1 . Some of the world’s most famous musicians recently gathered in Paris and New Orleans to celebrate the first annual International Jazz Day. UNESCO( United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) recently set April 30 as a day to raise awareness of jazz music, its significance, and its potential as a unifying(联合) voice across cultures.
Despite the celebrations, though, in the U.S. the jazz audience continues to shrink and grow older, and the music has failed to connect with younger generations.
It’s Jason Moran’s job to help change that. As the Kennedy Center’s artistic adviser for jazz, Moran hopes to widen the audience for jazz, make the music more accessible, and preserve its history and culture.
“Jazz seems like it’s not really a part of the American appetite,” Moran tells National Public Radio’s reporter Neal Conan. “What I’m hoping to accomplish is that my generation and younger start to reconsider and understand that jazz is not black and write anymore. It’s actually color, and it’s actually digital.”
Moran says one of the problems with jazz today is that the entertainment aspect of the music has been lost. “The music can’t be presented today the way it was in 1908 or 1958. It has to continue to move, because the way the world works is not the same,” says Moran.
Last year, Moran worked on a project that arranged Fats Waller’s music for a dance party, “Just to kind of put it back in the mind that Waller is dance music as much as it is concert music,” says Moran. “For me, it’s the recontextualization. In music, where does the emotion(情感) lie? Are we, as humans, gaining any insight(感悟) on how to talk about ourselves and how something as abstract as a Charlie Parker record gets us into a dialogue about our emotions and our thoughts? Sometimes we lose sight that the music has a wider context,” says Moran, “so I want to continue those dialogues. Those are the things I want to foster.”
1. Why did UNESCO set April 30 as International Jazz Day?| A．To remember the birth of jazz. |
| B．To protect cultural diversity. |
| C．To encourage people to study music. |
| D．To recognize the value of jazz. |
| A．Jazz becoming more accessible. |
| B．The production of jazz growing faster. |
| C．Jazz being less popular with the young. |
| D．The jazz audience becoming larger. |
| A．It will disappear gradually. |
| B．It remains black and white. |
| C．It should keep up with the times. |
| D．It changes every 50 years. |
| A．Exploring the Future of Jazz. |
| B．The Rise and Fall of Jazz. |
| C．The Story of a Jazz Musician. |
| D．Celebrating the Jazz Day. |
Yu Rong, a Chinese artist, thinks of a new way to introduce
Hua Mulan,
To better tell the story, Yu Rong takes inspiration from her several
3 . Around 6,200 years ago, farmers living on the eastern edges of Europe, in what is now Ukraine, left their villages. They moved into an area between the modern cities of Kiev and Odessa. They built new settlements up to 20 times the size of their old ones. Scientists believe the civilization might be an early attempt at urbanization. But it isn’t clear whether the sites, or perhaps the earliest cities, were fully inhabited (居住) year round and there is heated debate over what they were for.
This puzzling culture, known as the Cucuteni-Trypillia, predates the earliest known cities in Mesopotamia. Researcher Monica Smith, the author of Cities: The First 6.000 Years, thinks the very large sites may have had something in common with Gobekli Tepe in modern Turkey. It is a building complex which is at least 10,000 years old and seems to have been a place where people gathered together periodically for special gatherings.
By contrast, scientist Johannes Muller believes the very large sites were fully occupied all year round. But the inhabitants left the lightest of footprints in the landscape, and no human remains have been found. “Not a finger, not a tooth,” says researcher Alexey Nikitin. The evidence is extremely difficult to collect because Trypillians periodically burned their houses down in a controlled way.
Uruk and Tell Brak, which arose in Mesopotamia early in the 4th millennium BCE, are usually considered the world’s first cities. Their remains point to an increased density (密度) of habitation and a hierarchical (等级制度的) social structure-two features that are considered essential to the definition of a city. But the Trypillian sites don’t meet either of those standards.
Scientists John Chapman and Bisserka Gaydarska agree, saying. “Trypillian sites were a social system based on the belief that everyone was equal.” These were cities, but of a very different kind from the slave-owning (拥有奴隶的) societies of Mesopotamia a few centuries later. And our definition of a city may need expanding, argue Chapman and Gaydarska.
