I'm glad to know that you are interested in Chinese traditional festivals and want to experience one of them.

I am looking forward to your coming.

Yours,

Li Hua

6 . As more and more people speak the global language of English, Chinese, Spanish, and Arabic, other languages are rapidly disappearing. In fact, half of the 6,000-7,000 languages spoken around the world today will be likely to die out by the next century, according the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

In an effort to prevent language loss, scholars from a number of organizations — UNESCO and National Geographic among them — have for many years been documenting dying languages and the cultures they reflect.

Mark Turin, a scientist at the Macmillan Center, Yale University, who specializes in the languages and oral traditions of the Himalayas, is following in that tradition. His recently published book, A Grammar of Thangmi and Their Culture, grows out of his experience living, working, and raising a family in a village in Nepal.

Documenting the Thangmi language and culture is just a starting point for Turin, who seeks to include other languages and oral traditions across the Himalayan reaches of India, Nepal, Bhutan, and China. But he is not content to simply record these voices before they disappear without record.

At the University of Cambridge Turin discovered a wealth of important materials —including photographs, films, tape recordings, and field notes — which had remained unstudied and were badly in need of care and protection. Now, through the two organizations that he has founded — the Digital Himalaya Project and the World Oral Literature Project — Turin has started a campaign to make such documents, found in libraries and stores around the world, available not just to schools but to the younger generations of communities from whom the materials were originally collected. Thanks to digital technology and the widely available Internet, Turin notes, the endangered languages can be saved and reconnected with speech communities.

Chinese New Year,     1     starts on the first day of the Chinese lunar calendar （阴历），is considered as China's most important holiday. It     2     （know） as the Spring Festival.

The Spring Festival starts at the beginning     3     the new moon. It often happens between January and February. It usually       4     （last） about one month until Lantern Festival （元宵节），which gives everyone plenty of time for celebration.

    5     （traditional） , red envelopes with money in are gifted during the Spring Festival celebrations. It's a custom which goes back to ancient times. However, when the tradition     6    （start） is unknown. Whatever the reason is, the red envelope is an important part of Chinese New Year to this day.

The firework is another big part of Chinese New Year. A     7     （write） shared the following story on a website. An old man saved a town from a terrible monster （怪兽）by throwing many     8     （bamboo） into the fire. The explosion caused by the bamboo frightened off the monster. As     9     result, Chinese people set off fireworks （爆竹）during Chinese New Year celebrations     10     （avoid） the evil spirits of the past.

9 . In 1947 a group of famous people from the art world headed by an Austrian conductor decided to hold an international festival of music, dance and theatre in Edinburgh. The idea was to reunite Europe after the Second World War.

It quickly attracted famous names such as Alec Guinness, Richard Burton, Dame Margot Fonteyn and Marlene Dietrich as well as the big symphony orchestras(交响乐团). It became a fixed event every August and now attracts 400,000 people yearly.

At the same time, the “Fringe” appeared as a challenge(挑战) to the official festival. Eight theatre groups turned up uninvited in 1947, in the belief that everyone should have the right to perform, and they did so in a public house disused for years.

Soon, groups of students firstly from Edinburgh University, and later from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, Durham and Birmingham were making the journey to the Scottish capital each summer to perform theatre by little -- known writers of plays in small church halls to the people of Edinburgh.

Today the “Fringe”, once less recognized, has far outgrown the festival with around 1,500 performances of theatre, music and dance on every one of the 21 days it lasts. And yet as early as 1959,with only 19 theatre groups performing, some said it was getting too big.

A paid administrator(行政人员) was first employed only in 1971, and today there are eight administrators working all year round and the number rises to 150 during August itself. In 2004 there were 200 places housing 1,695 shows by over 600 different groups from 50 different countries. More than 1.25 million tickets were sold.

10 . China Daily∣Updated:2016-12-26 07:44

THE COMPOUND surrounding Dayun Temple in Shangluo, Northwest China’s Shaanxi province, has been encroached (侵犯) upon by the urban regeneration process. This has caused damage to several relics including an ancient mulberry tree and four houses built during the Ming Dynasty (1368 — 1644). Beijing News commented on Saturday.

The construction work endangering a cultural and historical site on the provincial cultural heritage protection list stopped when the Shangluo museum published an open letter calling for official involvement. However, damage had already been done to the temple, which has a history of more than 600 years. An old tree and a decorated archway were relocated and four houses torn down. There are also cracks in the walls and gates.

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 27(Xinhua) — Two key UN agencies and some countries on Sunday joined Interpol (国际刑警) to launch a major new program to strengthen the protection of cultural heritage targeted by terrorists and illegal sales against a background of a sharp rise of terrorist attacks and destruction of cultural heritage in armed conflict.

“Culture is on the frontline of conflict — we must place it at the heart of peace-building,” said UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova.

For his part, the executive director of UNODC, Yury Fedotov, said it was important to address sales and the destruction of cultural property as “crimes that strike at the key of our civilization and heritage.”

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