A black slate (石板), an alloy steel needle and decades of practice are     1     Li Yahua needs to create the perfect Huihe stone shadow carving work of art. With her left hand     2     (gentle) leaning against the mirror-like stone to support the heavy chisel (凿子) she’s holding in her right hand, the artist creates a black-and-white landscape by intensively chiseling dots in various sizes and density on the stone.

    3     (difference) from traditional Chinese art types that emphasize the beauty of lines, stone shadow carving highlights the size and     4     (deep) of dots.

“We use an alloy steel needle to chisel white dots to create images on a polished and smooth black slate,” Li explained, adding the pressure     5     (use) to chisel them was the key to getting the carving right.

“On an A4-paper-size black slate, we need to chisel about 100 million dots     6     (create) an image,” she continued, adding it would take 7 to 20 days to complete the work depending on its level of complexity.

Born into a family of stone carvers, stone and alloy steel needles     7     (be) Li’s best friends since childhood and the sound of chisel     8     (knock) on the slate is the soundtrack to her life.     9     56-year-old has devoted nearly 40 years to the craft. For her, shadow carving is about preserving history, culture and art,     10     recording the stories of the times.

James Cameron was born in 1954. A science fiction fan as a child, he grew up to become one of the most outstanding film-makers in Hollywood. At first he studied physics at California State University,     1     he left to follow his cinematic dream. When he was working     2     a truck driver, Cameron would stop the truck by the side of the road to work on screenplays,which     3     (contribute) to his success. In 1978, Cameron made his first film called Xenogenesis. The film helped him get a job with New World Pictures, a company run by    4     (know) B-movie director Roger Corman. Years later, Cameron began his masterpiece Titanic, a movie about unlucky lovers    5     (trap) aboard the Titanic ocean liner. Titanic eventually became     6     first film to earn nominations.For his work on the film, he took home three Oscars.

Even though he    7     (win)countless awards, he still tries hard to be a director truly committed to his work. Perhaps that is the reason why he is so famous     8     (global).He can create new kinds of films and take our     9     (imagine)to places     10     we have never been before.

People generally agree that Pablo Picasso,    1     lived from 1881 to 1973, is the twentieth-century’s greatest western artist. He was born in Spain and at 10 was already     2     excellent artist. He     3     (have) his first exhibition at the age of 16. Picasso studied art in Spain, but moved to France     4     his early twenties.

From 1902 to 1904 he painted a series of     5     (picture) where the main colour was blue. These pictures showed poor, unhappy people and this period     6     (know) as Picasso’s “blue period”. From 1904 to 1906 Picaso painted much     7     (happy) pictures in the colour pink. This period was called Picasso’s “pink period”.

With another Spanish artist     8     (name) George Braque, Picasso then started an     9     (importance) new artistic movement called Cubism. People agree that Picasso’s greatest Cubist painting is Guernica, which was painted     10     (show) his feelings about what had happened to the town during the 1930s war in Spain.

As a     1     (gift) child, Beethoven was pushed by his father to study music. Not long after, he began to be appreciated     2     his piano performances. Many important figures like Mozart made     3     (predict) about Beethoven’s future.     4    , life took a sharp turn. He started to lose his hearing. The loss of hearing made him     5     (depress). Despite his hearing loss, he was determined     6     (continue) a life full of music. Although he was able to continue composing music, it became     7     (increasing) difficult to perform in public. Since he presented Symphony No.9 in 1824, the piece has become famous. He died less than three years after the concert in Vienna, aged 56. For his amazing     8     (achievement) and for his determination in     9     (he) darkest days, Beethoven     10     (regard) as one of the most remarkable musicians who ever lived.

Born in 1853, Vincent Willem van Gogh was a 19th century Dutch painter. When he was a young man, van Gogh     1     (travel) to France, England, and Belgium, but near the end of his life he moved to France. Although van Gogh began to draw when he was a child, he did not start painting     2     his late twenties. And many of his best paintings     3     (do) in the last two years of his life, before his     4     (die) at the age of 37. His first really good paintings were dark and serious. When he moved to France, van Gogh saw new kinds of art, with new, brighter colors. He liked what he saw so much that he started to paint with brighter colors right away. Later, he moved to the south of France,     5     the sunlight was very strong and bright. The     6     (beautiful) and color of the place he lived inspired him to paint it, and his artwork got even more colorful—full of new intensity, and also full of emotion.

If he had lived longer, van Gogh might have sold many pieces of art,     7     (become) a very famous painter,     8     unfortunately he died in 1890. Vincent Willem van Gogh’s distinctive style makes     9     easy to recognize his paintings. Because of his paintings, a new form of art,     10     (call) Expressionism, was invented, and his work still influences artists today.