1. What might have been the purpose of the Trypillian sites according to Monica?| A．Protecting cities. | B．Attracting settlers. |
| C．Holding events. | D．Entertaining villagers. |
| A．It has little clear evidence. |
| B．It is mainly based on unusual ideas. |
| C．The data he collected is not convincing. |
| D．The research method he used is unscientific. |
| A．Trypillia had more houses. |
| B．Trypillia was densely populated. |
| C．Trypillia was a society full of equality. |
| D．Trypillia created a greater civilization. |
| A．Prehistoric remains in Ukraine |
| B．A different urban life of Trypillians |
| C．Mesopotamia’s slave-owning societies |
| D．The mysterious culture that invented civilization |
Shadow theater is a unique art form in China. Thanks to the basic principle of light and shadow projected (投影) onto a screen, performers use puppets (玩偶)
Among all the country’s branches, Beijing shadow theater stands out
In the past, the shadow theater
5 . When you think of Chinese food in the US, fried rice, or General Tso’s chicken may first come to mind. But a new museum exhibition in New York City is trying to expand visitors’ palates (味蕾). It features stories of famous cooks like Martin Yan and home cooks whose food represents 18 different regional cooking styles of China.
“I think it’s unfair to just classify Chinese cooking as one,” says Kian Lam Kho, an organizer of “Sour, Sweet, Bitter, Spicy: Stories of Chinese Food and Identity in America” at the Museum of Chinese in America. “Even with the same dish or same cuisine, every family has a different variation.” That’s why the organizers say if you want to taste the full range of Chinese cuisine in the US, you’ll need to go beyond restaurants and into home kitchens, which can play a central role in many immigrants’ lives.
“The kitchen itself is kind of a comfort when you come to a new country. That’s the one place where you set up as your home base, and you cook things that you remember from your past,” explains Audra Ang, another organizer.
One of the home cooks showcased in the exhibition is Ni Biying, 80, of Manhattan. She worked as a live-in babysitter for years before she could finally afford to rent a home with her own kitchen. These days, you can usually find her moving around her one-bedroom apartment as a sweet smell of vinegar and rice wine floats from her stove. For Ni, a small dinner for friends and family means preparing almost a dozen different dishes. She learned some of her techniques from her father, who made most of her family’s meals when she was a child. “I still miss the beef with stir-fried celery my father used to cook,” she says. And it’s the kind of comfort food that defines Chinese food for Ni.
1. What is the new museum exhibition mainly about?| A．Cuisine of different countries. | B．Exploration of famous restaurants. |
| C．History of Chinese immigration. | D．Stories of Chinese food and cooks. |
| A．It provides a wealthy life. | B．It brings a sense of belonging. |
| C．It helps them to accept new cultures. | D．It enables them to forget the past. |
| A．She worked in a Chinese restaurant. |
| B．She made most meals as a child. |
| C．She learned cooking from her father. |
| D．She lives with a big family. |
| A．Cuisine Gains New Variations |
| B．Home Cooking Brings More to the Table |
| C．Immigrants Seek Their Fortune in the US |
| D．Chinese Restaurant Tells Immigrant Tales |
Tigers are
According to Chinese folklore, tigers have the ability to keep off evil spirits,
In the Book of Rites, they were described as helpful. They would assist people in killing the animals that
Tigers also appear in much classic Chinese literature. In many legends, they are described as heroes,
Tigers are believed
Known as a ”voice catcher“ in his social circle, 38-year-old Long Qing is working to record dialects and
The native of Changsha, Hunan province, has an acute appreciation for sounds and voices, and his previous job as
Long Qing
A 90-second animated (动画) video of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games
Netizens were fascinated by the video’s
The video starts with a girl and a panda going to Beijing
Hangzhou AU Culture and Technology Co. created the work. It is an animation company and
“ We hope to add more
9 . In China, people in different areas have their own ways to celebrate the Spring Festival. Especially between Northern China and Southern China, there are many differences.
One is about the food on the night before the Spring Festival. In Northern China, people usually eat dumplings during this time. For luck, people may put sugar in dumplings.
It’s true that Northern China and Southern China have differences in celebrating the Spring Festival.
| A．Here are some examples. |
| B．Many foods are made of rice. |
| C．The differences bring many bad results. |
| D．But the differences are gradually disappearing. |
| E．As a result, people in Southern China often prefer rice. |
| F．That way, they believe life in the next year will be “sweet”. |
| G．China’s north and south also have a difference in New Year decorating. |
Beijing Opera or Peking opera is a form of Chinese opera
The music of Beijing Opera can be divided into the Xipi (西皮) and Erhuang (二黄) styles. The repertoire (全部曲目) of Beijing Opera includes over 1,400 works,
