1 . I was born and raised in England in a culture where privacy and “keeping yourself to yourself” were valued traditions. Speaking to strangers was not encouraged. People were most hospitable (好客的) and friendly — but only once they had been introduced to new people.

However, I have been lucky enough to spend some time in both Italy and the US, where I found traditions of hospitality and politeness to be very different.

I experienced Italian hospitality first-hand on a crowded railway carriage traveling, one afternoon, from Genoa to Florence. Sinking gratefully into an empty seat, I was berated (斥责) in rapid Italian by a gentleman who was returning to this seat — it had not been “spare” after all. I apologized in English, and got up to allow him back into the seat. The gentleman obviously had no understanding of the English language, but he, too, realized my genuine mistake. He smiled and gestured for me to remain in the seat, and he himself remained standing in the corridor for the rest of the journey. The other passengers of the carriage smiled and nodded at me and made me feel quite welcome amongst them. I feel that if this had been in England, a foreigner who made a mistake would not always be so kindly treated.

Transport was also obvious in the differences I noticed between English and American culture. I flew to New York on a plane with mainly English passengers. We sat together in near silence. Nobody spoke to me nor, as I expected, to anyone else they did not know. They felt it was not polite to disturb someone else’s privacy. However, when I traveled across the United States, whether by plane or Greyhound bus, I was never short of conversation. Conversation was going on all around me and whoever sat next to me was happy to introduce themselves and ask me about myself, which was usually a pleasant way to kill time. They obviously felt it would have been rude not to speak to another person, whether they were strangers or not.

1. What do we know about the passengers of the carriage when the author was travelling in Italy?

A．They were all on the side of the gentleman.

B．They all laughed at the author for this mistake.

C．They all showed their understanding of the author’s mistake.

D．They would not bear a mistake like the author’s in public.

2. According to the last paragraph, English passengers sat in near silence because________.

A．they were too tired to speak	B．they are short of topics to talk about
C．they were all strangers to each other	D．privacy was a valued tradition in England

3. The purpose of the author is to tell us ________.

A．his traveling experiences

B．how to adapt ourselves to a new culture

C．the culture shock he experienced in Italy and the US

D．cultural differences in hospitality and politeness

4. What is the author’s attitude towards American’s traditions of hospitality and politeness?

A．Approving.

B．Confused.

C．Negative.

D．Disapproving.

2 . 阅读下面短文, 在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单同的正确形式。

Chinese people have been celebrating the Mid- Autumn Festival and enjoying mooncakes for centuries. Mooncakes are in    1    shape of a full moon on the Mid-Autumn night. There are many traditional folk     2    (story) about this festival. However, most people think that the story of Chang’e is the most     3    (touch) story.

Hou Yi, who was the husband of Chang’ e, shot down nine suns. After that, a goddess gave     4    (he) a magic medicine     5    could help people to live forever. But there was a bad man     6    (call) Pang Meng wanted to steal the medicine when Hou Yi was not at home. Chang’ e refused     7    (give) it to him and took it all. She    8    (become) very light and flew up to the moon. Hou Yi was very sad and he called out her name to the moon every night. One night he found that the moon was     9     bright and round that he could see his wife there. He     10    (quick) laid out her favorite fruits and desserts in the garden.

3 . 假定英语课上老师要求同桌之间交换修改作文，请你修改你同桌写的以下作文。文中共有10处语言错误，每句中最多有两处。每处错误仅涉及一个单词的增加、删除或修改。
增加：在缺词处加一个漏字符号(∧)，并在其下面写出该加的词。
删除：把多余的词用斜线划掉(﹨)。
修改：在错的词下划一横线，并在该词下面写出修改后的词。
注意：1. 每处错误及其修改均仅限一词；
2. 只允许修改10处，多者(从第11处起)不计分。
Dear Mary,

I am delightful to hear from you. Learning that you had developed a deep interest in Tang poems, I feel happy and pride. I’d like to give you a brief introduction to them.

In China, so popular are Tang poetry that people of all ages are fond of it. The Tang Dynasty is common recognized as the golden age of poetry. It is well-known to the public is that a lot of excellent poems were written by a good many poets during that period. Tang poems are easy to be read and recite, some of them have been translated into many foreign languages.

Now that you have preference for Tang poems, I will send you a collection of Tang poems by post. I hold the belief that you will love them.

I am looking forward to receiving your reply at your earliest convenience.

