Tomb-Sweeping Day,     1     (fall) on April 4th according to the solar calendar, is one of the most profound and significant traditional festivals in China. It has had     2     history of more than 2,500 years since Zhou Dynasty.

Like other solar terms, Qingming,     3     (create) in ancient China, was to guide the agricultural affairs and farming     4     (activity). During this period, seeds     5     (plant) and farmers start raising silkworms. With the development of history Tomb-Sweeping Day has     6     (extreme) rich connotations and different customs     7    (develop) in various places since then. There are many customs on that day, such as sweeping graves, worshipping ancestors and so on.

Nowadays, it is also a time for people to enjoy spring and get closer to nature as flowers bloom and trees turn ever     8     (green) than the time before. On that day, people enjoy the hope of spring, going for spring outings or flying kites.

Generally speaking, it is people’s sincere love for nature and miss for the dead     9     enable the festival to be passed down constantly     10     generation to generation.

Many foreigners first learn about Chinese culture through numerous Chinese restaurants     1    (find) all over the world. The second impression of Chinese culture is often Peking Opera,     2    masks are now almost symbolic of China. Many countries design posters     3     (use) Peking Opera masks to signal a “Year of Chinese Culture”.

    4     impresses people most is the artistic beauty of Peking Opera masks, which serve two purposes. One is to indicate the identity and character of the role. For example, a red face means that the person is loyal and brave     5     a white face identifies the person as foxy and evil. The other purpose is to express people’s     6     (assess) of the roles from a moral and aesthetic (美学的) point of view, such as respectable, hateful or noble etc.

Zhang Fei, a heroic character from Three Kingdoms Period (220-280), has a     7     (face) design in the shape of a butterfly —     8     perfect combination of personality and artistic design. The beauty of the color and design of Peking Opera masks adds to the attractive performance     9     stage. Therefore, Peking Opera masks     10     (adopt) as a source element in designing many Chinese folk handicrafts, posters, and fashions.

The world’s biggest kite, shaped like a dragon and    1     (stretch) over 280meters, flew high on Sunday in the skies over the Chinese city of Weifang. The city in the eastern province of Shandong is     2     birthplace of kites and home to the Weifang International Kite Festival since 1984.

The highlight of this year’s edition was the “Chinese Giant Dragon”, four meters in    3     (high) and 3.6 meters in width. The kite has the head of a dragon and the body of a centipede(蜈蚣) and is the    4    (wide) of its kind in the world. “It took 28 experienced workers 48 days to design and complete the kite.55 people     5     (require) to fly it,” said Zhang Huagang, general manager of Weifang Tianshun Kite Productions and one of the kite makers.

According to Zhang, the giant dragon kite, using traditional Chinese techniques, “    6     (refer) to our nation’s wishes for prosperity and fortune”. The kite festival, now in its 38th edition, opened on Friday    7     the presence of hundreds of amateurs and professionals,    8     flooded to the city from near and far to display their creations at the event.

This year’s festival features a record 1,628 kites in     9    (vary) forms by 500 participants     10     (divide) into 188 teams from over 31 provinces and regions from across the country.

At the opening ceremony of the 17th Guizhou Tourism Industry Development Conference held on April 6, a fashion show    1     (feature) signature local ethnic cultures drew rounds of camera flashes capturing images of the delicate Miao embroidery (刺绣) on the latest collection.

Pan, learned the embroidery art from her mother at the age of 5 as an ethnic tradition. But it was     2     her expectation that the folk craft could present itself on stages at world-famous fashion weeks as it does nowadays and     3     the embroideries created by her could one day     4    (spot) in the daily lives of families across China as household products, which is now the case.

Pan has been to five foreign countries, including the United States, France and the United Kingdom. “Foreigners     5     (true) love our embroideries. They were even willing    6    (queue) hundreds of meters long at Christmas, just to buy an embroidered notebook or ornament for their families,” she said.

Xia Hua, chairman of Eve Group,     7     Chinese clothing brand, has been devoted to promoting the intangible cultural heritage of China’s embroidery industry for more than three decades.

Over the past decade, Xia and her team     8     (commit) to the digitalization of ethnic handicrafts and have established databases on Chinese traditional embroidery     9     (pattern) and ethnic craftsmen.

“Access to embroidery patterns and embroiderers     10     (able) global designers to find appropriate cooperative partners to design and create relevant products,” Xia said.

A new branch of the Palace Museum is expected to rise on Beijing outskirts over the next few years to better showcase the     1     (museum) cultural relics.

