The traditional Chinese lunar calendar divides a year into 24 solar terms. The Spring Equinox(春分), as the fourth term of the year starts on March 20     1     ends on April this year.

The Spring Equinox signals the equal     2     (long) of the day and night time. The day of the Spring Equinox is     3     the sun is directly above the equator. After the equinox, the sun moves northwards, resulting in     4     (gradual) longer day time in the Northern Hemisphere and longer night in the Southern Hemisphere.

Standing an egg upright is a popular game across the country during the Spring Equinox. It is an old custom that       5     (date) back to 4,000 years ago. People practice this tradition to celebrate the coming of spring. It     6     (believe) that if someone can make the egg stand, he will have good luck in the future.

The Spring Equinox is     7     good time to fly kites. In ancient times, people did not have good medical resources. So     8     (pray) for good health, they wrote their medical issues on paper kite. When the kite was     9     the air, people would cut off the stringy let the paper kite float away,     10     (symbolize) the flying away of diseases.

The approaching of a new year is always exciting. The Little New Year,     1    is also called the Minor New Year’s Day, usually falls roughly a week before     2     Lunar New Year. In 2023, it will fall on Jan. 14th and 15th. The Chinese Little New Year is not a    3    (fix) festival as it varies with local     4     (custom).

Worshiping Kitchen God is the most important activity in    5     (celebrate) of the Chinese Little New Year. According to the folklore, the Kitchen God would report    6     the Jade Emperor on the good and evil deeds of every family on the 23rd of the 12th lunar month for the Emperor to reward or punish. While     7    (offer) sacrifice to the Kitchen God, people place candy, water, beans and hay on the table in front of the Kitchen God image.

Other activities during the festival     8    (main) include sweeping dust and making Chinese paper cuts for window decoration. Chinese Little New Year also means that Chinese people begin to prepare special purchases for the Spring Festival and are ready     9    (spend) a clean Spring Festival. Above all, it suggests a new year with a new image and     10    (express) the good wishes of Chinese people to ring out the Old Year and ring in the New Year.

Fan Jinshi, an archaeologist from Beijing University, first visited the Mogao caves as an undergraduate student in 1962. Despite the caves’ tough     1    (condition), Fan was determined to study national cultural heritage(遗产)and stayed to pursue her dream.

Over time, Fan’s commitment to preserving national cultural heritage grew    2    (strong). She joined the Communist Party of China in 1974 and became even more determined to protect the Mogao caves when they were officially open to tourists in 1979.     3     (face) with the challenge of balancing conservation and tourism, Fan knew that a solution had to be found. She    4    (convince) that the caves’ social importance far outweighed their economic potential and that scientific protection was the key to their     5     (survive).

In the late 1980s, Fan came up with     6     innovative plan to digitize the Mogao caves, permanently preserving the murals(壁画), painted cultures, and historical data. In 2016, Digital Dunhuang was launched online, allowing people worldwide     7     (enjoy) comprehensive images of the caves.

In her eighties, Fan Jinshi is as busy as before, working    8    (tireless) to conserve and manage the caves. She hopes that young people will carry    9    the “Mogao Spirit” and build a better Dunhuang Academy,    10    she spent her lifetime. “Let this be my epitaph,” Fan says, “I’ve done all I could for Dunhuang.”

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.

World Olive (橄榄) Tree Day takes place     1     26th November every year. It was established     2     (official) at the 40th session of the UNESCO General Conference in 2019.The olive tree, especially the olive branch, holds an important place in people’s mind. Since ancient times, it     3     (symbolize) peace, harmony and     4     (wise) .It is important not just to the countries     5     these noble trees grow but also to people and communities worldwide.

Protecting and growing the olive tree is     6     increasingly urgent thing as the world fights against climate change. The conservation of cultural and natural heritage is one of UNESco’s     7     (center) goals, and marking World Olive Tree Day strengthens the efforts to achieve it.

World Olive Tree Day is set up     8     (encourage) the protection of the olive tree and stress the values it symbolizes,     9     (inspire) people to appreciate its important social, cultural, economic and environmental significance to humans.

There is much to learn, share and celebrate on World Olive Tree Day, and UNESCO encourages everyone to participate in     10     (activity) such as debates, conferences, cultural events and exhibitions organized worldwide.

Tens of thousands of Chinese     1    (society) media users have backed calls from the country’s state media to have its artworks     2    (current) kept in the British Museum returned.