Yours,

Li hua

4 . As a child growing up in a suburban town in the Northeast of the United States, the arrival of spring had little meaning for me. Sure, we had a week-long spring vocation from school, but the key word there was vacation, not spring.

For the kids in my neighborhood, the arrival of spring was a non-event. There were two important seasons: winter, when we could go skating and sledding or build snow forts, and summer, when we could finally make proper use of the beach about 100 meter east of my family home. Spring and autumn were just technical details, weeks and weeks of waiting for the good times’ return.

Admittedly, spring later developed its own attractions for me. “In the spring a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love”, as the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson noted. However, it was not spring itself, but the other stuff that got my attention.

In short, I never thought much at all about spring and then I arrived in China. I had been in Beijing for about three months when my first Spring Festival rolled around, and it could hardly be ignored. Aside from the random bursts of fireworks at any time day or night, what stood out most for me was that the capital seemed to be empty.

It was as though the crowds and streams of cars and trucks commonly seen in the capital had all gone into hiding. My puzzlement cleared up when I returned to work. My colleagues explained that Chinese traditionally travel, if necessary, to visit their families during Spring Festival, and that many Beijingers were not natives of the capital.

I also got my first knowledge of something about Spring Festival that never ceases to amaze me. Regardless of when the holiday is set to begin, there is an almost immediate and sudden change for the better in the weather. Spring really does arrive.

I can’t begin to figure out how the ancient Chinese could create a system that would almost always accurately predict when the season would shift year after year after year. But they did.

1. What did the author think of spring as a child?

A．It hardly left any impression on him.	B．It was always beyond his imagination.
C．It was a tiring and long holiday.	D．It was a season full of promise.

2. What impressed the author most about Beijing during the Spring Festival?

A．The busy traffic.	B．The unexpected quietness.
C．Beijingers’ love for travel.	D．Occasional bursts of fireworks.

3. How does the author feel about the system created by ancient Chinese?

A．Desperate.

B．Confused.

C．Wonderful.

D．Convenient.

4. What can be inferred from the text?

A．Spring Festival in Beijing will make one feel quite lonely.

B．The author spent his first Spring Festival at a colleague’s home.

C．In China Spring Festival always indicates the coming of Spring.

D．The author still worked during the Spring Festival while in Beijing.

5 . People perform graceful moves, all while standing on a bamboo strip in the river. You may think it’s a scene from an art movie, but actually it is a form of intangible cultural heritage: bamboo drifting(独竹漂).

Bamboo drifting dated back to over 2,000 years ago in the Chishui River area of Guizhou. During the Qin Dynasty,the Bozhou district of Zunyi city was known for its high-quality nanmu. It was in great demand by the royal court more than 2,000 kilometers to the north. With no transportation along the Chishui River， people had to stand on one log(原木)to drift down the river. Later, local people began to compete along the way and the game of wood drifting was born. In the Qing Dynasty, wood drifting became bamboo drifting because of bamboo’s lower price.

Now, communities in Guizhou hold bamboo drifting competitions every year during Dragon Boat Festival. Due to the great strength and balance it takes for one to get the hang of this act, bamboo drifting was included in the national intangible cultural heritage list.

Yang Liu,24,is an inheritor(继承人) of bamboo drifting.Yang said the most challenging part of bamboo drifting was keeping one’s balance. “I fell in the water several times when I was practising,” she said.

But the love for the ancient skill keeps Yang going. In the past 17 years, she has drifted all year round, in winter cold and summer heat.

Yang also produces new ideas when spreading the culture of bamboo drifting. For example, she connects dance with bamboo drifting to make it more graceful and wears hanfu when performing, creating a beautiful feel. In 2020, Yang registered on social media platforms and posted her videos. “I want to spread it to other countries so that more people around the world will like Chinese culture,” she told China Daily.

1. Why did bamboo drifting replace wood drifting?

A．The bamboo was cheaper.	B．The bamboo was more beautiful.
C．The bamboo was more convenient.	D．The bamboo was much easier to control.

2. What does the underlined phrase “get the hang of” in paragraph 3 mean?

A．Prepare.

B．Change.

C．Master.

D．Improve.

3. What is the most difficult for bamboo drifting in Yang Liu’s opinion?

A．Designing moves.	B．Transporting goods.
C．Choosing bamboos.	D．Keeping balance.

4. What can we infer about Yang Liu?

A．She inherits bamboo drifting creatively.

B．She learned bamboo drifting very easily.

C．She has become the leader of bamboo drifting.

D．She began learning bamboo drifting at 17.

