A music concert “Echoes of Ancient Tang Poems” jointly performed by iSING! Suzhou and the Philadelphia Orchestra was staged at Kimmel Performing Arts Center in Philadelphia on Jan. 6.

Another concert featuring Tang poetry was    1    (successful) held at the Lincoln Center in New York on Jan. 7. Fifteen iSING! Suzhou singers from 10 countries led by Liao Guomin performed songs    2    (write) by young composers from 6 countries. The songs included many well-known    3    (poem) from the Tang Dynasty, such    4    Luo Binwang’s Singing of Goose and Li Bai’s Quiet Thoughts by Night.

The iSING! Suzhou International Young Artists Festival    5    (set) up in Suzhou in 2014 as China’s first international vocal (声乐) art festival. Over    6     past eight years, the festival has attracted outstanding young singers from all over the world, spread    7    promoted Chinese and classical music, and enhanced cultural exchanges between China and the West, becoming a cultural card for Suzhou to go    8    (globe).

The performances were also held to commemorate(纪念) the    9     (fifty) anniversary of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s China tour in 1973. The Philadelphia Orchestra, as the first American orchestra    10    (visit) China, bridged the two nations in the field of culture.

Consisting of a bamboo frame and a     1     (delicate) painted paper surface, Chinese oil-paper umbrellas have long been viewed as a symbol of China’s tradition of cultural craftsmanship and poetic beauty. Not just are they an instrument to keep off rain or sunlight, but also works of art     2    (possess)rich cultural significance and aesthetic(美的)value.

The first oil-paper umbrellas appeared during Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220).Later,they    3     (bring) overseas to Japan and ancient Korea during the Tang Dynasty (618-907),which is     4     they were known as “Tang umbrellas”.

It takes quite a lot of time and effort to make a traditional Chinese oil-paper umbrella     5     hand. For example,in Fenshui township in Luzhou, Sichuan Province,craftsmenmust complete more than 90 steps and use over 100 different tools    6     (create) a single handmade oil-paper umbrella.

Since the appearance of modern mechanical umbrellas, traditional oil-paper umbrellas    7     (suffer) from declining sales, while     8     number of craftsmen has been on thedecrcase. Fortunately, with the    9     (include) of Fenshui oil-paper umbrellas as one ofChina’s national intangible cultural heritages in 2008, things have been improving. These greatitems appear in many fashion shows and media publications due to the positive publicity     10     they have received.

3 . Marvelous Scenic Walks Near London

There are plenty of walking routes in London. If you fancy something a bit more rural, then the green and pleasant land has plenty to offer.

If you’re in the mood for a gentle rural walk, the Thames Path is far from boring. The 5-mile footpath follows the curve of the river, winding past wildflower meadows (草地).

Post-walk pub: Pangbourne’s seventeenth-century pub The Swan serves high-end dishes. Bag a table on the riverside or keep toasty by one of its open fires.

To admire this spots rural views, first you’ve got to jump across 17 stepping stones and climb 272 steps to the top of Box Hill, where the path begins. The total distance is 6.8 miles.

Post-walk pub: The cavernous Tree on Box Hill has an attractive menu and huge beer garden, or sample a glass of Juniper Hill at Denbies Winerie.

If you’ve already done the classic Seven Sisters clifftop walk or can’t face all those hills, this is a long but lovely alternative. The route covering 14.3 miles snakes along a ridge and a river valley.

Post-walk pub: There are always 10 real beers at the old-school pub The Wellington.

Chess Valley in the Chiltern Hills isn’t home to any chess masters, but it used to produce a kind of water plant. This walk of 4.9 miles follows the river, winding through rolling meadows and woods.

Post-walk pub: The George & Dragon is a simple old coaching pub on the High Street with a log fire, real beers and giant burgers.

Camping was so popular as to even become a fashion across China during the just-concluded National Day holiday, with some joking that “half of the friends     1     WeChat were camping. Outdoor camping sites were popular during the holiday and had to     2     (book) several days in advance.

According to research firm iiMedia Research, the core market size of China’s camping economy reached 74.75 billion yuan ($10.5 billion) in 2021,     3     was 62.5 percent up year-on-year.

