The use of chopsticks has been     1     big part of Chinese food culture for centuries. When cooking food or picking it up, a pair of chopsticks always comes for use.

So how did chopsticks come into being? It’s said that Dayu, a legendary ruler of ancient China    2     helped his people fight floods, invented them. In those days, people    3     (eat) only with their hands. But Dayu was busy preparing for flood control work and often had his meals in the wild. Mostly, he hurried to deal    4     unexpected accidents and didn’t want to wait to eat. The meat    5     (cook) in the pot was too hot to pick up with his hands. So one day Dayu picked up some twigs(细枝)     6     (help) him hold the meat. Later, the twigs    7     (gradual) became the chopsticks we know today.

But of course, this is just a story. The    8     (early) chopsticks archaeologists(考古学家) have found so far are more than 3,000 years,     9     (date) back to the Shang Dynasty. The six bronze chopsticks were found in Yinxu, one of China’s oldest archaeological    10     (site) in Anyang, Henan Province.

2 . If art preserves the culture of the Crow people, then Crow women are the keepers of that culture, cultivating it to reflect the modern day.

Fashion designer Bethany Yellowtail grew up riding horses and running in the fields and swimming in the river and being around her people in the Crow Nation and Northern Cheyenne Indian reservations in southeastern Montana. She knows first-hand the importance of art to maintaining native traditions. In 2015 she turned that knowledge into her own brand: B. Yellowtail. A year later, she created the B. Yellowtail Collective, made up of native artists, to foster economic opportunities for their communities. Many of those artists are women from different tribes but all of them preserve their culture and move it forward through their medium of choice.

Yellowtail and her team work for the native-owned business that’s rooted in community. Artists within the Collective typically receive 70% of profit from retail sales, and for a portion of the pandemic (流行病) the brand has upped that to 100%. The extra money has, of course, increased artists’ income in the past year, but the relationship is interdependent: without the work of those artists, B. Yellowtail wouldn’t exist and native culture would feel the loss.

Dewanda Little Coyote is Yellowtail’s mother. Family is deeply important to their tribe. So is art, which often runs in the family — and along the matriarchal (母系的) side. Little Coyote picked up her entrepreneurial spirit from her parents, who owned a gift shop. “My parents said, ‘If you have hands, create something. Do something, and make a living off of that,’” she said. After her parents passed away, the artist began learning beading (串珠) earrings herself. Dentalium, a tusk shell often used in native jewelry, caught her eye in particular. “I love it, because back in the day, our Cheyenne women wore a lot of dentalium,” she said. “So I wanted to give a contemporary look to that — to what our ancestors wore.”

Yellowtail herself learned sewing from her aunts and grandmothers before moving to Los Angeles in 2007 to study fashion design. Now, native women support native women — and matriarchal art evolves.

A small village in Yunnan Province is     1     (wide) known as the Dai paper factory. There are nets for     2     (dry) paper all over the village and inside villagers’ houses. Dai paper     3     (make) for over 800 years there up to now.

One of the best papermakers is Yan, who was already interested in Dai paper at an early age.     4     the guidance of his grandparents at 16, Yan was quickly able to complete     5     production independently.

Unlike ordinary papermaking where trees need to be cut down, Dai paper is environmentally friendly. This is     6    its raw material is the recyclable bark of a kind of trees unique to the area. Dai paper’ production process is still used today. In a workshop, Yan demonstrated 11 different papermaking     7     (process) to us.

Although Dai paper carries the culture and     8     (believe) of the Dai people, the crafting of it is faced with great challenges.     9     (address) the problems, Yan improved Dai’s papermaking technology, thus saving production time and reducing labor costs. And then he     10     (start) teaching the villagers his new papermaking process for free.

10 . As an old saying in China goes, “The days of the Sanjiu period are the coldest days.” “Sanjiu period”, which is in Minor Cold (小寒), refers to the third nine-day period (the 19th to the 27th day) after the day of the Winter Solstice (冬至). There are many different customs related to Minor Cold in China.

During Minor Cold people should eat some hot food to benefit the body and defend against the cold weather. Winter is the best time to have hotpot and braised mutton with soy sauce. But it is important to notice that too much spicy food may cause health problems.

In Tianjin, there is a custom to have huangyacai, a kind of Chinese cabbage, during Minor Cold. There are large amounts of vitamins A and B in huangyacai. As huangyacai is fresh and tender, it is fit for frying, roasting and braising.

According to tradition, the Cantonese eat glutinous rice in the morning during Minor Cold. Cantonese people add some fried preserved pork, sausages and peanuts and mix them into the rice.

In ancient times, people in Nanjing took Minor Cold quite seriously, but as time went by, the celebration of Minor Cold gradually disappeared. However, the custom of eating vegetable rice is still followed today. The rice is steamed and is incredibly delicious. Among the ingredients (原料), aijiaohuang (a kind of green vegetable), sausages and salted duck are the specialties in Nanjing.