1 . A British friend told me he couldn’t understand why Chinese people love eating sunflower seeds（嗑瓜子）as a snack so much. “I’ve met a lot of older Chinese and many have a crack in their front teeth, I believe that’s from cracking the seeds,” he said.

I had never noticed the habit, but once he mentioned it, I suddenly became more aware. I realized that whenever I’m watching TV or typing a report, I always start mindlessly cracking sunflower seeds. My friend doesn’t like sunflower seeds, and, to him, it seems unnecessary to work so much just to get one small seed.

When we were young, the whole family would usually get together for Chinese New Year. Then, we all lived close to one another, usually in a small city, and sometimes even neighbors would go door-to-door on Chinese New Year’s Eve to check out what every household was making.

I remember my parents would be in the kitchen cooking. Out in the living room, a large table would already be laid out, complete with fancy tablecloth, ready-made dumpling fillings, and dishes full of candy, fruits and sunflower seeds. Some of the dishes were to be offered to our ancestors later, while others were for neighbors and children to eat before the evening feast. I must have learned how to crack sunflower seeds back then.

I don’t think it’s right to criticize one’s choice in food or eating habits, no matter how strange they may seem.

It’s not only in China. When I went abroad, I found people had all sorts of strange habits when it came to food. In Denmark, they put salted red fish on bread and eat it for dinner, no matter how much it ruins your breath. They think it’s。delicacy（美味佳肴）, and it’s connected to their certain culture. I think it’s a wonderful tradition.

1. Why can the British friend not understand when he found Chinese love eating sunflower seeds?

A．Because the seeds are too hard to crack.

B．Because he thinks they art harmful to teeth.

C．Because he doesn’t think the seeds are good.

D．Because he doesn’t thinks the seeds are worth eating.

2. What does the writer prove by mentioning Chinese New Year?

A．The families get together for it.	B．Eating sunflower seeds is related to it.
C．The traditions of celebrating it disappear.	D．Children can eat delicious food on that day.

3. What’s the writer’s attitude to Denmark’s way of eating bread?

A．indifferent

B．critical

C．understandable

D．doubtful

4. What idea does the writer want to express in this passage?

A．It is good to form healthy eating habits.

B．Eating habits come from a certain culture.

C．Changing your eating habits will change your life.

D．One kind of food doesn’t necessarily suit everyone.

4 . You might think of martial arts movies when you see people performing graceful moves down a river, all standing on a bamboo strip, but actually it is a form of intangible cultural heritage: single bamboo drifting (独竹漂).

Over 2,000 years ago, the high-quality wood, nanmu, in Guizhou was in great demand by the royal court in the north. With no better transportation, people had to stand on one log 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 single bamboo drifting because of bamboo’s lower price. Due to various skills it takes for one to master this act, single bamboo drifting was included in the national intangible cultural heritage list in 2021.

Yang Liu, an inheritor(继承者) of single bamboo drifting, learned it at 7. “Usually, the bamboo under our feet is about 9 meters long, and the bamboo in our hands is about 5 meters. If the length of the bamboo is not long enough, it will not float. Keeping our feet firmly positioned on the narrow bamboo pole is the key, so we should fight against the current(水流) by constantly changing the angle. I lost my balance and fell into the water many times while practicing. Once I fell, I gave it another try until I knew how to handle the most difficult part,” she said.

The love for the ancient skill keeps Yang going. Yang also shows creativity when spreading the culture of single bamboo drifting. For example, she includes dance in single bamboo drifting to make it more graceful. As hanfu culture has been on the rise, Yang started wearing hanfu while performing, creating a more beautiful feel. In 2020, Yang began to post her videos on social media. “I’m extremely proud to get the response from viewers that single bamboo drifting makes the line between what is possible and impossible unclear. It’s my mission to keep it alive and make it known to more people,” Yang Liu told China Daily.

1. What can be learned from the first two paragraphs?

A．Nanmu was delivered to the north by land.

B．Single bamboo drifting needs lots of skills.

C．Bamboo was costly in Guizhou over 2,000 years ago.

D．The martial arts movie is a form of cultural heritage.