More market-sensitive players are plowing into the industry. In 2021, more than 20,000 new camping-related enterprises sprang up in China,     4     over 5,000 have been set up this year, according to the information provider Tianyancha.

Huzhou,     5     popular tourist destination in East China’s Zhejiang province, hosted the first Camping Conference in the Yangtze River Delta in June. It also became one of the first to     6     (official) regulate the construction standards and     7     (safe) supervision (监管) of camping sites.     8     (follow) Huzhou, Beijing and Nanjing in Jiangsu province have also introduced related policies for the healthy development of the industry.

“Consumers’ demand for outdoor activities     9     (increase) in recent years. I believe     10     (many) people will join in camping and other outdoor activities in the long run,’’ said Liang Qidong, vice president of the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences.

6 . Could the next Ernest Hemingway or Jane Austen be a well-engineered AI software program? It’s a question becoming increasingly pressing as machine language-learning software continues to evolve.

Much of this is just nerves. Today’s AI creative writing programs are not yet at a stage of development where they pose a serious threat to Colleen Hoover or Charles Dickens. But while attention continues to focus on the possibility of a blanket takeover of human literature by AI, far less consideration has been given to the prospect of AI co-working with humans.

Earlier this month, American sci-fi writer Ken Liu, who had been awarded Hugo and Nebula to his name, joined 12 other professional authors for a writing workshop on Google’s Wordcraft. This AI tool, a language generating model, is not yet publicly available but is advertised as an AI-powered writing assistant that can, when given the right instruction from the writer, provide helpful descriptions, create lists of objects or emotional states, and even brainstorm ideas.

The writers at the workshop, however, emerged with mixed reports. “Wordcraft is too sensible. Wow!” Robin Sloan wrote. “But ‘sensible’ is another word for predictable, overused and boring. My intention here is to produce something unexpected.”

I’m unconvinced that writers awarded the Nobel Prize have much to fear from AI. Their work, and that of countless other novelists, short story writers, dramatists and poets, is too particular, too beautifully unique. Even if a model learned what they had done in the past, it would not be able to predict where their creativity might take them in the future. But for authors who write following a pattern, AI might step in, first as assistants before some day to authorship.

Production-line novels are nothing new. In the 1970s, Barbara Cartland, who wrote more than 723 books in her lifetime, many of which are romance bestsellers, would read her novels for her secretary to type up at the remarkable rate of roughly seven chapters a week. But already machine has replaced the secretary’s role. Perhaps creative writing software isn’t that far from replacing the Mrs. Cartlands of today.

7 . Imagine driving behind a huge truck shooting clouds of smoke into the air while your new fully electric vehicle cleans up its carbon emissions (排放). This dream may soon be a reality. A team of students in the Netherlands has created an electric car that not only doesn’t produce carbon dioxide when driving, but actually pulls it out of the air.

The two-seater sports car was designed and built in less than a year by a team of 32 students at Eindhoven University of Technology. Called “ZEM”, which stands for “zero emission mobility”, the car is equipped with special devices that remove carbon dioxide from the air as it drives. The team says if ZEM is driven about 32,000 kilometers, it can remove 2 kilograms of carbon dioxide from the air. That’s not a huge amount. The team calculates that 10 ZEM cars on the road for a year would remove as much carbon dioxide as a typical tree does during that time. However, they also point out that there are over a billion passenger cars in the world that could be using this technology. And if a billion cars were removing carbon dioxide instead of producing it, the result would be huge.

ZEM also has several other innovations that help to make it more capable of being sustained: the car’s frame and panels (面板) are 3D printed to reduce waste; it was built using recycled and recyclable materials; and it can be easily taken apart so that many of its parts can be reused. ZEM’s battery is also reusable, and has another handy feature: it can be charged with solar panels on the car’s roof—and can even be used to provide power to your house when the car isn’t on the road.

According to the statistics, transportation was responsible for over 20% of global carbon dioxide emissions in 2020—and of those emissions, cars were responsible for 41%. The Eindhoven team says its goal is to challenge the electric car industry: If 32 students can build a car like this in less than a year, then surely car manufacturers (生产商) are expected to adopt these innovations, too.

