Mount Everest, which is part of China,     1     (lie) between Nepal and Tibet. On Tuesday, Nepal and China made a surprising     2     (announce) on the height of the world’s highest mountain. After years of not reaching an agreement on the mountain’s height, both sides have measured again and discovered it’s higher    3    anyone thought.

Sir George Everest, after     4     the mountain is named, was the main surveyor (测量员) of India in the mid-1800s. Radhanath Sikdar, an Indian man who worked for Mr. Everest, was the first     5     (realize) it was the highest mountain in the world. He     6     (exact) calculated the height as being 29,000 feet. But Mr. Sikdar’s boss added two feet to the height because he was afraid people wouldn’t trust     7     round number like 29,000.

But the height most people have been using for Mount Everest came from a 1955 survey     8     (conduct) by India, which put the mountain’s height at 29,029 feet   (8,848 meters) . Since that time, other attempts     9     (make) to measure the mountain, each coming up with a different result.

Last year, four surveyors from Nepal climbed Mount Everest and made new measurements, using GPS and satellite information. And in May, China sent up     10     (it) own team of surveyors, who were the only ones to climb Mount Everest this year. Working together to determine the mountain’s exact height, the two countries announced the new height: 29,031.7 feet (8,848. 86 meters).

People say that the real culture of Beijing lies in the culture of hutong and siheyuan. The hutongs     1    (form) by lines of siheyuan, which is a type of residence     2     houses are purposely built to form squares or rectangles (长方形) in order to create a type of     3    (tradition) courtyard. In the mid 20th century, several hutongs in Beijing had been torn down     4    (pave) way for the development of infrastructure (基础设施).     5    , thanks to efforts designed to safeguard this significant aspect of the Chinese architectural culture, many hutongs have been preserved.

Because of the interlacement (交织) of the lanes, every house is connected to the other,     6    (make) it easy for local people to keep     7     touch with their neighbors. Therefore, once one enters any of the lanes, one can feel the deep and warm relationships among people, which are     8    (rare) found in this modern world.

In the twisted lanes one can experience the life of the locals. It is just like a community. These    9    (lane) have witnessed the development of Beijing. Where there is such a lane, there is a story. If one wants to explore the culture and experience Beijing hutong food and hutong shopping,     10     hutong tour should not be missed.

Dujiangyan is the oldest man-made water system in the world, and a wonder in the development of Chinese science. Built over 2,200 years ago in    1    is now Sichuan Province in Southwest China, this amazing engineering achievement is still used today to irrigate over 6000 square kilometers of farmland and provide water for 50 cities in the province.

In ancient times, the region in which Dujiangyan now stands suffered from regular floods     2    (cause) by overflow from the Minjiang River. To help the victims of the flooding, Li Bing, the region governor, together with his son, decided to find a    3    (solve).

Li designed a series of channels built at different levels along Mount Yulei    4    would take away floodwater while    5    (leave) the river flowing naturally.    6    (Well) still, the extra water could be directed to the dry Chengdu Plain, making it suitable for farming.

After eight years of work, the 20-meter-wide canals had been carved through the mountain.

Once the system was finished, no more floods     7     (occur) and the people were able to live peacefully and    8    (happy).Today, Dujiangyan is admired by scientists from around the world because of one feature. Unlike modern dams where the water    9    (block) with a huge wall, Dujiangyan still lets water flow through the Minjiang River naturally, enabling ecosystems and fish population to exist       10     harmony.

China Daily website is inviting foreigner readers to share your China Story!

It has been     1     seems like six long years since I have been back here in the Capital of China. Beijing! I am very excited about my life adventure! The Olympic Games definitely has given Beijing a face lift and the city looks     2    (total) different.

I came back right on the coming of the     3    (China) Lunar New Year. The streets were lined with red lanterns and trees     4    (decorate) with colorful lights from root to tip. The Christmas holiday has definitely become both     5     economic activity and a welcome mat to many foreigners.     6    (shine) Chinese characters, large and colored, boldly mark the roof tops of high rises and glass sky scrapers. Beijing in the winter is known to be one of the     7    (cold) places and amazingly I have adapted     8     the cold very quickly that most times I never notice it.

China is definitely pushing forward to make     9    (it) mark on the world and to obtain the highest position it can achieve. With business on an all-time height in the newest Economic Power, there are many new     10    (opportunity) for people from all over the world.

As I write this I’m I sitting on a bus back to Santiago in Chile where I am I now working     1     a language assistant. I’ve just spent a weekend in a city called La Serena, north of Santiago. I was lucky enough to see the flowering I desert, a natural phenomenon that     2     (occur) around every five years here in the Atacama Desert.

    3     (follow) a particularly large amount of I rainfall earlier, a     4     (vary) of flowers come into blossom. Bright purple flowers create     5     unbelievably beautiful scene at the base of the surrounding mountains.

    6     (catch) the sight of this great treasure of nature, we took a bus from La Serena to a nearby town and then rented a car to go to the desert.     7     we saw did not disappoint us, and as expected it was even more amazing than the pictures we had seen online. The bloom was particularly     8     (impress) this year due to the strong presence of El Niño (a band of warm water developed in the Pacific Ocean that changes the temperatures and increases the rainfall in certain areas). The vast carpet of colour     9     spread into the distance towards the striking green hills was     10     (simple) wonderful and deserved a large amount of photos! A real reminder of the beauty our planet can provide.

10 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

Chinese architecture is a style that has taken shape in East Asia over many centuries. The structural principles of Chinese architecture have remained largely     1     (change), the main changes being only the decorative details. Since the Tang Dynasty, Chinese architecture has     2     (have) a major influence     3     the architectural styles of Korea, Vietnam, and Japan.

The architecture of China is as old as Chinese civilization. From every source of information, there is strong     4     (evident) that the Chinese have always enjoyed a native system of construction that has kept its principal characteristics from old times to the present day. Over the large area from Chinese Turkistan (突厥) to Japan, the same system of construction is popular and this is the area of Chinese cultural influence.

Throughout     5     20th century, western-trained Chinese architects have tried     6     (combine) traditional Chinese designs into modern architecture, with great success. Moreover, the pressure for urban development throughout contemporary China required higher speed of construction and higher floor area ratio (容积率),     7     means that in the great cities the demand for traditional Chinese     8     (build) has declined in favor of modern architecture.     9    , the traditional skills of Chinese architecture,     10     (include) major and minor carpentry (木工), and masonry (石工), are still applied to the construction of vernacular architecture in the large rural area in China.