2. What is the biggest challenge in learning single bamboo drifting?

A．Keeping balance.

B．Maintaining a fixed angle.

C．Finding the proper bamboo.

D．Holding the bamboo firmly in hands.

3. What do the viewers think of single bamboo drifting?

A．It’s confusing.	B．It’s impossible.
C．It’s unbelievable.	D．It’s effortless.

4. Which of the following is a suitable title for the text?

A．Balancing with Grace

B．Chinese Cultural Heritage

C．Yang Liu: a Creative Performer

D．Transporting Bamboo down the River

5 . The Miao Sisters Festival is held every year in Guizhou’s Taijiang County, where 97 percent of the 168,000 people there are from the ethnic (民族) Miao group.It is an ancient tradition, which brings men and women together through food, gifts and music.

In the days before the festival, young women gather leaves and wild flowers, which they use to dye (给……染色) sticky rice with bright colours. This brightly coloured rice, known as Sister Rice, gives the festival its name. During the festival, the young women dress in beautiful traditional clothes with large amounts of silver jewelry.

The festival includes parades, horse races and musical performances. But the real focus is the interaction between the young women and the young men who visit from surrounding villages and sing songs.In one traditional type of song, a man and woman take turns singing to each other, and the first one to make a mistake loses the game.The loser must give the winner a gift, but the winner is expected to give a gift in return too.

After meeting the men, the women send them home with a bamboo basket containing dyed rice and hidden objects with special meanings. For example, a pair of chopsticks means she wants to marry the man, while garlic shows that she is not interested.

One of several stories is about the festival’s beginning of a girl and a boy who fell in love. The girl’s parents wanted her to marry her uncle’s son as it was traditional at the time. She refused, and the boy likewise refused to marry anyone else. For a time, they could only meet in a field and pass hidden messages to each other through rice in a bamboo basket. Finally, the pair overcame their parents’ opposition and were allowed to marry.

The Miao Sisters Festival is perhaps the oldest festival in Asia that encourages love.

1. What is the purpose of young women collecting leaves and wild flowers?

A．To decorate their rooms.

B．To sell them and make money.

C．To give sticky rice different colours.

D．To cover some objects in a basket.

2. Which of the following is NOT the activity taking place in the festival?

A．Water skiing.	B．Horse races.
C．Parades.	D．Singing songs.

3. What can we learn from the passage?

A．A woman often loses the game.

B．A hidden pair of chopsticks suggests good things.

C．The winner need not send a gift.

D．Often a man needs to sing songs to a young woman.

4. What does the story in Paragraph 5 tell us?

A．The boy’s parents didn’t like the girl.

B．They were not married in the end.

C．The boy refused to marry the girl at first.

D．The rice in the bamboo basket carried their love.

6 . Last weekend I was lucky enough to attend one of Spain’s most famous carnivals in the city of Cádiz. You can only understand what it is like after seeing it for yourself. Everybody was fancily-dressed from top to toe.     1    

Almost instantly after stepping off the train, we were filled with joy.     2     Many people parading through the streets playing traditional music filled people with happiness. As we wandered around and took in the animate atmosphere, the creativity of some costumes was incredible! You could really tell that people put a lot of time and energy into making some amazing costumes.

Then there were the groups dotted around the city.     3     This gave the carnival a pure essence of originality, as they were singing from their heart. Furthermore, the fact that I was not able to understand the inside jokes did not matter, as I was transfixed by the actions and expressions they provided.     4    

As the night progressed, the streets got more packed with people. When we passed a convenience store, we danced along to the music coming through the owner’s speakers.     5     It was a marquee with a DJ set inside, literally like a mini festival. After this wacky weekend of festivity, it is true to say that the Spanish know how to party!

A．Everyone was dancing.

B．People got more and more excited.

C．We saw everyone was in high spirits.

D．It made me feel like I was in a fairy-tale world.

E．Afterwards, we went to the main party at El Puerto.

F．They were mostly old men singing some traditional songs.

G．These mini street shows were a true taste of Spanish culture.