8 . On a bright sunny day, I stared my day off by volunteering at the L. A. Food Bank. My reason for volunteering at the food bank was to satisfy my need to help others and leave a _________, however small a difference it is, in someone’s world. As I_________the food bank, there were lots of people there. The room appeared to be _________as people waited in lines to _________with coordinators (协调员). Everybody volunteering began heading quickly to their given _________ after checking in. Coordinators _________ me to repackage donated food items (物品) from local food drives after being sorted and _________ by other volunteer. When I _________ the donated food items, each bag had to _________ the correct amount of food items. As a team. we effectively worked similarly to a __________assembly (装配) line as the items continuously moved down the __________to volunteers. We __________placed the food items into bags before the table would get overcrowded. My __________ was that all this hard work and effort would be worth it by allowing us to __________ those in need. My task required a lot of __________ when trying to work swiftly with my hands while ensuring that items placed in bags were correctly __________·Here I had a chance to communicate with a variety of people while improving my __________ skills .We worked together as a team to __________ that our task was going effectively.

By helping pack food items. I was able to make as significant impact on my community by helping people fight __________ and giving them hope for a better life. After this experience, I feel a sense of __________within me which does not usually happen.

9 . Daniel Delfin used to think only superheroes could change the world. A shy 21-year-old student in the Philippines, Daniel saw himself as one ________ of life and spent all his time ________, socializing and looking after his pet rabbit.

Then his ________ routine was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. ________ to stay home by a community order, Daniel turned to social media, only to find himself ________ by most of the content. Late one night, when he could no longer stand the negative content, he ________ to cancel his social media account. But before he could click the button, a call for ________ for the Young Heroes Organization (YHO) caught his attention. His first thought was, “Am I doing good service to my country?” Daniel ________, before he could answer his own question.

To improve the welfare of children, YHO has provided a place for young people to express their ________ during the pandemic. And it ________ the critically related issues affecting them, including lack of ________ and mental health problems. As a volunteer, Daniel reaches out to strangers and offers them ________ support by listening to their stories and ________ with them. But as much as he has touched their lives, they have also given Daniel ________ for the future.

For his ________ and hard work, Daniel was ________ to be one of the best YHO volunteers. He has even signed up to do more: he has since become a YHO ________ and creates social media content as an advocate for the programme.

“YHO ________ me to be a better version of myself, ________ beyond my expectations,” Daniel said. “I believe that as young people, we can help each other and our communities get through this ________.

10 . Los Angeles native Randall Bartlett sat under the rooftop of a traditional Chinese scholar’s studio, occasionally turning a page of his book. The scene was in the reopened Liu Fang Yuan garden at the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens. For him, the garden brings to life the Chinese philosophies he learned from books.

Phillip E. Bloom, director of the Center for East Asian Garden Studies, said the idea for Liu Fang Yuan goes back to the 1980s with the initial aim of creating a collection of Chinese plants, but after research, they realized plants alone were not sufficient to demonstrate the essence of a Chinese garden. Eventually, it was decided to model a garden on 16th and 17th century scholarly retreats(隐居处)in Suzhou.

The decision was made partly due to the fame of Suzhou classical gardens, but also because similarities were found between the Huntington and Suzhou gardens. Bloom said that Henry Huntington, founder of the Huntington Library, was a successful US businessman who used his fortune to collect rare books, artworks and to create gardens. “Many Suzhou gardens were also created by rich people who tried to pursue a scholarly lifestyle,” he added.

To preserve the character of the Suzhou gardens, the Huntington Library sought help from Suzhou, giving rise to collaboration between US and Chinese architects, contractors and designers. In all stages of construction, artisans(工匠)from Suzhou came to work on details of the venue.

After three years of expansion from 2018 to 2020, Liu Fang Yuan reopened to the public with 4.6 hectares of new landscape, making it one of the largest classical-style Chinese gardens in the world. The additions include courtyards displaying penjing, a scholar’s studio, a pavilion(亭子)situated at the garden’s highest point, etc.

Now, it is meaningful to see how people from local communities interact with the garden. “A lot of volunteers come to different lectures and exhibitions about Chinese culture hat we hold regularly,” Bloom said. By exposing its visitors to arts and literature, Liu Fang uan goes beyond international boundaries and bridges the cultural gaps between the two ountries.