1 . A long，long time ago，Nyame the sky god hid all the stories in a box high in the sky. No person or animal had any story to tell，so everyone was very sad.

Then one day，an old spider，Anansi，made a long web all the way to the sky. Anansi climbed the web to the sky and asked Nyame，“Can I have the stories please？I'll do anything if you give us the stories."Nyame thought for a moment.Then he answered，“Fine. First I will give you a task. Bring me three things：a snake，a leopard，and bees.Then I will give you the stories." Nyame laughed so loudly that everyone on Earth could hear him！Anansi climbed slowly back to Earth and told his wife, Aso, what had happened. She listened carefully. Then she said，"I have a plan."

Later that day，Anansi followed Aso's plan. First，he found a long stick. After that，he went near Snake's home and said loudly，“This is very long，very long indeed！"When Shake heard Anansi talking, he said，“What is so long？"Anansi answered，“I'm sorry，Snake.This stick is longer than you are. “Snake answered proudly. “It is not！I'm a very long snake! You will see that I am longer.” He moved next to the stick. Then，Anansi quickly used his web to tie Snake to the stick.

Immediately，Anansi climbed back to the sky and gave the snake to Nyange. Bur Nyame only said，“I told you to bring three things.Where are the other two？"Then Nyame laughed，“Ha ha ha！” Anansi sadly went back to Earth with no stories. He asked his wife，“How will I ever obtain a leopard？"

Again，Aso had a plan，and Anansi followed it. First，he made a hole in the ground and put sticks over it so no one could see the hole.The next day，Anansi went back to the hole and Leopard had fallen inside！Anansi used his web to quickly tie him up. He took Leopard to Nyame. Nyame looked surprised this time. He said，“You still must bring the bees！"Again，Anansi asked Aso for help. Again，he followed her plan.The next day he found a tree with bees in it. He quickly threw water on the tree and on himself. Then he said to the bees，“It is raining！Quick--get inside my gourd（葫芦）. It will keep you dry.”So the bees fell for his trick and all flew into Anansi’s gourd. With a big smile，Anansi used his web to close the gourd, so the bees could not get out.

Finally，Anansi took the bees to Nyame. Nyame was not laughing anymore. Nyame kept his promise and gave Anansi all of the stories. Very carefully，Anansi carried all the stories back down to Earth. And after he told each story，he said，“Stories are for telling，not for keeping in boxes.”

1. It was Snake's ________that led him to being caught by Anansi.

A．being sympathetic	B．being competitive
C．being cooperative	D．being helpful

2. Nyame's laughter changed in volume each time he met Anansi because ________ .

A．he found that Anansi was a better story teller than he was

B．he felt surprised that Aso helped Anansi in such a way

C．he sensed that he would have to keep his promise

D．he was disappointed that Anansi was not so eager for stories

3. It can be inferred from the passage that Aso ________ .

A．had a good knowledge of the animals

B．was more anxious for stories than Anansi

C．liked to take challenges

D．knew where Nyame hid the stories

4. Which of the following might be the best title of the passage？

A．Why stories are for telling not for hiding

B．How Anansi gave people stories

C．Why Snake，Leopard and Bees were tricked

D．How Aso came up with the plans

2 . What inventions have had the greatest impact on the way we live？Most people would mention the wheel，the printing press，the internet，and so or. But pause for a moment and consider the following four contenders.

Standard time

Time has always existed，but “standard time'" hasn't. Imagine the world today if our clocks weren't synchronized. In the 18th and 19th centuries，towns around the world used their own local time，which was different from town to town. This meant that a train could arrive in one town before it had officially left the previous one！Time zones across the world were only standardized at the beginning of the 20th century, enabling international air travel and global business to take place.

The light bulb

When the electric light bulb first appeared in the 19^th century，it came with a waning sign to be placed on the wall next to the bulb：“Do not attempt to light with a match".Now，perhaps more than any other object in our lives，we take it for granted. Light bulbs light up our cities and roads at night，they have led to more flexible working hours and they enable us to do much more with our free time. Imagine your evenings without electric lights！

Algorithms

An algorithm is defined as "the steps that you follow to solve a problem or reach an answer'". The first algorithms date back almost 4,000 years to the Babylonians，but the word itself comes from the 9^th century Persian mathematician，Al-Khwarizmi. Algorithms started to make a big impact in the 20th century.They are central to how computers process information and they decide everything from the search results you see when you Google a word，to the time you wait at traffic lights.In fact，you could argue that we are living in the age of the algorithm. It's a shame so few of us understand them！