7 . Some people describe American society as a salad bowl while others think of it as a melting pot. In a bowl of salad, all the ingredients are mixed together.    1     Together, however, the ingredients make up a unity. All the ingredients of a salad contribute to the finished product. They may be covered with the same dressing (调味酱), but the green vegetables, tomatoes and cooked corn can all be seen for what they are.

From this point of view, America is very much like a salad bowl where individual ethnic groups mix together, yet maintain their cultural uniqueness. People may work together during the day at similar jobs and in the same companies, but at night they may return to their ethnic groups where their own individual culture directs their way of life.    2     Each ethnic group has its own special customs, language, food and traditions to protect and defend. This idea of the salad bowl is referred to as cultural diversity; that is, American society is a collection of various cultures living together in harmony within one country.

    3     Here, society is like one large pot of soup. All cultural aspects are mixed together, sacrificing their original identity and keeping a bit of what they were to become a new reality. The longer the soup is cooked, the better the taste and the more likely it will be for the mixture to dissolve. In this sense, America can surely be seen as a melting pot where people from all over the world come to live and work together forming one nation. There are dozens of shared symbols.     4     In such a culture, symbols like the flag and the nation’s official song serve to break down the walls which separate ethnic groups.

Whether a salad bowl or a melting pot, America can be best described as a mixture of both.    5    

A．Both are correct depending on one’s point of view.

B．They never lose their shapes, colours or tastes.

C．This is why there is so much diversity within America.

D．In other words, America is a nation where there is unity in diversity.

E．Thus, one needs to abandon one’s culture to be considered “American”.

F．They serve to develop the various ethnic groups to create a new American culture.

G．The other theory, which is also used to describe American society, is the melting pot.

9 . As William Shakespeare is to literature in English, so is the poet Du Fu to the Chinese literary tradition. “We have Dante, Shakespeare and Du Fu. These poets create the very values by which poetry is judged,” remarked Harvard Professor Stephen Owen in Du Fu: China’s Greatest Poet, a BBC documentary that aired on April 7.

Aimed at introducing the charm and beauty of traditional Chinese literature to viewers around the globe, the documentary invited the famous British actor Ian McKellen, who played the wizard Gandalf in the film series The Lord of the Rings, to read 15 of Du’s poems that have been translated into English.

The one-hour film traces the poet’s life experiences in detail. Born in 712, Du lived in the reign of the Emperor Xuanzong of Tang(712—756), a time marked by extraordinary prosperity, inclusiveness and glorious cultural accomplishments.

However, as An Lushan’s rebel army floored the empire, the 43-year-old Du, the former civil servant at the Tang court, had to take his family out of his hometown, and faced starvation and sufferings. Through ups and downs, the poet never stopped writing and about 1,500 poems have been kept over the ages.

Even though he never held a high position in the government, Du still cared about common people. For example, in the poem My Cottage Unroofed by Autumn Gales, he wrote that “Could I get mansions covering ten thousand miles, I’d house all poor scholars and make them beam with pleasure”.

“That is why he is honored as the Poet Sage by later generations. A difficult life and his spirit of concern about the world helped him create so many masterpieces,” Shi Wenxue, a cultural critic based in Beijing, told the Global Times.

Without doubt Du is a cultural symbol of ancient China, but his brilliant works and core spirits have also inspired people outside China. As the documentary notes, his work represents a precious cultural heritage for the entire world, not just China.

1. What can we know about the documentary?

A．It introduces Shakespeare.

B．Du Fu is acted by Ian McKellen in it.

C．Its target audience is Chinese.

D．It shows 15 of Du Fu’s poems to the audience.

2. What does the underlined word “That” in paragraph 6 refer to?

A．The concern about common people.

B．My Cottage Unroofed by Autumn Gales.

C．The low position in the government.

D．The sentence of the poem.

3. What inspired Du’s creation most according to Shi Wenxue?

A．His work experience.

B．Hard life and his caring spirit.

C．An Lushan’s rebel army.

D．The Tang Dynasty’s cultural background.

4. In which section of a website may this text appear?

A．Entertainment.	B．Health.
C．Literature.	D．Science.