and wealthy businessmen often     5     (feature) beautifully carved and painted roof beams and pillars (柱子). The hutongs they formed were orderly, lined by     6     (space) homes and walled gardens. Farther from the center lived the commoners and laborers. Their siheyuan were far smaller in scale and     7     (simple) in design and decoration, and the hutongs were narrower.

Hutongs represent an important cultural element of the city of Beijing. Thanks to Beijing’s long history     8     capital of China, almost every hutong has its stories, and some are even associated with historic     9     (event). In contrast to the court life and upper-class culture represented by the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, and the Temple of Heaven, the hutongs reflect     10     culture of grassroots Beijingers.

China’s traditional Laba Festival is celebrated on the eighth day of the 12th month of the lunar Chinese calendar,     1     falls on January 18 this year. It     2     (regard) as the prelude (序幕) to Chinese New Year.

There are different     3     (origin) of the Laba congee, but one of the most popular is about Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang of the Ming Dynasty.

Before Zhu became emperor, he was suffering in a prison on a winter day. When he was starving, he found some red beans, rice, dates and other grains near a rat hole     4     (unexpected), so he boiled these together to make porridge. That day was the     5     (eight) day of the 12th lunar month. Later, when Zhu Yuanzhang was emperor, he decided     6     (name) the porridge he ate Laba congee     7     memory of that special day in prison.

Since then,     8     (enjoy) a bowl of Laba congee with families and friends has been a time-honored tradition in China,       9     it also sweetens a winter day. Made of a     10     (various) of ingredients, including various beans, rice, lotus seeds, peanuts, etc., it is believed to be good for people’s health.

After waking up, you may feel frustrated that you cannot recall the dreams you had last night. Artificial intelligence (AI) may be     1     (capacity) of helping you, because they     2     (learn) all the time from large amounts of data from both tests and images. Researchers from Osaka University in Japan have gone to great     3     (long) to train an AI system called Stable Diffusion to re-create images based on people’s brain scans.

The researchers used an online data set provided by the University of Minnesota, US,     4     consisted of brain scans from four participants as they each viewed     5     set of 10, 000 photos.

The AI then learned about the brain activities on the basis of the     6     (analyze)of changes in blood flow and then matched the brain activities with the photos. Through this method, AI learned how human brains would react when seeing different photos.

    7     (ultimate), the researchers tested the AI on additional brain scans from the same participants when they viewed photos of a toy bear, airplane, clock and train. If the person looked at an airplane, for example, the AI would use the brain scan data to create an image of a vague airplane. Then, it would turn     8     the previous “text-to-image” model and improve the quality of the image by feeding itself the keyword “airplane”. The final images were “convincing” with about 80 percent of     9     (accurate), according to the researchers.

The new study created a novel approach to     10     (combine) texts and images to “decode the brain”. In the future, scientists hope that the technology can be used to record imagined thoughts and dreams.

A group of 11 children from Nanning, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region in South China, fearlessly embarked on an     1     (education) trip to Harbin. Dressed in orange coats, they     2     (refer) to as the “little tangerines (砂糖橘)”,     3     the oldest just six and a half years old and the youngest only three years and five months old. The nickname symbolizes both     4     (they) cute orange outfits and Guangxi’s prominent citrus production.

Wherever they travelled, they were     5     (warm) embraced and showered with affection by the locals. In Harbin, they tasted the local food and watched a fireworks display amid     6     snowy landscape. The lead teacher of their tour confirmed their     7     (arrive) in Mohe,     8    a local travel agency welcomed the tour group. At the northernmost police outpost of China, they     9     (sing) the national anthem and saluted the border guards,     10     (mark) an important part of their trip.