1 . For people who are planning a trip, a visit to a museum might not be the first thing they think of. After all, there are plenty of ways to appreciate the world’s civilization, gain exciting experiences and spend quality time with family and friends.     1    

Museums are where people learn something new, at every age! Are you interested in something specific?     2    . There, you will find yourself drawn in and inspired! Museums are a fantastic place to learn about a region’s history, scientific achievements, major cultural events, and of course, dinosaurs. They also design exhibitions related to visual arts, industrial innovations and anything that inspires an individual to learn about the past and create new paths to the future.

    3     They will surely be an exciting part of the educational experience with the main purpose to expose children to knowledge of various fields and expand their horizons. To achieve that, museums are working to create meaningful and engaging activities, interactive and knowledge-based.

Museums support tourism. They are tourism promoters in small towns and large cities. Museums aren’t a burden on tax revenue (税收) or a separate concern from other city projects.     4    Statistics show that museums support more than 726, 000 jobs in America.

Museums shape communities. They have activities and exhibitions through which visitors can learn about local history. Museums are places where a shared heritage is celebrated and a collective identity is formed. They provide an interesting public space where people meet and talk to each other.     5    

The Forbidden City is also known as the Palace Museum. It lies in the city center of Beijing and     1     (be) once the Chinese imperial palace (皇宫) of the Ming and Qing Dynasties (1368 -1911) . Listed as a World Heritage Site in 1987, the Forbidden City is one of the largest, best-protected ancient     2     (palace) in the world.

    3     (build) between 1406 and 1420, the Forbidden City was home to 24 emperors and their families and acted as the     4     (politics) center of ancient Chinese government throughout 500 years.     5     the Last Emperor of China left the palace, it later became a museum open to the public in 1925. Since then, the Forbidden City is no longer ‘forbidden’.

Rectangular (长方形的) in shape, the Forbidden City is     6     (terrible) large, covering an area of 72 hectares, and made up of more than 9, 000 rooms. It     7     (divide) into two parts - the Inner Court as living quarters in the north and the Outer Court     8     national affairs in the south. It is not only a great architectural masterpiece, but also a storehouse     9     (house) a unique collection of 1.8 million pieces of art. As    10     must-see in Beijing and the world’s most visited museum, it is worth spending half to one day to visit the Forbidden City and appreciate the precious cultural heritage of China.

A road trip

Out of all possible road trips, the best one is by car. You finish packing, put everything inside the car, sit inside it, buckle up, look at your friend     1     (sit) next to you, smile and ... go! And then begins the most wonderful part of the road trip. It is not the place you are heading to but what you see from the opened window of the car     2     matters. The best part is when you leave your home before the dawn. Personally,     3     I look in the direction of the east, I am always amazed by how the sun informs the world about its arrival.

I love to meet the sun while driving a road trip in a car.     4     (bring) alive in the new sunlight, everything looks promising. It always seems as if it was the first time in your life that you had seen a green leaflet, the trees,     5     grew right next to your car window, and a light smiling over the nature.

Spring and autumn are two seasons of the year that are perfect for a road trip. In my opinion, spring is the most inspiring time of the year,     6     when you open the car windows, you can actually feel that the world is clean and ready for a new life. The green grass is so fresh that you can’t wait     7     (take) a deep breath. The air is filled with a fragrant smell of the plants.

A road trip in autumn is beautiful, too. The golden brush touches     8     around the gardens, the fields, the groves, the woods. In deep autumn, the whole earth     9     (cover) by colorful plants as if you were driving through a fine carpet. The air is sharp, cool and fresh. You simply put on a warmer sweater but never put the window up!

A road trip for me is the moment of communication with nature. It is a dialogue     10     the nature and me. The beauty that you observe during a car road trip purifies you, refreshing your soul and your mind!

4 . See the Exhibitions on View Just for You

Bernd & Hilla Becher

The famous German couple Bernd and Hilla Becher (1931-2007; 1934-2015) changed the course of late 20th-century photography. Working as a rare like-minded and professional couple, they focused on a single subject: the disappearing industrial architecture of Western Europe and North America that fueled the modern time.

Fictions of Emancipation: Carpeaux Recast

Organized around a single object — the marble sculpture (雕塑) Why Born Enslaved! By French sculptor Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux — Fictions of Emancipation: Carpeaux Recast is the first exhibition in the Metropolitan Museum of Art to examine Western sculpture in relation to the histories of Western slavery, colonialism, and empire.

Chroma: Ancient Sculpture in Color

Ancient Greek and Roman sculpture was once colorful, vividly painted and richly decorated. Chroma: Ancient Sculpture in Color tells the colorful backstory of polychromy — meaning “many colors” in Greek — and presents new discoveries of surviving ancient color on artworks in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s world-class collection.

Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina

Focusing on the work of African American potters (陶工) in the 19th-century American South — in dialogue with contemporary artistic responses — the exhibition presents approximately 50 objects from Old Edgefield District, South Carolina, a center of stoneware production in the decades before the Civil War.

5 . A week ago I went on a drive to explore an area of Eastern Washington that I’m not familiar with at all. It was the rolling countryside north of where I live, near the little town of Manson.

The geography here is dry but lower, wider, and full of rolling hills. The area miles intothe distance towards the East. It seemslike a very rural, mainly uninhabited (杳无人烟的) area, but actually, as you explore, you quickly realize that there are houses even in the most remote (遥远的) looking areas, little pockets of human life here and there.

I think that people who live in these areas are either retired, working remotely from home, or really need the peace and energy that the quiet countryside can give.

Driving up a lonely, winding road, suddenly there was a flash of color above that passed over the car. Of all things it was a peacock (孔雀). What on earth was it doing in this remote area? It seemed really out of place. It flew from one side of the road to the hill on the other, joining eight others that were already there, enjoying the sun. Their colors were brilliant. And yes, they seemed more comfortable in that area than in palace gardens. They are, after all, very much like pheasants (野鸡), just much more beautiful. Someone nearby must have attended them. I could only see one female; of course she wasn’t as beautiful to look at as the males. Her feather was much more like the grass and rocks of her surroundings.

These little day trips always seem to bring surprises, even in remote areas. There is always something that will prove to be unexpected.