Shipping containers

First used in the 1950s，shipping containers are，in many ways，the symbol of our times.They have made globalization possible. Before shipping containers，goods were loaded and unloaded by hand. Each package had to be carried onto the ship，tied down with ropes and then untied and carried out at the other hand. Just unloading a single ship could take 20 men a week，making goods from abroad very expensive. Nowadays，three people operating three cranes can unload a ship in about ten hours.The largest modern ships are four football fields long and can carry almost 15，000 containers. This has made shipping costs low，which has resulted in cheaper goods all over the world and has affected all our lives dramatically.

1. The word“synchronized'（in paragraph 1）is closest in meaning to“ ________ .”

A．made to show standardized time

B．made to adapt to the local time

C．made to indicate the local time accurately

D．made to ensure that trains arrive on time

2. If we are to put the items from earliest to latest according to when they first appeared，the correct order should be   ________ .

A．the light bulb，shipping containers，algorithms，standard time

B．algorithms，the light bulb，standard time，shipping containers

C．shipping containers，standard time.the light bulb，algorithms

D．standard time，algorithms，shipping containers，the light bulb

3. Which of the following items makes it possible for us to buy imported goods at a low price？

A．Standard time.

B．The light bulb.

C．Algorithms.

D．Shipping containers.

3 . Directions：Complete the following passage by using the words in the box.Each word can only be used once.Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. complicated     B.concern     C.disruptions     D. eventually     E.frequent     F.healing G.holding        H.reminder     I. representatively   J. vocalizing     K.zero

Secrets are bad for your health

I grew up in a Midwestern town where the popular wisdom was to only talk about what was pleasant and to keep secrets，if necessary，to make that happen.This meant staying silent when someone offended you，rarely     1     negative feelings and smiling a little more than is necessary. It also meant     2     room for airing any sort of dirty laundry，especially not the kinds of personal secrets that keep people up at night.

Many of us like to believe that sweeping unpleasant truths under the rug might make them     3     go away. Instead，keeping secrets--especially heavy ones--can spin an even more     4     web of isolation and deception. So why do we do it？

The truth can hurt. But in many situations，it s better to get it out and let the     5     start，rather than allowing it to become more dangerous.The burden of     6     in the truth doesn't just disappear. It hides itself in the back of your mind and can cause a number of     7       to your life and health.

"If the situations in your daily life are regular     8     of the secret，and you find it stressful to keep it，then yes，it can have emotional and physical consequences.” says Dr.Dean McKay. “Some people also find keeping secrets stressful out of a general     9     that they will 'slip’. This     10     and recurring thought of the secret can in itself be stressful.”

4 . Directions：After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passages coherent and grammatically correct.For the blanks with a given word，fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word；for the other blanks，use one word that best fits each blank.

Young professor's success an encouraging sign

Feng Lei,with a doctorate in computer science and engineering from the Nanyang Technological University，surprised many netizens by landing a job as a doctoral supervisor at the Chongqing University at the young age of 25. Feng Lei is the youngest talent     1     (introduce) to the College of Computer Science，and it is the first time for the university to grant the position of professor and doctoral supervisor to a fresh PhD graduate.

For many，the title of professor     2     be earned through a tedious assessment of paper-publishing.teaching experience，project quality evaluation--all those nearly cost a decade.In that sense, the University did find the suitable person by breaking conventions.

In an era     3     post-90s and post-95s have gradually become the pillars of colleges and universities，    4     is indeed the university's right to recruit people with talent and virtue.The role of national laboratories，research institutions，high-level universities and leading tech companies must be amplified to develop a large number of leading scholars and innovation teams     5     China aims to rank among the world's best as a strategic force in science by 2035.The nation must focus the strength of its talent policies on young specialists while enabling     6     to take major responsibility, said President Xi Jinping，who called for greater emphasis     7     (give) to training talent and quicker steps to establish     8     people have come to call a competitive edge in human resources.

It is time for the younger generation to find higher standards of idols instead     9       chasing pop stars who are caught doing something discreditable.Aren't young scholars like Feng Lei who     10     (win) the hearts of all by their hard work and performance worth admiring？

5 . Directions: Read the following three passages. Summarize the main idea and the main point（s）of the passage in no more than 60 words. Use your own words as far as possible.

How Come Scientists Draw Opposite Conclusions?

