3 . Maya Lin, designer and sculptor, has created some of the most iconic works and spaces with the belief that art can address important issues. Her latest projects are no different, from museums to sculptures for Presidential centers.

Lin, 62, grew up in Ohio, the daughter of college professors who were Chinese immigrants. As a 21-year-old student at Yale University, she gained national prominence when her entry won a design competition for the new Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Her winning design — two black granite (花岗岩) walls engraved with the names of US service members who died in the Vietnam War (1954-1975) or remain missing — is considered one of the most influential in modern architecture.

Lin went on to design the 1989 Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, and dozens of other projects globally, all with social and environmental justice in mind. She told The Wall Street Journal she uses facts in her art. She said, “I am going to present you with what the story is, but I am not going to draw the conclusion for you.” Currently underway is Lin’s plan for the new Museum of Chinese in America in New York City. Lin said she wants it to be a celebration of Chinese American stories and contributions to the country.

Lin is also designing a sculpture to honor former President Barack Obama’s mother, who died in 1995, at the Obama Presidential Center in Illinois. When Obama awarded Lin the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016, he called her work “physical acts of poetry, each reminding us that the most important element in art or architecture is human emotion.”

Festivals     1     (celebrate) all around the world. They have a wide range of     2     (origin), such as religions, famous figures, and important events. Every festival has     3     (it) different customs and unique charms. However, no matter       4     different they may seem, all over the world, the spirit of sharing joy, gratitude, love, or peace is common in all festivals.

Of all the traditional festivals, the harvest festival can be found in almost every culture. This important     5     (agriculture) festival takes place after all the crops have been gathered in. People celebrate it     6     (show) that they are grateful for the year’s supply of food.

Customs play a significant and relatively stable role in festivals,     7     sometimes they can change over time.     8     the development of modern society, some traditions may fade away and others may be established.

Festivals are an important part of society. They are occasions     9     allow us to relax and enjoy life, and forget about our work for a little while. They help us understand     10     we came from, who we are, and what to appreciate. If you study festivals carefully, you may be surprised to find that different cultures actually have a lot in common after all.

One incident will always come to my mind when I think of China. One day, I was off work early in my hometown in Western Nepal. I was about to leave     1     one of my friends stopped me, proudly     2    (show) a brand new phone. It     3     (fix) to his waistbelt in a beautiful case. Obviously, most of the questions targeted at him     4     (be) about this expensive looking and shining mobile phone. His exact words: “Thanks to China and its people, I could afford this phone. I don’t think we could have such cheap and excellent phones     5     them”. If not for the cheap Chinese goods, the world’s poor can’t afford to buy many things they badly need.

Over the past 70 or so years, China     6     (become) world leader. This shows that it’s possible for sing     7     country to rise from the rubble(废墟)of wars, shame and poverty. It also shows that a country’s     8    (develop) is possible when you have good plans and a strong will!

China has lifted 850 million out of absolute poverty in forty years,     9     is a great achievement in the world history. Besides, it is     10     (true) wishing to help: other poor countries to develop.

These are the reasons I love China and I want it to prosper forever.

6 . We all know that water is tasteless. But it happens from time to time: you pick up the bottle of water you didn’t finish yesterday, and it tastes strange. Most often, you tend to drop the bottle in the trash bin, believing that the water has gone bad. But is it true?

According to Time, of course not, taste has little to do with quality of water.

According to Time, when water is exposed to the air for 12 hours, CO2 interacts with the H2O in the water, and the pH value lowers slightly. As a result, the water has a different taste.

“But it’s most likely safe to drink,” Norwegian expert Truls Krogh told Science Nordic. “If the water is covered and of good quality to start with, in principle it can last a thousand years. That’s because when water is fresh, it contains little organic matter. As long as water is held in clean glasses or bottles, no pollutants will enter it to harm our health.”

People in countries like the US, the UK and Australia usually drink tap water. According to Time, if tap water is drunk within six months, the chlorine(氯气)in the water will be enough to kill any bacteria and keep it safe to drink.

However, there are also some exceptions. If you accidentally put your fingers into water or store water in unclean containers day after day, microorganism (微生物) will enter the water.

With the help v of surrounding temperature, and sunlight streaming through windows, these microorganisms multiply quickly. Sooner or later, the water will be in the charge of the unfriendly bacteria. And if you drink the water too often, then you’re more likely to be ill.

And what about water in plastic bottles? Heat and plastic are a bad combination, US researcher Kellogg Schwab stresses. When plastic bottles are used at high temperatures, they produce a chemical called BPA.BPA is something that affects hormones (荷尔蒙) and research has tentatively linked it to “several health damage, including heart disease and cancer”, Time reported.

Schwab suggests replacing disposable (一次性的) plastic bottles with the refillable containers made of metal or glass to deal with BPA.

8 . Maybe you’ve heard about the saying, “A bird with a broken wing will never fly as high.” I’m sure that T. J. Ware was made to feel this way almost every day in school.

By high school, T. J. was the most famous troublemaker in his town. He got into lots of fights. He failed almost every exam but was passed on each year to a higher grade level. Teachers didn’t want to have him again the following year.

When I showed up to lead the first training for a leadership retreat, a program designed to have students become more involved in their communities, the community leaders told me about T. J. Ware, the boy with the longest arrest record in the history of town. Somehow, I knew that I wasn’t the first to hear about T. J.’ s darker side as the first words of introduction.

At the start of the retreat, T. J. didn’t readily join the discussion groups and didn’t seem to have much to say. But when his group started a discussion about positive and negative things that had happened at school that year, he joined in and had clear thoughts on those situations, and the other students in his group welcomed his comments. Suddenly, T. J. felt like a part of the group, and soon he was treated like a leader. He was saying things that made a lot of sense, and everyone was listening. By the end of the retreat, he had joined the Homeless Project team. He knew something about poverty, hunger and hopelessness. The other students on the team were impressed with his ideas and love for the homeless. They elected T. J. vice-chairman of the team.

Two weeks later, the Homeless Project team organized a communitywide service project — a giant food drive. Seventy students led by T. J. collected a school record: 2,854 cans of food in just two hours, enough to take care of poor families in the area for 75 days. The local newspaper covered the event with a full-page article the next day. T. J.’ s picture was up there for doing something great.

T. J. reminds us that a bird with a broken wing only needs mending. But once it has healed, it can fly higher than the rest.

9 . There’re stories behind Olympic medalists. Among them, a very _________ one is that of former weightlifting champion Óscar Figueroa. He _________ in the Olympics four times, but with those events came plenty of _________ before he finally won his victory.

21-year-old Figueroa made his first _________ in the 2004 Olympic Games. Though ranked fifth—a good position, he was _________. He looked forward to the 2008 Beijing Games to prove himself. _______ , just two weeks before the event, his hand was injured, which _________ Figueroa in his weightlifting and cost him the competition. Figueroa had got _________ than ever by the 2012 London Games. So he took home the silver medal. Though he’d already _________ all, he still wanted more. In 2016, he headed to Rio to __________ for the top prize and he did. After his final lift, knowing just how __________ his performance had been, Figueroa fell to the ground in __________. Then he put his shoes on the stage, indicating he would __________ from the Olympics. That year, he became the first Colombian man to have ever taken home the __________ in his category.

“It’s many years since I started; now is the time to stop,” he said at the 2016 Olympics. “But I am full of emotion. It’s as though I was __________ for the whole country.”