The topic “The British Museum please return Chinese antiquities (古董)” was in response     3     a piece published by Chinese state media Global Times that called for all cultural relics in the British Museum     4    (return) free of charge.

The British Museum has been under pressure after around 2,000 items were reported “missing,     5    (steal) or damaged” two weeks ago,     6    (lead) to accusations that it was failing to fulfil its duty of care.

The calls follow a piece published by the Global Times     7     argued, “The world-renowned British museum     8    (fail) to take good care of ‘cultural property belonging to other countries’ up to these years.”

The British Museum looks after 23,000 Chinese objects, from the Neolithic (新石器) age to the present day. It is one of the largest     9    (collection) of Chinese antiquities in the West. The collection includes     10     large range of precious items such as paintings, prints, jade and bronzes.

Since the pre-Qin period, Chengdu    1    (be) an important cultural town in China. But    2    really sets the city apart, culturally, is its opera. An important aspect of Sichuan Opera is    3    magic of “face changing” where vividly coloured masks are changed within the blink of an eye. In opera gardens and tea houses across the town, audiences    4    (want) a glimpse of the local culture love to drink tea while listening to Sichuan Opera and watching face changing.

It is believed that “face changing” has its roots in evolution. Early humans needed survival strategies to avoid fierce animals and foreign    5    (invade). Often, aggressive facial gestures and non-verbal cues were part of it. The Sichuan Opera is said    6    (bring) this range of emotions on stage.

Once the performance starts, the actor keeps pulling down one mask after    7    in swift movements to convey different emotions.    8    (astonish), no matter how close one is    9    the stage, they just can’t tell how the masks change.

In fact, the different kinds of characters and personalities that Sichuan Opera brings alive can    10    (find) among common people. This is why its emotions will continue to resonate with people for a long time.

The English word “garden” gives an entirely wrong idea of the Chinese yuan, for “garden” suggests a lawn and an infinite       1       (vary) of flowers, altogether too prim (呆板的) and tidy to suit Chinese taste. The Chinese yuan suggests first of all a wild landscape, perhaps better arranged and more artistically       2     (plan) than nature, but still a bit of nature itself, with trees, creeks, and flowers. Dotted in this natural landscape are the human structures like pavilions and long winding corridors, so       3       (perfect) belonging to the scenery as to become a whole with it. The Chinese garden       4       (characterize) by studied disorderliness. There are no even-cut bushes or symmetric (对称的) rows lining avenues as if in battle formation.

No Chinese mansion allows an outsider       5       (look) through theiron gates at along drive, for that would be against the principle of concealment.       6       (face) the   gate, we see a small courtyard giving no idea of the expansiveness of space inside, and leading one step by step into newer views, in       7       continual series of surprises and astonishments. With wooden framework       8       (bear) most of the weight of the house, windows, doors and walls are not restricted to certain locations. The essential idea of interior (室内的) decoration is the beauty of simplicity. Home designs are not something fancy we buy from a first-class firm. What distinguishes a home       9       a public building is the personal touch that we give it. It is only when the spirit of leisure and loving care exists       10       living at home can become an art and a pleasure.

Adaptation from My Country and My People by LinYutang

Quyi is a general term for all kinds of talking and singing arts in China. It originated from oral literature, the talking and singing performances of ancient people. It refers     1     (primary) to storytelling, accompanied by body movements. There are many different types of quyi-performance in China, such as comic dialogues, degu, pingshu and shuanghuang, among    2    the crosstalk is most popular,

The crosstalk, also     3     (know) as xiangsheng in Chinese, a kind of folk art with “comic” dialogues began as     4     form of Street performance and is generally thought to have taken form in the late Qing Dynasty, particularly during the rule of the Xianfeng Emperor and the Tongzhi Emperor in the mid-1800s.

The crosstalk realizes     5     (it) artistic presentation by means of imitation, talking, teasing, and singing. The jokes     6     (hide) in the baofu, or “package”. When the right time comes, they are suddenly spilled out, just like the funny stuff being thrown out of a carefully, wrapped package, thus unexpectedly but logically with a second thought,    7     (cause) the audience to laugh. Most of the crosstalk     8     (story) come from daily life. Others are based on folk jokes, historic legends, events and word games. The stage props (道具) are quite simple: a fan, a handkerchief     9     a table will be adequate. Normally, a crosstalk performance is done by two people. Up to now, the crosstalk has become a nationwide    10     (entertain) loved by different walks of people.