One of the biggest concerns is science is bias-that scientist themselves, consciously or unconsciously, may put their thumbs on the scales and influence the outcomes of experiments. But gathering the data and running an experiment is not the only part of the process that can go awry. The methods chosen to analyse the data can also influence results even if being based on the same data-set.

A new paper, headed by Martin Schweinsberg, a psychologist at the European School of Management and Technology, in Berlin, helps shed some light on why. Dr Schweinsberg gathered 49 different researchers with each handed a copy of a data-set consisting of nearly 8,000 comments made on an online forum for chatty intellectuals. Dr Schweinsberg asked his guinea pigs to explore a seemingly straightforward hypothesis(假设)that a woman’s tendency to participate would rise as the number of other women in a conversation increased. Crucially, the researchers were asked to describe their analysis in detail by posting their methods and workflows, which allowed Dr Schweinsberg to see exactly what they were up to.

As it turned out, no two analysts employed exactly the same methods, and none got the same results. Some 29% of analysts reported that women do indeed participate more, if plenty of other women are present. But 21% concluded that the opposite was true. (The remainder found no significant difference).

The problem was not that any of the analyses were “wrong” in any objective sense. The differences arose because researchers chose different definitions of what they were studying, and applied different techniques. When it came to defining how much women spoke, some analysts plumped for the number of words in each woman’s comment. Others chose the number of characters. Still others defined it by the number of conversations that a woman participated in, irrespective of how much she actually said. The statistical techniques chosen also had an impact, though less than the choice of definitions. Some researchers chose linear-regression analysis: others went for logistic regression or a Kendall correlation.

Truth, in other words, can be a slippery customer, even for simple-sounding questions. What to do? One conclusion is that experimental design is critically important. It is recommended that scientists specify exactly how they chose to perform their analysis, allowing those decisions to be reviewed by others. It is probably not practical, he concedes, to check and re-check every result. But if many different analytical approaches point in the same direction, then scientists can be confident that their conclusion is the right one.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

6 . The statue of King Leopold II of Belgium that stands in sight of the royal palace in Brussels has been defaced dozens of times in recent years. Activists have painted its hands and eyes red as a reminder of the brutality that Leopold unleashed in the Congo Free State, a territory in central Africa, at the end of the 19th century. As many as 10 million Congolese-or half of the population-might have perished as Europeans forced entire villages to collect rubber and ivory for export.

Leopold’s exploitation of Congo was a scandal. In 1908, after years of campaigning by journalists, the Belgian state stripped the king of his private possession. The Belgian Congo joined other European colonies in Africa where wanton（恶意的）extraction was to be replaced by a supposedly civilising mission. Yet though less transparently murderous, the “benign” colonialism of elsewhere was often not that different from what happened under Leopold. A new book, “In the Forest of No Joy”, by J. P. Daughton, an American historian, exposes how forced labour in the French Congo（now the Republic of Congo）, on the other side of the river from Leopold’s possession（now the Democratic Republic）, led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Africans.

The book is a masterful, if relentlessly bleak, account of the construction of the Congo-Ocean Railway, a route designed to connect the central African interior to the Atlantic. What makes it so compelling is the divide it exposes between the often admirable intentions of colonial bureaucrats, who did genuinely think they were lifting Africans out of poverty, and the grim reality that they enabled. The application of “modern” government to conquered people could be almost as savage as plunder（掠夺）, Mr Daughton shows.

The railway was the idea of Pietro Paolo Savorgnan di Brazza, an Italian-born French explorer who conquered much of central Africa for France “by exclusively peaceful means”. The French state imagined itself as a bringer of civilisation to Africa, and the railway was to provide a way for the Congolese to take part in world trade. Yet Mr Daughton shows how the colonial administration in Congo had little capacity to build a railway without violence: it claimed to be recruiting paid volunteers while its agents forced Africans to work at gunpoint. Many were marched hundreds of kilometres to the tracks chained at the neck, as slaves had been a century before. Whatever work had to be done, reported Albert Londres, a French journalist, “it’s captives who do it.”

Surprisingly, the French state documented these abuses diligently（the archives provide the source of much of Mr Daughton’s information）. In 1926 one inspector, Jean-Noel-Paul Pegourier, compared the treatment of workers on the railway to the German genocide of the Herero in Namibia before the first world war. Yet unlike the reports of Leopold’s abuses, these observations had little effect, not least because orders issued from Paris or even Brazzaville were simply ignored. Raphael Antonetti, the colonial governor, fought back with an avalanche of legalese.

