1 . BLOSSOMS SHANGHAI, a Six-Year Wait Over Now

HONG KONG film director Wong Karwai’s first television series, Blossoms Shanghai, began its broadcast at the end of December. The drama with 30 ______ is adapted from a 2012 novel of the same name, winner of the 9th Mao Dun Literature Prize in 2015. It aims to ______ stereotypes (刻板老套的印象) about Shanghai and help readers understand its culture.

The TV drama, set in 1990s Shanghai, centers around a young man called A Bao (played by Hu Ge, now a cultural ______ in TV field) who rises from ______ beginnings to become a successful businessman in ten years. Along the way, he receives help from supporters and faces off against rivals to expand his business empire.

The TV adaptation comes out in two ______ one in Shanghainese, the other dubbed (配音) in Putonghua. The former is an effort in particular to stay true to the novel’s ______ flavor, with the major roles taken on by actors born and raised in Shanghai and a large amount of the dialogue had in Shanghainese. Even director Wong himself spoke ______ Shanghainese while working on set.

The success of the TV series can ______ the effort invested in recreating the look and atmosphere of the time. In August 2020, the crew posted a newspaper notice to seek everyday household objects from the period between 1976 and 1995. The appeal received a nation-wide response. Various items from old newspapers to cigarette lighters to ______ , and even a car, were sent to them. Some of these items had interesting stories behind them, which bring strong ______ from the Shanghai citizens for the past days.

In addition, the main setting of the story, “Huanghe Road”, was rebuilt at a 1:1 ______ at Shanghai Film Park in Songjiang.

In typical Wong Kar-wai style, the production took six years to complete. The director has a reputation for being very ______ each and every shot, often requiring actors to perform a scene upwards of ten times. At a promotional event when the cast was asked to provide a reason for people to watch the series, actress Ma Yili said, “I hope you can see our growth and change of the city in this drama and remove the old fixed general image.” Three trailers (预告片) had previously been released. Each trailer also focused on a different part of the series: the first on A Bao’s life before his success, and the story brings us to the old days when almost all the Shanghai citizens invested their savings in stock due to ______ in marketing; the second on him as an influential businessman; and the final one on the era of the drama, which is essential to A Bao's personal struggle.

The TV series has received mixed reviews. On Douban, quite a number of viewers are not happy with its plot which they think is transitioning too rapidly and thus a bit challenging to follow, thus it ______ the viewing. But nearly 80 percent of the viewers have given it a ______ rating. ‘This is not a TV series! This is art!’ said one post on the platform.

2 .

A Bite of China is a very popular TV program. It shows the relationship between_________and people in Chinese culture. To our joy, it returned for its third season on CCTV on Feb 19th during the Spring Festival. In fact, its first season and the second were very wonderful. When A Bite of China I was on TV, it_________attracted a number of audiences.

A Bite of China III has already broadcast (播放) eight episodes(集). Every episode has a different topic. The producer and director of the third season is Liu Hongyan. She invited a Dutch photographer, Banito Strangio, to_________her team. She said that the foreign designers from different countries have_________cultural traditions. _________we can find different ways are used in the program to show the traditional Chinese diet culture.

Many experts do think of this program as an/a_________food program. It is because it shows the_________of Chinese food. A Bite of China makes Chinese people memorize their cooking traditions. Most of the traditions have been forgotten in today’s_________life. So the program has more educational_________.

Chinese eating habits__________traditional Chinese culture. A Bite of China III continue to show the beauty of the Chinese diet and the real meaning of Chinese culture.

3 . In February Chen Qiqi was riding on a field trip, seeking interesting plants in South China’s Hainan province. Suddenly, she ______ and gave other passengers a shock.

As the car pulled over, she jumped off and ______ to a plant. Chen ______ the plant at close quarters, while taking pictures and shooting it from various angles. “It was Entada phaseoloides (榼藤) and I couldn’t wait to share it with my ______,” she says.

She applied for studies of ______ protection at college in 2016. The college study has given her ______ knowledge of plants and the plant-hunting ______ has made her have a good ______ of the natural world. These led to her option of becoming a teacher at a (n) ______ education institute after graduation.

However, the lockdown interrupted her plans so she couldn’t ______ with it. Instead, she picked up skills of video shooting, which ______ her to be a plant video blogger. Her short videos cover a ______ range of plants, including red spider lily, box bean and air plants, etc. In Chen’s ______ on TikTok, over 100 videos explaining varieties of plants have earned her almost 1 million followers.

“I feel proud and my job is ______ when people say they know about some plants because of me. As for her future plans, Chen says she ______ to carry on exploring the world of plants.