6 . The TV series, The Longest Day in Chang’an, which was shown on Chinese online platforms, became a hit soon. Since then, it has been shown on partnering streaming platforms and TV networks abroad. Some websites overseas also offered the program to their users paying for it — the first time a Chinese series was broadcast as paid content abroad.

“I was amazed by the overseas audience’s love of this show,” Cao Dun, director of The Longest Day in Chang’an told Beijing Review. “I was worried that they wouldn’t understand the complex political structure of the Tang Dynasty. But in fact, the show is prompting foreign audiences to research the history of the Tang Dynasty to better understand the plot.”

The unique culture in ancient China is no a barrier but a bridge to connect with foreign audiences. In the TV series, every figure is given enough space to flesh out his or her character.

Telling stories of the ordinary Chinese people that resonate (引起共鸣) with the audience might be the way to communicate with the world. “The success of the TV series shows that beauty is a universal language crossing borders,” he told Beijing Review.

His ambition is to distinguish Chinese dramas from the TV shows in the rest of the world. “The TV series is a step in my plan to tell Chinese stories to the world,” Cao said. “After describing the impressive beauty of the Tang dynasty, I am looking for several plays that tell stories of today’s China. I don’t want to copy any country’s production. Chinese dramas have to build on our rich culture and Chinese people’s everyday life.” Cao added.

1. What do we know about the TV series?

A．It can be appreciated for free.

B．It was very popular once it was shown.

C．It was put on overseas when first released.

D．It is about the development of the Tang dynasty.

2. What does the underlined word “prompting” in Paragraph 2 probably mean?

A．Requiring.

B．Reminding.

C．Encouraging.

D．Informing.

3. What contributed to the TV series’ success?

A．Recognition of beauty.	B．Stories of Tang Dynasty.
C．Diversity of Chinese culture.	D．Personalities of every figure.

4. What is the best title of the passage?

A．Learn the Ancient Political Structure	B．Make a Successful TV Series is Easy
C．Show Different Nationalities in China	D．Tell Chinese Stories to the World

8 . By drawing patterns on the surface of a cup of tea, chabaixi, an ancient Chinese tea trick displayed in a recent TV drama, has gone viral for its apparent similarity with modern latte art (咖啡拉花艺术). However, ten years ago, this distinctive technique was close to disappearing completely. Zhang Zhifeng, a practitioner of chabaixi, found scenes of chabaixi in the drama aroused great interest among ordinary people.

Chabaixi can create endless patterns such as bamboos and mountains or even calligraphy. There are over a dozen steps, from grinding (碾碎) tea for fine powder, to pouring boiled water, stirring the mixture for thick froth, and finally drawing the patterns. It is different from making latte because people use clear water as the object to put into the cup instead of milk. But when the water touches the surface of whipped (搅打起泡沫的) tea, it turns into a white color and disappears in 20 minutes. The process before the drawing is known as the tea-making technique, diancha. The quality of diancha is crucial to whether patterns can be successfully produced later.

“Chabaixi is one of the countless forms of tea-making techniques in China. The importance of chabaixi is not only that this technique is unique in the world, but also it gives us a window into people’s lifestyle in the Song Dynasty, a period of time when leisure activities in some ways resemble what we have now,” Zhang said.

Before chabaixi was discovered by TV audiences, the technique was listed as part of China’s Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2017, after it was recovered by Zhang Zhifeng. He started researching the origins of chabaixi in the 1980s and brought the technique back in 2009 after decades of trials and practice. Zhang spent nearly 30 years studying and researching the origins and making of tea, but for him it was all worthwhile.

“This technique is key to the tea culture of the Song Dynasty, and it would be a shame to let it fade. This technique must be passed on to the next generations so they can understand its history,” Zhang said.

1. What do the underlined words “gone viral” probably mean?

A．Received good protection.	B．Maintained highly competitive.
C．Started declining gradually.	D．Become popular quickly.

2. What do we know about chabaixi?

A．It is painted with whipped milk.

B．It involves complicated tea-making skills.

C．It mainly describes beautiful scenery.

D．It develops based on latte art.

3. What is the third paragraph mainly about?

A．The significance of chabaixi.	B．The uniqueness of chabaixi.
C．The origin of chabaixi.	D．The development of chabaixi.

4. What can we infer about Zhang Zhifeng?

A．He teaches people the tea culture of the Song Dynasty.

B．He is leading young generations to innovate chabaixi.

C．He is committed to developing chabaixi through media.

D．He encourages people to pass on the technique of chabaixi.