The railway was a masterpiece of engineering, as Mr Daughton readily admits. For decades it provided the only means of transporting goods within Congo. The wealth of Brazzaville, still so named, was built on it. In Britain and France, the infrastructure bequeathed to former colonies is often cited as an argument for its benefits. But to build it, a weak and stingy state had to rely on brutality. As Mr Daughton reports, “the Congo-Ocean provides an all too-useful case in point for how the language of humanity could be invoked to explain the deaths of thousands.”

1. According to the passage, King Leopold was infamous for ________.

A．taking possession of the private belongings of 10 million Congolese by killing them

B．reviving slavery by illegally transporting the native Congo villagers to Europe

C．being physically handicapped by people in the Congo Free State for his cruel governance

D．his tyrannical and exploitative behaviors imposing forced labor on the Congolese

2. Which of the following statements will Mr Daughton probably disagree with?

A．European bureaucrats’ intention to bring prosperity to the Africans led to unintended consequences.

B．The African workers involved in the railway construction were enslaved and ill-treated.

C．Despite being crowned as a masterpiece of engineering, the railway is of little benefit to local people.

D．Some colonists led no better lives when governed by civilized leaders than by tyrants.

3. Why did the documents made by the French state about the construction workers’ being abused barely contribute to improving the condition?

A．Because the local governor turned a blind eye to the instructions given by higher officials.

B．Because some of the descriptions were groundless and denied by the inspector on the site.

C．Because the local agents fought back by filing a lawsuit against the alleged documents.

D．Because the workers on the railway were contracted volunteers though being treated cruelly.

4. Which of the following can be the best title for the passage?

A．A Brief History of Forced Labor	B．Blood on the Tracks
C．Treasure of Colonialism	D．The Vanishing Humanity

7 . Across all four walls of a vast hall, Vincent van Gogh’s blue irises begin to sway. They bloom gently at first, then more violently, as the music builds to a crashing crescendo. Visitors to “Immersive Van Gogh”, showing at a former music venue in San Francisco, sit or stand in socially distant circles on the floor, their bodies bathed in the glow of these animated laser projections.

“Immersive art” experiences are on the rise, not just in America but across the world. Tens of thousands of people have walked completely dry through a “Rain Room” of streaming water in Shanghai, Melbourne and Sharjah. Others have entered a gallery filled with disorientating yellow fog in Berlin or visited a mirrored “infinity room” in New York. More and more, the experience of contemporary art is just that: an experience.

These installations share a common trait: an urge by artists to create and audiences to enjoy a space in which visitors participate and play. “It’s a bit like going into the museum and being in the picture,” says Florian Ortkrass, co-founder of Random International, an art collective which has followed its blockbuster “Rain Room” with other hands-on exhibits that probe the tension between human bodies and technology. “If this kind of work is done well, it engages people emotionally, it lifts them out of their everyday rut,” adds HannesKoch, Random Intemational’s other co-founder. “It heightens your awareness and perception of people and the space around you and people like that.”

Immersion in a sensory experience-a Gesamtkunstwerk or total work of art-has a long pedigree in human history, with the cave paintings at Lascaux and the overwhelming aesthetic experience of the Gothic cathedral. Yet through the 19th and 20th centuries art-making became more individual and focused on the autonomous painted or sculpted object. Only in the 1960s did artists return to “reinventing art as the environment”. Artists have been experimenting with ambitious installations ever since, enabled by ever more sophisticated technological tools.

Admittedly, whizzy new technology is part of the reason for immersive art’s appeal. In a screen-saturated world, there is also an undeniable “relief that comes with being in a physical environment that sparks the imagination,” says Ali Rubinstein, co-chief executive of Meow Wolf. “People want to connect to art-making.” agrees Mr Glimcher of Super-blue. More profoundly, as humans become more urban and isolated, “we need our artists to help us connect to a sense of awe-to the transcendent(超常的)and to each other,” he adds.

Art is always a reflection of the spirit of its time, notes Dorothea von Hantelmann, professor of art and society at Bard College Berlin. What she calls “the shift from object to experience” is a phenomenon of the rich world that reflects many things: an excess of stuff, a young, more interactive generation with a sophisticated aesthetic, and, perhaps, “a new kind of thinking which one might call ecological thinking, which is to think in connections, in relations.”