4 . An Introduction to Sensory Marketing

When you walk into a bakery, the smell wafting out of the oven is often enough to incentivize clients to purchase sweets. The sights, sounds, and smells of the modern marketplace are rarely _______. More likely, they are tools of an evolving strategy of psychological marketing called “sensory marketing” designed to win your loyalty and, most of all, your dollars.

“Sensory marketing” is an advertising tactic intended to appeal to one or more of the five human senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch to create an emotional _______ a specific product or brand. A successful sensory branding strategy _______ certain beliefs, feelings, thoughts, and memories to create a brand image in a customer’s mind. _______, if the smell of pumpkin spices in October makes you think of Starbucks, it’s no accident.

As an approach that appeals to the senses instead of logic, sensory marketing can affect people in a way that _______ marketing cannot. Classic mass marketing works on the belief that people — as consumers — will behave _______ when faced with purchasing decisions. They will systematically consider concrete product factors like price, features, and utility. _______, sensory marketing seeks to utilize the consumer’s life experiences and feelings. These life experiences have _______ sensory, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral aspects. In this way, customers will act according to their emotional impulses more than to their _______ reasoning.

Today, the most successful sensory marketing campaigns appeal to ________ senses. The more senses appealed to, the more effective the branding and advertising will be. Two major brands ________ for their multi-sensory marketing campaigns are Apple and Starbucks.

In its stores, Apple allows shoppers to fully “experience” the brand. Throughout these concept stores, customers are ________ to see, touch, and learn about the entire Apple brand. The stores are designed to convince prospective and ________ Apple owners that the innovate brand is and will contribute to be the key to enjoying “a state of the art” lifestyle.

As a pioneer in employing multi-sensory marketing, Starbucks’ philosophy is to ________ its customers’ senses of taste, sight, touch, and hearing. The Starbucks brand serves up this comprehensive package of sensual satisfaction through the use of ________ flavours, aromas, music, and printing that is known to appeal to its customers. All music played in Starbucks stores worldwide is selected from about 100 to 9,000 songs on CDs sent to the stores every month by the company’s main office. Through this approach, consumers in all countries and cultures can share much more than a good cup of coffee. They get the entire “Starbucks experience.”

6 .

News plays a significant role in shaping people’s beliefs and opinions. False news has always been a problem in ___________. The following pieces of news are well-travelled legends proved to be not ___________.

Trying to keep warm in ___________ weather, a 50-year-old Cypriot (塞浦路斯人) huddled over his oil heaters. ___________ overturning it, he set himself on fire. ___________ in pain, he ran out and jumped into a nearby river, where he ___________ like a stone and drowned.

Frank Perkins of Los Angeles made an attempt on the world flagpole-sitting record (坐旗杆记录). By the time he came down, eight hours short of the 400-day record, his ___________ had gone bust (破产), his girlfriend had ___________ him and his phone and electricity had been cut off.

In a hospital’s ICU, patients always died in the ___________ bed at about 11:00 a.m. on Sunday morning. This ____________ the doctors and some ____________ thought it had something to do with the supernatural. No one could solve the mystery as to why the deaths ____________ around 11:00 a.m. on Sunday, so out of ____________, a worldwide team of experts gathered to ____________ the cause of the incidents.

The next Sunday morning, all the experts ____________ waited outside the ICU to see what would ____________. Just when the clock struck 11:00, Pookie Johnson, the part-time Sunday ____________, entered the ICU and unplugged (拔出插头) the life support system. ____________, he could use the vacuum cleaner.

After being fact-checked, the above three pieces of news have been ____________ that they were almost entirely ____________.

7 . People using ad-blocking software who visited the New York Times website in March were shown a message. This read: “The best things in life aren’t _______.” It went on to explain that, “Advertising helps us fund our journalism,” and gave the visitor two options to read the newspaper’s online content: _______ their ad-blocking software or pay for a subscription.

Despite many internet users’ opposition, a number of publishers are now banning ad-blocking software. Aidan Joyce, chief executive of Oriel, says, “Most ad-blocking users do not object to a reasonable advertising experience _______ quality free content.” Mark Thompson, the group’s chief executive, said, “Anyone who refuses to contribute to the creation of high-quality journalism has no right to _______ it.”

To satisfy people who hate advertising, the news organization plans to introduce a higher-priced, advertisement-free _______. Ben Barokas, chief executive of Sourcepoint, thinks that media groups should offer consumers a range of different ways to _______ content, including for-free with ads, micropayments and subscriptions.

However, Sean Blanchfield, chief executive of PageFair, argues that publishers need to exercise care in how they ban ad blockers. “Users have justifiable concerns,” he says. “Ads that are served today have serious privacy and security problems.” Mr. Blanchfield says that PageFair aims to help publishers. “_______ the advertising experience in a way that the typical ad-block user wouldn’t find offensive.”

