1 . Chinese Culture Shown to the World with Love Li Ziqi, a short video blogger specializing in traditional Chinese cooking and handicrafts has gained worldwide popularity.
Li has about 20 million followers on Sina Weibo, China's equivalent to Twitter，plus 7 million followers on overseas social media networks. Many foreigners say they have got to know traditional Chinese food culture via her channel.
It is the spirit of craftsmanship（技艺） behind her works that makes Li's video clips attractive. She strictly follows the authentic traditional steps and procedures in making traditional Chinese food and handicrafts, such as peach flower wine and silk, and goes to great lengths to ensure her videos are accurate. Sometimes she spends several months producing one of her videos.
Li has been inheriting（继承） traditional Chinese culture in a rather creative way. A closer look at her videos will show that they are never with any "analysis" that makes people feel bored. They just show the audience each and every detail of traditional Chinese culture so that the latter knows how Chinese live their beautiful and elegant lives. It is that universal appeal that makes her works so attractive. Thanks to Li's efforts, many intangible cultural heritages that only existed in memories and written records now appear before our eyes. Via her short videos, Li presents the image of a beautiful and friendly China.
With the growth of the Chinese economy, people overseas are showing more interest in traditional Chinese culture. Li has shown how to satisfy that interest in a good way, namely showing the best parts of traditional Chinese culture with her heart.
To effectively present the beauty of Chinese culture to the world, we need more Li Zigi.
1. What can we learn about Li Zigi's video clips?| A．They promote the sales of Chinese food and handicrafts. |
| B．They attract a large number of foreigners to visit her online shop. |
| C．They aim to introduce traditional Chinese food culture and handicrafts worldwide. |
| D．They are based on her family's recipes of making traditional Chinese food. |
| A．Analysis of Chinese culture in Li's videos makes people bored. |
| B．Details and accuracy play significant roles in the success of Li's videos. |
| C．Li makes sure all of her video clips are short enough to be downloaded. |
| D．Cultural heritages usually exist in memories and written records. |
| A．nonphysical | B．inaccessible | C．invaluable | D．unnoticeable |
| A．To provide guidance on cooking and making handicrafts. |
| B．To suggest a way of attracting more followers on Sina Weibo. |
| C．To give an example of how to gain worldwide popularity as a short video blogger. |
| D．To encourage more people to make efforts to bring Chinese culture to the world. |
2 . What is Hanukkah?
Hanukkah (光明节) is the Jewish Festival of Lights. It lasts for eight days and is usually celebrated in November or December. Hanukkah traditions include lighting candles, giving presents, playing games and eating food fried in oil, like doughnuts or potato pancakes.
Fried food is traditional at Hanukkah. latkes are fried pancakes made with potatoes, onions, eggs, flour and oil. Jam filled doughnuts are another popular Hanukkah treat. Dairy food such as cheese and cheesecake are also traditionally eaten at this festival.
The traditional Hanukkah candle holder is called a Hanukkah menorah (烛台) or hanukkiah and it has been used as a Jewish symbol since ancient times. A Hanukkah menorah has nine candles which are lit at night-time during Hanukkah.
In London you can see a giant menorah lit up with candles for the Hanukkah London event, in celebration of the Jewish Festival of Lights. This huge menorah in Trafalgar Square is put close to the Christmas tree for a truly multicultural winter celebration.
Playing with the dreidel (陀螺) is a traditional Hanukkah game played in Jewish homes in Britain and all over the world, and rules may vary from family to family. There are various games you can play with the dreidel.
It's traditional to give presents or money to family and friends at Hanukkah. Hanukkah Gelt refers to money given as a gift at the festival. ''Gelt'' is the Yiddish word for money. Children are often given chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil (金箔).
People also give Hanukkah greetings cards. The cards often show a picture of a menorah or dreidel. One UK online greetings cards company even combines Christmas and Hanukkah to make a card with the greeting ''Very Merry Chrismukkah wishes''!
Happy Hanukkah!