1. Which of the following words is NOT proper to describe “immersive art” experiences?

A．engaging

B．awe-inspiring

C．chilling

D．dazzling

2. According to the passage, the purpose of hosting exhibits of immersive art is to ________.

A．call on people to be alert and stay away from overwhelming technologies.

B．liberate people from daily routines and enhance their understanding of the world around.

C．urge more visitors to work with artists and participate in the creation of exhibits.

D．invite people to experience contemporary art by focusing on framed objects.

3. It can be inferred from paragraph 4 that ________.

A．immersion has always been a popular form of artistic appreciation ever since the ancient times.

B．the focus on individual experience of art in the 19th century laid a foundation for contemporary immersive art.

C．the magnificent works in the Gothic cathedral drew its inspiration from prehistoric cave paintings.

D．cutting-edge technologies have accelerated the burgeoning development of immersive art since the 1960s.

4. According to the last two paragraphs, immersion has become a much sought after form of art in that ________.

A．people are immersed in a more self-isolated environment to stimulate imagination.

B．people feel relieved and more related, strengthening their connection with what goes beyond ordinary limits.

C．artists are to reflect on the difference between autonomous objects and immersive experiences.

D．younger generations are inspired to pursue a world of aesthetics teeming with excessive material objects.

8 . A Bold New Era at Work

Adrienne Barnard has worked in human resources since 2004, and has been all manner of concerns and requests from workers. But Barnard, now senior vice president of people operations at Boston tech startup Mainstay, recently found herself shocked at how emboldened some employees had become.

“There’s a sense of _________ that’s buildings,” says Barnard, who’s had to deal with issues like remote workers expressing _________ with the system the company used to deliver them free lunches. “These employees are recognizing, ‘You need me, and if I leave, it’s going to be hard to replace me.’”

Employees in many industries are in a position of power that they haven’t experienced in years, as the economy swiftly _________ from the pandemic and businesses struggle to recruit retain enough workers to keep up with the growth. The rate of monthly _________ hit a record low in May, as job openings notched a record high. Meanwhile, more employees _________ quit their jobs in April than ever previously recorded-a clear sign that they’re confident they can find better options.

On top of the tight labor market, the pandemic has led many people to reconsider the centrality of work in their lives and has _________ some ties to their employers. Surveys suggest roughly 40% of U. S. workers are open to switching jobs in the coming months.

To a significant extent, this is a really good development. Workers had lost leverage with employers over the past four decades, amid a sharp _________ in union membership and an intense focus on shareholders at the expense of employees. The recent rise in wages. and worker’s increasing _________ in workplace practices, in many ways helps reset the balance.

Now, in order to attract and retain the workers they need, leaders are having to _________ their organizations’ practices. A large portion of office-based companies are rolling out flexible schedules, which allow employees to work when they want, and hybrid arrangements, where they __________ their time between office and remote work.

Barnard predicts the four-day workweek may even __________. Already, Kickstarter and other U. S. companies have committed to experimenting with the approach. And in a high-profile test in Iceland, workers were just as __________ and had improved well-being when they worked a shorter weekly schedule.

Another tactic is to conduct “stay interviews.” Employers traditionally hold “__________ interviews” when people leave companies, to better understand what went wrong. __________, managers would be better off if they proactively met with staff individually to better understand any problems they’re having before they get to the point of quitting. Good questions to ask include What do you wish you could spend less time on?

The increasing empowerment of workers is __________ and bewildering for many managers. But in the end, most of them are managed by someone else themselves. And if managers think deeply about what would attract them to an employer or make them stick around, it might help them succeed in this moment. As Bock says, “People forget that the thing that would help their teams the most is to give them what they themselves want.”

1.

A．resentment

B．entitlement

C．discrimination

D．illusion

2.

A．concern

B．gratitude

C．dissatisfaction

D．agreement

3.

A．rebounds

B．reunites

C．recedes

D．reacts

4.

A．complaints

B．layoffs

C．resignations

D．demonstrations

5.

A．unwillingly

B．admittedly

C．passively

D．voluntarily

6.

A．reinforced

B．loosened

C．tightened

D．narrowed

7.

A．decline

B．surge

C．reversal

D．blow

8.

A．protest

B．word

C．say

D．interference

9.

A．reassure

B．reassess

C．repeat

D．recall

10.

A．combine

B．distinguish

C．waste

D．split

11.

A．take off

B．get away

C．die out

D．catch on

12.

A．sluggish

B．productive

C．worn-out

D．confirmed

13.

