The Chinese people call flattery(奉承) to someone's face “presenting a tall hat” to someone.

In the past,     1     official in the imperial court in Beijing was appointed to an official post outside the capital. Before leaving, he went to his teacher’s home     2    (say) farewell. His teacher warned him, “It is not easy to be an official outside the capital. You should be     3    (care).” “Please don’t worry. I     4    (prepare)100 ‘tall hats’ already and will present one to every person I meet. I’m sure all the local people will be pleased.”

The teacher said    5    (angry), “We are all honest     6     (gentleman). How can you do that?”

The official,     7     pretended he had no way out, said, “Very few people under heaven are like you who dislike being flattered or presented with tall hats.”

    8    (hear) this, the teacher was very much pleased. He nodded and said, “    9     you said is true, too.”

After the official said farewell to his teacher and     10     (go) out, he said to his friend, “Of my 100 ‘tall hats’, now only 99 are left.”

One real man

The ruler of     1     ancient kingdom wanted to disprove the statement that the men of his country     2     (rule) by their wives. He had all the males in his kingdom     3     (bring) in front of him and warned that any man who did not tell the     4     (true) would be punished severely.

Then he asked all the men who obeyed     5     wives' orders and suggestions to step to the left side of the hall. All the men did so. One little man,     6    , moved to the right.

It's great to see, said the king, that we have one real man in the kingdom. Tell these chickenhearted fools why you alone     7     them stand on the right side of the hall.     8     an embarrassing moment of silence came the reply in a     9     (frighten) voice.

“Your Majesty, it is    10     before I left home my wife told me to keep out of crowds.”

3 . Once there was a farmer with a wife and two sons. He became quite________through hardworking. He wanted his children to have a(n)________life, so he and his wife did all the work and________made them do anything.

After some time, his wife died and________he didn’t want his children to________, so he did the field labor and all the housework. But as time went on, he became old and________, and started to worry about his________when he died.

So he thought about this for a long time and he________his sons and said, “Look, my inheritance (遗产) to you is a lot of gold. I’ve________all my gold in the fields, so it’s up to you to plough (耕作) them and________the gold.”

And he called his neighbors and said, “I’m going to________and my children don’t know how to________themselves. So please cook for them until they can take care of themselves.”

So the neighbors provided them with________for some time.

Certainly the brothers didn’t want to be robbed of the________so they did the digging themselves. They________one field after another and after they had dug all the fields, they found no gold.

So the brothers sat down and one________the other, “Do you think our father________us?”

But the other brother said, “No, I think our father was saying that the________is a golden profession. And if we dig up all the________we can become rich.”

So like all the other________, they sowed wheat in the fields they had dug and became very rich in the end.