1. What are the traditional foods of Hanukah?| A．Fried pancakes and cheesecake. |
| B．Potato cakes and doughnuts. |
| C．Eggs and fried pancakes. |
| D．Cheese and onion doughnuts. |
| A．A candle. |
| B．The dreidel. |
| C．Hanukkah Gelt. |
| D．A Hanukkah menorah. |
| A．Hanukkah is only celebrated in December. |
| B．Playing with the dreidel is a traditional Hanukkah game. |
| C．Children are often given money wrapped in gold foil. |
| D．People will make Hanukkah greetings phone calls. |
The answer depends largely on cultural values as well as personal experiences. To the Egyptians, green was a color that represented the hope and joy of spring, while for Muslims, it means heaven. Red is a symbol (象征) of good luck in many cultures. In China, children are given money in a red envelope to bring good fortune in the New Year. For many nations, blue is a symbol of protection and religious beliefs. Greek people often wear a blue necklace hoping to protect themselves against evils (灾祸).
People’s choice of colors is also influenced by their bodies’ reactions (反应) toward them. Green is said to be the most restful color. It has the ability to reduce pain and relax people both mentally and physically. People who work in green environment have been found to have fewer stomach aches.
Red can cause a person’s blood pressure to rise and increase people’s appetites (食欲). Many decorators will include different shades of red in the restaurant. Similarly, many commercial websites will have a red “Buy Now” button because red is a color that easily catches a person’s eye.
Blue is another calming color. Unlike red, blue can cause people to lose appetite. So if you want to eat less, some suggest that eating from blue plates can help.
The next time you are deciding on what to wear or what color to decorate your room, think about the color carefully.
1. Muslims regard green as a symbol of heaven mainly because of their______.
| A．cultural values | B．commercial purposes |
| C．personal experiences | D．physical reactions to the color |
| A．To relax people physically. |
| B．To increase people’s appetites. |
| C．To encourage people to make a purchase. |
| D．To cause a person’s blood pressure to rise. |
| A．Red. | B．Green. | C．Blue. | D．Purple. |
| A．Colors and Human Beings |
| B．The Cultural Meaning of Color |
| C．The Meaning and Function of Color |
| D．Colors and Personal Experiences |
4 . People from East Asia tend to have more difficulty than those from Europe in distinguishing facial expressions — and a new report published online in Current Biology explains why.
Rachael Jack, University of Glasgow researcher, said that rather than scanning evenly(均匀的) across a face as Westerners do, Easterners fix their attention on the eyes.
“We show that Easterners and Westerners look at different face features to read facial expressions,” Jack said. “Westerners look at the eyes and the mouth in equal measure, whereas Easterners favor the eyes and neglect (忽略) the mouth.”
According to Jack and her colleagues, the discovery shows that human communication of emotion is more complex than previously believed. As a result, facial expressions that had been considered universally recognizable cannot be used to reliably convey emotion in cross-cultural situations.
The researchers studied cultural differences in the recognition of facial expressions by recording the eye movements of 13 Western Caucasian and 13 East Asian people while they observed pictures of expressive faces and put them into categories: happy, sad, surprised, fearful, disgusted, angry, or neutral. They compared how accurately participants read those facial expressions using their particular eye movement strategies.
It turned out that Easterners focused much greater attention on the eyes and made significantly more errors than did Westerners. “The cultural difference in eye movements that they show is probably a reflection of cultural difference in facial expressions,” Jack said. “Our data suggest that whereas Westerners use the whole face to convey emotion, Easterners use the eyes more and mouth less.”
In short, the data show that facial expressions are not universal signals of human emotion. From here on, examining how cultural factors have diversified these basic social skills will help our understanding of human emotion. Otherwise, when it comes to communicating emotions across cultures, Easterners and Westerners will find themselves lost in translation.
1. The discovery shows that Westerners _____________.| A．pay equal attention to the eyes and the mouth |
| B．consider facial expressions universally reliable |
| C．observe the eyes and the mouth in different ways |
| D．have more difficulty in recognizing facial expressions |
| A．The participants in the study. | B．The researchers of the study. |
| C．The errors made during the study. | D．The data collected from the study. |
| A．The Eye as the Window to the Soul |
| B．Cultural Differences in Reading Emotions |
| C．Effective Methods to Develop Social Skills |
| D．How to increase Cross-cultural Understanding |
5 . Whether it’s one day off or a week, you don’t need to be surrounded by people to have a great holiday.
Don’t feel like you have to stay in your house because you’re spending your holiday alone. Going shopping is a good choice. Even if you don’t want to spend a lot of money, you can take your time perusing stores, and treat yourself to something small that you’ve been wanting. Going to see a movie or show alone can be also a fun experience.
Be productive
Read a book
Setting aside long periods of time to read can help you get around to finishing that book you’ve been wanting to read and feel a sense of achievement.