Publishers that ban ad blockers also risk losing their audience to competitors that turn out more _______. In some ways, that matters little. But internet users are not just _______ consumers; Instead, they often help distribute a publisher’s content by sharing links with friends through email, forums, and social media.

More than half of U.K. adults using an ad blocker said that they would switch it off if doing so was the only way to access a website, according to a survey by YouGov. Meanwhile, Sweden’s biggest publishers will ________ block people next month who use ad-blocking software. The idea is that they will be able to turn the ad-blocking tide with a combined effort.

8 . Most forms of conventional advertising — print, radio and broadcast television — have been losing ground to online ads for years; only billboards, dating back to the 1800s, and TV ads are holding their own. Such out-of-home advertising, as it is known, is expected to________ by 3.4% in 2022, and digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising, which includes the LCD screens found in airports and shopping malls, by 16%. Such ads draw viewers5 attention from phones and cannot be skipped or ________, unlike ads online.

Billboard owners are also ________ the location data that are pouring off people’s smartphones. Information about their owners’ locations and online browsing gets collected and sold to media owners. They then use these data to work out when different groups — “business travellers”, say — walk by their ads. That________ is added to insights into traffic, weather and other external data to produce highly relevant ads. DOOH ________ can deliver ads for coffee when it is cold and iced drinks when it is warm.

Such ________ works particularly well when it is accompanied by “programmatic” advertising methods, a term that describes the use of data to automate and improve ads. In the past year billboard owners such as Clear Channel and jcDecaux have ________ programmatic platforms which allow brands and media buyers to select, purchase and place ads in minutes, rather than days or weeks. It is said that outdoor ads will increasingly be bought like online ones, based on audience and views as well as________.

That is possible because billboard owners claim to be able to ________ how well their ads are working, even though no “click-through” rates are involved. Data firms can tell advertisers how many people walk past individual advertisements at particular times of the day. Advertisers can estimate how many individuals ________ to an ad for a handbag then go on to visit a nearby shop (or website) and buy the product. Such metrics make outdoor ads more________ -driven, automated and measurable, argues Michael Provenzano, co-founder of Vistar Media, an ad-tech firm in New York.

However, the outdoor-ad revolution is not ________ -free. The collection of mobile-phone data raises privacy concerns. And ________ of the online-ad business for being vague, and occasionally dishonest, may also be targeted at the OOH business as it becomes bigger and more complex. The industry is ready to________ such concerns, says Jean-Christophe Conti, chief executive of VIOOH, a media-buying platform. One of the________ of following the online-ad pioneers, he notes, is learning from their mistakes.

10 . According to a survey conducted by wenjuan.com for the China Youth Daily, 71.0 percent of the 1,538 people polled said they watched short videos on a________basis. 61.8 percent believed that long-term viewing of short videos could interfere with their normal social interactions; and 65.2 percent suggested that video platforms step up in issuing regular________so that users could take a break.

This appeal for external aids to help________ the addictive habit hints at the crushing hold short videos have on the shiftless majority— many of them are not utterly ________ self-control in other circumstances.

Another recent survey of juveniles found 65.6 percent of them have watched short videos, and 20 percent of them just couldn’t stop watching.

For as you click on those seemingly________videos, your life will be thrown into a mindless spiral (螺旋)as we eagerly move from one piece to the next, each lasting 20 to 30 seconds, and are shocked, amused, and outraged in rapid________.

You never have a chance to get________, for you are always curious about what the next piece would be like,________more. All that is needed is a slight twitching (抽动) of one of your fingers.       

Respondents do believe some videos could be useful by teaching you how to cook， how to apply make-up, practice wellness, or buy things. There was even an alleged (声称但未经证实的) telecom fraudster publicizing his________and daring the police to catch him in Dubai, according to him.

It is shocking to realize that a published video itself would have ________ acquired a degree of authenticity and enough to prevent all intentions and the need for checking, even________ such basic facts as authorship.

So it is natural that 36.7 percent of the respondents in the wenjuan.com survey cited the issue of false and misleading content in short videos as an issue, and relevant authorities should have stepped in long ago to________it.

Yes, juvenile-only modes have been________for some time, but it is so easy for children to avoid this.________ , there is an equal need for a mechanism to prevent adults from becoming addicted, notably by limiting the lime they are allowed to view the videos. Thus, when 37.0 percent of the respondents said that, as far as viewing habits are concerned, parents should be a role model to prevent the imitation of juveniles. Maybe all parents should________their mobile phones for a moment of self-reflection.