We Chinese people are all descendants of the dragon.

China National Silk Museum is located at the southern bank     1     West Lake in Hangzhou City. There are three buildings. The museum covers three floors of the first building. The second building covers silk worm biology, while the     2     (three) covers the earliest silk technology. It     3     (house) many historical silk relics.

Why should you visit it? China was the first to make clothes with silk. The museum is a great visit for those wanting     4     (know) the history and culture of silk and silk     5     (develop) in China during the various dynasties since the New Stone Age. There are textiles (纺织品) of the Han and Tang dynasties,     6     have been dug along the route of the Silk Road. There are also costumes from areas south of the Yangtze River in the Song Dynasty, modern Qipao and traditional cloth-making     7     (machine).

You can learn about the influence of silk on China and global cultures, about silkworm (蚕) care and biology, silk goods     8     silk production technologies in China. You can see how silk clothes     9     (make) from natural silk.

The museum also shows evidence about the famous Silk Road, the world’s oldest and most     10     (historical) important overland trade route.

Are you familiar with pop star Jay Chou’s Blue &White Porcelain? Its original lines, just     1     the composer Fang Wenshan described, were inspired by Ru porcelain (汝瓷).

Ranked best among famous kinds during the Song Dynasty (960-1279), Ru porcelain is known for its unique pale blue glaze (釉). Oceans     2     Ru porcelain flooded onto the market around the year of 1100, but the     3     (exist) of Ru ware now is actually rare. Thanks to the efforts of Ru porcelain inheritors, people can now appreciate it     4     (close) at hand than before.

Born in Ruzhou, Henan province, Li Chao has spent a decade     5     (better) crafting skills. Ru porcelain goes through 72 steps, the    6     (one) of which is knead (揉) mud. Any small errors could lead to disaster, said the 41-year-old inheritor. He then stressed that a Ru porcelain inheritor must be patient enough. Every item of artwork     7     (full) deserves our admiration.

Techniques of making Ru porcelain will     8     (lose) with senior inheritors gradually passing away. So,     9     Li spares no effort in doing is introducing it to wider masses.     10     (achieve) this goal, he creatively uses Ru porcelain in making daily ware popular among young people. Now he’s aiming to expand the market by introducing it to the whole world.

Chinese fans seem to have special meanings in Chinese culture. I’ve     1    (receive) a number of them as gifts from my Chinese friends. The fans are very pretty. You may have noticed that almost all female figures in     2     (tradition) Chinese paintings carry a silk fan. In the movies of     3    1930s and 1940s, fans are a very visible article for Shanghai women.     4    (usual) the structure of the fans is made of sand wood and the faces are made of silk or paper. Because the fans always have sweet smell, women     5     use them appear even more attractive. Fans are probably one of the most appropriate     6    (expression) of noble female.

Men also use fans. But these fans are quite often much     7    (big). Men’s fans often use valuable materials for that structure and the faces are always     8    (paint) with plants or landscapes. As a result     9    open-door policy, fans have become popular again not for people to use at home,     10     as a gift for foreigners. I heard westerners appreciate these gifts. As fans are small, inexpensive and typically Chinese, many people like to use them as gifts from the overseas trips.

8 . Four schools from Beijing were in Hull to put on a show.

The schools, all from the Fengtai District in Beijing, have close ties to the city. Groups of students from Beijing and Hull regularly visit each other as part of a cultural and educational exchange programme.

Today’s special performance at Hull City Hall included various forms of traditional Chinese music, dance and acrobatics (杂技).

Lewis Anderson, 26, started learning Chinese at the age of 13 and acts as a translator and organiser when the Chinese students visit the UK. He also currently studies at a university in China.

He said: “Cultural exchanges are really important because children start to appreciate everything in life. They start to learn that there isn’t only their view on things and they start to look at other cultures and appreciate their history and beauty. For example, when Hull students visit China, they might visit the Great Wall and enjoy traditional dancing and opera, and then they come home and think ‘What do we have that is the equivalent (相等的东西) of that?’ and they look at all the different things that we have and it starts to open their minds.”

The Chinese students are on a 12-day visit to the UK, visiting eight different cities, including four days in Hull. As part of their visit to Hull, they were invited to visit various museums, galleries and tourist sites in the city.

Lewis said: “The children love exploring Hull because it’s rich in history and everywhere you look it’s old, beautiful and attractive.”

At Hull City Hall the Chinese students performed a traditional Peking Opera, which combines music, vocal performance, dance and acrobatics. The performance is famous for featuring fantastic costumes and dazzling make-up.

Porcelain is a material     1     (make) from well-chosen porcelain clay (黏土) through technological processes. Although porcelain developed from pottery (陶器), the two are different in material and firing temperature. Porcelain has a better quality and a     2     (beautiful) body than pottery. That’s why it slowly replaced pottery. It is called china in English because it was first made in China, which fully explains that the beautiful porcelain can be a symbol     3     China.

The earliest porcelain     4     (appear) during the Shang Dynasty, but the first real porcelain was not produced until the Eastern Han Dynasty. The techniques for     5     (create) porcelain developed in the Tang Dynasty. In the Yuan Dynasty, people in Jingdezhen, China’s porcelain capital, produced blue and white porcelain     6     later became the representative of porcelain.

Since the Han and Tang Dynasties, porcelain has been exported (出口) worldwide. It     7     (strong) encourages economic and cultural exchange between China     8     the outside world. It also influences the     9     (tradition) culture and lifestyle of people from other     10     (country). Porcelain is the creative fruit of the working people of ancient China.