Do some exercise
Exercise has many long-term benefits, and it can improve relaxation afterwards. Set aside thirty minutes or an hour to do a cardio workout. Holiday is a great time to exercise because you won’t be rushed or feel like you need to be somewhere else.
| A．Go out and do something |
| B．Make a schedule for your own holiday |
| C．Being alone can also be relaxing and enjoyable |
| D．Reading can also help you free from technology |
| E．It really makes sense to read a book alone on your holiday |
| F．A holiday can be a great time to get around to your home project |
| G．You’ll feel better and fresher after you are wet with sweat |
6 . We all love bank holidays. In the UK, we only get eight bank holidays in one year, and atleast five of those occur around Christmas time and Easter time! A bank holiday is a British English term. This is an official day that is decided by the government, when banks, shops and offices close for the day even though it’s a weekday — usually a M onday, and a lot of people have a day off work.
Bank holidays are different in Colombia — firstly, they are called “festivos”. There are twenty festivos for the whole country in one year ! In Britain, people get more holiday allowance (津贴) than Colombians but fewer bank holidays. There can be even more festivos in Colombia, depending on which region of Colombia you live in. This is because different regions have their own holidays. For example, some regions have a patron saint (守护神) in their region, so they have an extra festivo to celebrate that saint.
However, there are some days that are national holidays for historical reasons. There is an Independence Day celebration on July 20 every year. This is just like Bastille Day in France on July 14, or Independence Day in the United States on July 4. Other important festivos in Colombia are： Labor Day, on May 1, and Columbus Day on October 12. Columbus Day is a historical bank holiday that almost every country on the continent of A merica celebrates. This includes Colombia, Chile, Peru, Argentina, Mexico and the United States. It is a memorialization of the day that the Italian sailor, Christopher Columbus, first reached land on the continent in the year 1492. Many people criticize this day and say it is not something to celebrate because of the way Columbus and his teams treated the people that were already living there.
1. What is a “bank holiday” according to the text?| A．A holiday only for the bank staff. |
| B．A British traditional religion festival. |
| C．A celebration for Christmas and Easter. |
| D．An official nationwide rest day. |
| A．Colombia and Britain have the same number of festivos. |
| B．All Colombians have the same number of festivos. |
| C．Colombians have more bank holidays than the British. |
| D．Different regions in Colombia have different patron saits to celebrate. |
| A．Because Columbus wasn’t an American at all. |
| B．Because Columbus once treated the locals badly. |
| C．Because it wasn’t Columbus that found America first. |
| D．Because Columbus didn’t live in the continent of America. |
| A．Bank Holidays in Western World |
| B．How to Celebrate Bank Holidays |
| C．Celebrations of National Holidays |
| D．Why People Celebrate National Holidays |
7 . China’s popular “Singles’Day”, better known as “Double Eleven”, started out as a day to celebrate singles symbolized by the four number ones on the date of November 11.
With time that meaning has changed. In 2009, China’s e-commerce leader Alibaba set the day as a lucky shopping day for online sales as the date was both easy to remember and perfectly timed as it hit between the consumer spending lull (间歇) between National Day and Chinese New Year. It soon became a hit, and Double Eleven became a buying frenzy (疯狂) spread across the world’s second largest economy.
In 2019, the Double Eleven Shopping Festival entered its eleventh year. During this decade, Alibaba, Chinese e-commerce giant, and other e-commerce platforms, together with consumers, have co-created a very big shopping event whose heat has swept the world. Foreign readers share their ideas on Singles’ Day in China:
GhostBuster (UK) I think Double Eleven is unbelievable. It is not a religious festival that people of the same religion but living in different countries share. As an e-commerce faithful fan, I really love the shopping festival.
Emanreus (Australia) I work in Shanghai. Many of my young female colleagues are still single. They simply haven’t time to date, as they tend to work long hours then travel two hours by subway to get to and from work. Single’s Day is a day when they give themselves a treat with online shopping.
BlondeAmber (Ireland) There is not hing to be proud of to be in a country that spends so much online on a particular day. It does nothing more than show the superficiality (肤浅) of the temporary pleasure of shopping, and produces nothing more than a mountain of environmental waste. I bet there is plenty of buyers’ deep regret after this day.
