1 . Argosy Christmas Ship Festival
Seattle
December 1— December 23, 2018
The Argosy Christmas Ship Festival is ship-to-shore holiday celebration that has become a local Northwest tradition. Aboard the Christmas Ship, some of the finest Norwest choirs sing holiday greetings. These performances are broadcast via speakers to bonfire(篝火)sites and to other boats participating in the parade.
Holiday Island Lights Festival
Friday Harbor, Sand Juan Island
December 1 —December 31, 2018
An island-wide holiday tradition that includes local businesses decorating contest, a tree lighting ceremony on December 4 with shops staying open until 7:00 pm. On December 11 a Lighted Boat Parade starts the evening, to be followed by the Santa ship coming into Friday Harbor for the children, shops staying open until 7:00 pm. December 18-19 Roche Harbor’s Christmas Festival begins at 3:00 pm and will include artists booths, Victorian Carol singing, story telling, theater and dining.
Christmas Lighting Festival
Leavenworth
December 4 – December 19, 2018
This old-fashioned Lighted farm Implement (器皿) Parade, which expressed its admiration for the Yakima Valley’s agricultural heritage, including entries with up to 35,000 lights decorating the tractor, plow or thresher! Pre-parade activities include a Christmas Tree Ceremony and other special entertainment before the parade. Join us and you’re sure to enjoy the carolers dressed in traditional turn-of-the-century attire(服装) as they wander throughout the Downtown area.
Holiday with Lights
Federal Way
December 10, 2018 —January 1, 2019
With over a million twinkling lights displayed throughout the park, your heart will be filled with cheer and the spirit of the season! There will be holiday light displays, festive music and strolling carolers, visit Santa, enchanted village rides, and much more.
1. Which of the following festival lasts the longest?| A．Argosy Christmas Ship Festival | B．Holiday Island Lights Festival |
| C．Christmas Lighting Festival | D．Holiday with Lights |
| A．Seattle | B．Leavenworth | C．Friday Harbor | D．Federal Way |
| A．Astonished. | B．Tired. | C．Fresh. | D．Happy. |
Their eyes fixing on their Chinese Tai Chi master, some children in Zimbabwe closely follow a series of martial arts (武术) movements
From primary students to adolescents,
Tai Chi is
Since the 19th century, the Chinese
Here is a little tale about the Chinese zodiac
Legends tell us there was a great race between the
4 . 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. |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| A．Approving. | B．Confused. | C．Negative. | D．Disapproving. |
Chinese people have been celebrating the Mid- Autumn Festival and enjoying mooncakes for centuries. Mooncakes are in
Hou Yi, who was the husband of Chang’ e, shot down nine suns. After that, a goddess gave
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
7 . Boris, a foreign student at Communication University of China, often shares his experiences of Chinese culture on his vlog (视频博客).
In one video, for example, Boris shared how he had learned the Chinese word dongxi. He translated each part separately into “east west”. And he introduced one theory (说法) about how dongxi came to mean “things”. He told people that all marketplaces in ancient Chinese cities were set up along a single road that ran from east to west. So when you would say qu mai dongxi, you’d be saying, “I’m going to buy things.”
Some other videos show his reading Chinese poems and performing kung fu in Chinese traditional costume, which are quite welcome among his 40, 000 followers.
“Many of my followers are learning Chinese,” Boris said. “But sadly, they know little about Chinese culture and the country.”
Like many foreigners, Boris once believed that all Chinese could perform kung fu, flying onto roofs and walking over walls. He thought the country was not that developed. But after he got a scholarship (奖学金) to study in China, his view changed. “China has entered a new period, but many people’s impressions of China are still stuck in the1970s,” Boris said. “That’s why I started to shoot vlogs to share Chinese culture in 2019.”
Until now, Boris has posted more than 40 Chinese culture vlogs online. But making these vlogs is not easy. Take reading the poem Second Farewell to Cambridge by Xu Zhimo as an example.
“I can understand and read every word in the poem,” Boris said. “But to touch readers, I need to use proper feelings while reading.” So he needed to look for much background information and make his feelings suit each part of the poem.
Though shooting these vlogs takes lots of time, the young man feels proud that his vlogs have inspired many people. Boris said that he wanted to continue bridging the differences between two cultures. “This goal may not be achieved easily, but I will spare no efforts to do my part.”
1. Through the vlogs, Boris mainly wants to ______. .| A．teach foreigners Chinese | B．introduce a Chinese university |
| C．sell Chinese products | D．share his experiences in China |
| A．translating it as a whole | B．knowing its cultural background |
| C．making up some sentences | D．comparing it with similar words |
| A．His hunger for new technology. | B．His wish to show the real China. |
| C．His interest in Chinese culture. | D．His dream to be a big vlogger. |
| A．meet the followers’ needs | B．express Boris’s love for poems |
| C．show Boris’s efforts at vlog-making | D．give an example of Chinese culture |
8 . 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. |
| A．The busy traffic. | B．The unexpected quietness. |
| C．Beijingers’ love for travel. | D．Occasional bursts of fireworks. |
| A．Desperate. | B．Confused. | C．Wonderful. | D．Convenient. |
| 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. |
9 . 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. |
| A．Prepare. | B．Change. | C．Master. | D．Improve. |
| A．Designing moves. | B．Transporting goods. |
| C．Choosing bamboos. | D．Keeping balance. |
| 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. |
10 . Britain is divided into different areas. Britain is one of the most diverse nations in Europe with over 250 different languages being spoken in London alone. With such a various culture, adapting to it can be a challenge for anyone.
Forget the stereotypes (陈旧观念). Many of the long-formed stereotypes simply have nothing to do with Britain today. Don’t think that everyone enjoys drinking tea or beer. Abandoning some old ideas of people and culture will allow you to be more open-minded and easily get into the culture.
Get used to small spaces. Like all European nations, Britain does not have the luxury of space. Houses, apartments and cars are all smaller.
Accept the jokes.
| A．Be polite |
| B．Make friends with them |
| C．Don’t play jokes on others |
| D．Understand the differences |
| E．Following these steps should be of great help to you |
| F．Therefore, trying to become familiar with smaller areas is very necessary |
| G．One of the most confusing aspects of British culture is humour |