A．entrance

B．dismissal

C．exit

D．quiz

14.

A．Meanwhile

B．Therefore

C．Additionally

D．However

15.

A．frustrating

B．inspiring

C．frightening

D．unforgivable

9 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. prosperous             B. dedicated             C. defiance             D. imitated             E. instantly             F. claim G. prioritized             H. freedom             I. notoriously             J. traumatic             K. profound

The French Icon Who Revolutionized Women’s Clothes

In fashion folklore, Gabrielle Coco Chanel is famously credited as the designer who popularized trousers, making them a key piece in women’s wardrobes, and also for helping to liberate women from the tyranny of the corset (紧身衣). Instead of caging them in stuffy designs, her clothes     1     freedom of movement, mobility and comfort. She broke down dressing codes by borrowing elements of men’s fashion, such as pockets and tweed (粗花呢). Like any good pioneer, Chanel’s     2     of societal and gender stereotypes early in her career confused some, and inspired others.

Indeed, a look back at Chanel’s earlier career places her within the Roaring 20s, a time of indulgence driven by     3     economy and post-war recovery. Chanel was responding to the mood of the decade, designing clothes for women who exerted their new-found     4     by chopping off their hair and dancing to American jazz music all night. It’s easy to see why some view her as a feminist icon. Words like “feminine” and “femininity” appear often to describe her creations, though she never talked in these terms. What is really obvious, nevertheless, is that she placed women at the center of her creations and     5     her life to imagining a new way for women to experience fashion.

While the life of the legendary designer—for her     6     childhood as an abandoned orphan to the     7     that she was a spy for German intelligence—has been scrutinized (仔细审视) in film and books since her death in 1971, the body of her work and her contribution to women’s fashion is far less understood.

“There are more than a hundred biographies about her, which talk mostly about her private life,” says Miren Arzalluz, co-curator of Gabrielle Chanel: Fashion Manifesto. “We thought we knew her. But what we realized was that we lacked a     8     knowledge of her work. As curators, we rediscovered Chanel.”

Take the iconic tweed suit, for example. The two-piece costume,     9     recognizable as signature Chanel, remains a staple in the modern woman’s luxury wardrobe nearly 70 years after it was first introduced to the world, and is     10     frequently in cheap versions by other brands. But beyond its aesthetic, there are definitive reasons that the suit has become an enduring classic. The secret lies in the details: the jacket was designed to be soft and light and the skirt is designed to rests comfortably on top of the hips and angles slightly backwards to hang below the knee, offering the wearer freedom of movement.

10 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passages coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Barcelona Embraces Its Wild Side

At the end of April last year, Barcelona’s inhabitants emerged from a six-week lockdown. To their amazement, they found that while the city    1    （lie）dormant（休眠的）, nature had been busy transforming the streets and parks into a lively and pastoral wilderness

“The parks were shut, so there was no pressure    2     them from humans or dogs and no gardening was carried out,” says Margarita Pares. who heads the city’s biodiversity programme.

“It was spring and it rained a lot more than usual. The result was an explosion in plant growth,     3     there were more insects and more food for birds. And there were many more butterflies, as they are a species that reacts very quickly to changes in the environment.”

The city is now in the process of creating 783,300 square meters of green open space, including as area around the landmark Sagrada Familia basilica, and 49,000 square meters of “greened” streets. It is also encouraging bird and insect life with around 200 nesting towers for birds and bats, 40 beehives and around 80 plantings    4    （design）specifically as insect “hotels”. The council has also published a biodiversity atlas listing all the city’s flora and fauna.

When it comes to    5    （embrace）nature in its cities, Spain lags behind many countries. But it is hoped that Barcelona’s new policy will go some way to rectifying that.

“In a city like Barcelona, its a case of replacing    6     exists with green infrastructure.” says Lorena Escuer, who runs Hydro-biology, a natural pest control company, and has worked in Barcelona on a pilot scheme    7     aim is to plant wildflowers at the base of trees in the streets rather than surround them with pavement or grating.

“It’s not just having a park surrounded by asphalt（沥青）but introducing nature into the city,” says she. “People need re-educating. Their idea of a clean space is somewhere    8     the ecosystem is dead. There has been the conventional wisdom that nature is something outside and that what’s natural for the city is for there to be    9    . Covid has forced us to look at nature in a different way. It’s made us look at how we live and how we want to live. The lockdown gave us a glimpse of nature in the city and we like it.”