Ionstar (US) Singles Day became a big deal for Valentine’s Day not for the singles! Well, Alibaba’s 11. 11 has become more famous and important than that of Black Friday and Cyber Monday!
1. Alibaba set the festival on November 11 mainly because ________.| A．it is a traditionally lucky day |
| B．it is a time for people to stay single |
| C．many foreigners like shopping on this day |
| D．it comes right between two consumer spending festivals |
| A．It is a festival that people living in different countries share. |
| B．It is a day for the singles to date. |
| C．People will certainly regret buying anything on this day. |
| D．Alibaba has made it as famous as Black Friday and Cyber Monday. |
| A．Ghost Buster. | B．Emanreus. |
| C．BlondeAmber. | D．Ionstar |
8 . For Western designers, China and its rich culture have long been an inspiration for Western creative.
“It’s no secret that China has always been a source(来源) of inspiration for designers,” says Amanda Hill, chief creative officer at A+E Networks, a global media company and home to some of the biggest fashion(时尚) shows.
Earlier this year, the China Through A Looking Glass exhibition in New York exhibited 140 pieces of China-inspired fashionable clothing alongside Chinese works of art, with the aim of exploring the influence of Chinese aesthetics(美学) on Western fashion and how China has fueled the fashionable imagination for centuries. The exhibition had record attendance, showing that there is huge interest in Chinese influences.
“China is impossible to overlook,” says Hill. “Chinese models are the faces of beauty and fashion campaigns that sell dreams to women all over the world, which means Chinese women are not just consumers of fashion — they are central to its movement.” Of course, not only are today’s top Western designers being influenced by China—some of the best designers of contemporary fashion are themselves Chinese. “Vera Wang, Alexander Wang, Jason Wu are taking on Galliano, Albaz, Marc Jacobs—and beating them hands down in design and sales,” adds Hill.
For Hill, it is impossible not to talk about China as the leading player when discussing fashion. “The most famous designers are Chinese, so are the models, and so are the consumers,” she says. “China is no longer just another market; in many senses it has become the market. If you talk about fashion today, you are talking about China—its influences, its direction, its breathtaking clothes, and how young designers and models are finally acknowledging that in many ways.”
1. What can we learn about the exhibition in New York?| A．It promoted the sales of artworks. | B．It attracted a large number of visitors. |
| C．It showed ancient Chinese clothes. | D．It aimed to introduce Chinese models. |
| A．They are setting the fashion. | B．They start many fashion campaigns. |
| C．They admire super models. | D．They do business all over the world. |
| A．learning from | B．looking down on | C．working with | D．competing against |
| A．Young Models Selling Dreams to the World |
| B．A Chinese Art Exhibition Held in New York |
| C．Differences Between Eastern and Western Aesthetics |
| D．Chinese Culture Fueling International Fashion Trends |
9 . Traveling to all corners of the world gets easier and easier. We live in a global village ,but this doesn’t mean that we all behave in the same way.
Many countries rules about what you should wear and what you shouldn’t wear. In Muslim countries, you shouldn’t reveal(暴露) the body, especially women, who should wear long blouses and skirts.
In Spain, lunch is often the biggest meal of the day, and can last two or three hours. For this reason many people eat a light breakfast and a late dinner. In Mexico, lunch is the time to relax ,and many people prefer not to discuss business as they eat.
In most countries, an exchange of business cards is necessary for all introductions.
| A．In Korea, you should take off your shoes when entering a house. |
| B．What will you do when travelling abroad? |
| C．In both countries, eye contact is avoided as a sign of respect. |
| D．You should include your company name and your position. |
| E．How should you behave when meeting someone for the first time? |
| F．However, in Britain, it’s usual to have a business meeting over breakfast. |
| G．It is very important for you to behave properly |
10 . The rules about how to talk, eat and sit, which are highly limited, are observed in most Western restaurants and homes.
In my childhood home, dinner was enjoyed with low voices, and the topics that we could discuss were very limited.
As for eating, we did it quietly. No eating noises were allowed. Everything must be done as quietly as possible. If any sound was created by eating food or drinking, it would be considered as bad manners!
| A．The scene is fantastic. |
| B．Your hands don’t look dirty! |
| C．How one sits at the table is also prescribed. |
| D．Can’t you think up a better excuse than that? |
| E．In general they were all strictly forbidden topics. |
| F．They’re completely different from what we find here in China. |
| G．We were not allowed to talk about anything that made listeners uncomfortable. |