After nearly a decade of preparation, construction of the new branch     2     (begin) last December. Located in Xiyehe, a village in Haidian District, the new branch will cover more than 100, 000 square meters, including     3     exhibition space of over 60, 000 square meters for cultural relics and more than 35, 000 square meters for relic     4     (restore).

At present, over 1. 86 million cultural relics     5     (house) in the museum. However, only about 10, 000 pieces are able to be displayed every year due to limited exhibition spaces     6     outdated offices.

Du Haijiang, deputy director of the Palace Museum, briefed the public on the project in an interview with CCTV on January 26th,     7     (explain) that calligraphy works and paintings couldn’t be put on display during rainy seasons, in winter or summer, because of strict temperature and humidity requirements. Some silk and cotton artworks     8    (current) cannot be exhibited at all for lack of the necessary environment.

On completion of the new branch, it will be possible     9     (display) between 20, 000 and 30, 000 individual relics each year. The new venue will be a modern exhibition space     10     multiple functions to provide relic preservation, repair work, and visitor services.

Keju was an essential part of the Chinese government administration from its founding in the Sui Dynasty until it was abolished in 1905. It was a method to elect the talented to the government     1     (office) posts in ancient China.

Examinations were held at four levels. At the first three levels, candidates     2     (test) on their knowledge of the Confucian classics, and their ability     3     (compose) poems on given subjects. At the final level, also called the palace examination, candidates needed to show     4     they analyzed contemporary political problems. Individuals who succeeded in this exam were raised to the level of Jinshi.

    5     success rate in Keju was low: only about two percent in the Tang Dynasty. Many candidates experienced     6     (repeat) failures, and some continued taking exams even when they became old, gray-haired men.

    7    (general), any male adult, regardless of his wealth or social status, could become a high-ranking civil servant through Keju. There are many examples in Chinese history of those who moved from a low social status to political     8     (celebrity) through success in Keju.

Keju served as a model     9     the civil-service systems in other Asian and Western countries, such as Korea and Japan. In the late 19th centuries, the     10     (admit) to the British civil service administration depended on success in an examination in classical studies.

Book Restorers Touch History

—Keeping ancient manuscripts in tip-top condition requires expertise and passion—

Whenever Song Jing visits a museum, she makes a point of checking out the section on ancient books. In addition to appreciating the wisdom    1     (hide) in those historical volumes, she focuses on how they are bound and presented.

Song works in the restoration division for ancient books at the National Library of China which is home to about 3 million ancient manuscripts, many of which require restoration before they can see    2    light of day again. Some books have suffered great loss. Take, for example, a 16th-century copy of Yongle Dadian. Only 3.5 percent of the total publication are known    3     (exist).

The process of repairing ancient books is complex. Day after day, Song and her colleagues are fully immersed    4    the duty of handling and healing the old books. Thanks to cutting-edge technology, restorers can create paper    5     (incredible) similar to the original version. However, the old-fashioned techniques still come in handy sometimes.    6     (fear) the chemicals in commercially produced paste might harm the books, restorers have to make the glues by themselves. The paste needs to be mixed right before the repair,    7    it will go bad because of sitting for too long.

The valuable cultural heritage that restorers have preserved    8     (serve) as the best evidence of Chinese civilization. Recently, the library has sent    9     (it) specialists like Song to deliver speeches in colleges and on TV. “I’m glad to see such    10     (arrange) and I hope to inspire people to find their passion in the preservation of our traditional culture,” Song says.

The Year of the Rabbit fell, with Chinese New Year     1     (arrive) on January 22 in 2023.

After gathering countless audiences’ favorite     2     (option) and through systematic and informative big data research, the 2023 Spring Festival Gala official logo and mascot (吉祥物) image, “Tu Yuanyuan,” was born. It is the first intellectual property (知识产权) mascot     3     (develop) through big data analysis in the 40-year history of the Spring Festival Gala.

The overall image     4     (base) on the characteristics of the Chinese white rabbit and combines the aesthetic (审美的) style of gongbi,     5     careful realist technique in Chinese painting, and then completed using 3D modeling technology.

In Chinese culture, rabbits are quiet, smart and agile (敏捷的). Many Chinese idioms speak of these features. For example, people often say dongruo tuotu     6     (praise) people for moving     7     (quick). Jiaotu sanku means that a smart rabbit always has many holes,     8     makes it hard for people to find it. The rabbit also stands for the moon. People used to believe a rabbit was living on the moon. The rabbit is called the Jade Rabbit or the Moon Rabbit. It is the pet of the moon goddess Chang’e.

Rabbits can have a lot of babies in a short time. In this way, people in the past also saw the rabbit     9     a good sign. They believed     10     (have) more children could bring them good luck and happiness.