4 . On 20 December, in Newdale, a series of huge waves caused by an undersea Earthquake raced across the ocean near Goldshore. Worse still, it _________ thousands dead. Gold shore Beach was the only local beach to _________ the disaster without any loss of life. A10-year-old girl, Sabrina Andron, helped around100 people escape danger with her _________ of tsunamis.

The day began like any other on Gold shore Beach. People were walking, running or simply sitting on the sandy beach, _________ the warm sea air and enjoying the soft _________ that brushed their hair. Sabrina was one of the happy tourists until she noticed something _________. “The water was like the bubbles (气泡) on the top of a beer,” she later explained. “It wasn’t _________ and it wasn’t going in and then out. It was just coming in and in and in.” It hit her that these were the _________ of an upcoming tsunami, which Sabrina had just learnt about in a Geography lesson.

Sabrina was _________, but she soon kept her head. She warned her parents of the __________ , though at first they just thought she was __________ . However, Sabrina was certain that a terrible disaster was __________ and kept asking her parents to talk to a safety officer. To her great relief, the officer __________ realized the coming danger. The beach was rapidly __________ of people, just before the huge waves __________ into the coast.

First-time visitors to Chengdu may find it to be a city with rich cultural heritage. The emblem(标志)of a gold leaf,     1     (feature)four flying birds surrounding the sun, can be seen everywhere in the city. The emblem, which represents Chengdu,     2     (choose)as the symbol of China Cultural Heritage by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage in 2005.

After the discovery of the Sanxingdui Ruins in the city of Guanghan in 1929,     3     was believed to be one of Sichuan`s most important archaeological finds, a 3,000-year-old gold-leaf sunbird was unearthed at the Jinsha Ruins in 2001. In 2018, Chengdu made the decision     4     (become)a world cultural city. In recent years, Chengdu`s efforts to globalize have accelerated,     5     a series of major international cultural and sports activities have been held, laying the foundation for it to build itself into a world-famous tourist city.

Chengdu’s     6     (attract)range from giant pandas     7     the poetic legacy of the Du Fu Thatched Cottage.     8     (hide)in thick greenery, the Temple of Marquis Wu was built as     9     memorial hall in honor of Zhuge Liang and now China’s personification of loyalty and wisdom. The city also offers a museum including a cottage modelled after the poetic descriptions of Du Fu, one of the greatest poets     10     (historic)in China, emphasizing his influence on Chinese literature.

Strange things were happening in the countryside of northeastern Hebei. For several days, the water in the village wells rose and fell, rose and fell. There were deep cracks     1     appeared in the well walls. At least one well had some smelly gas     2     (come) out of it. Chickens and even pigs were too nervous     3     ( eat), and dogs refused to go inside buildings. Mice ran out of the fields looking for places to hide, and fish jumped out of the water. At about 3:00 a.m., on 28 July 1976, bright lights were seen in the sky outside the city of Tangshan and loud noises     4     (hear). But the city’s one million people were asleep as usual that night.

At 3:42 a. m., everything began to shake. It seemed as     5     the world were coming to an end! Eleven kilometres directly below the city, one of the most deadly     6     (earthquake) of the 20th century had begun, a quake that even caused damage more than 150 kilometres away in Beijing. Nearly one third of the whole nation felt it! A huge crack, eight kilometres     7     (length) and 30 metres wide, cut across houses, roads, and waterways. Hard hills of rock became rivers of dirt. In less than one minute, a large city lay     8     ruins. Two thirds of the people who lived there were dead or     9     (injure). Thousands of children were left without parents. The number of people who were killed or     10     (bad) injured in the quake was more than 400,000.

7 . Addy Barrett, an 11-year-old girl from Maryland, the US, is a regular visitor to the zoo, and never gets tired of watching gorillas (大猩猩). “I really fell in love with these smart animals after reading a book about them,” Addy said. “I also learned they were being killed for unnecessary reasons. And I knew I needed to do something.”

Addy is now working to save her favorite animals. She has sold T-shirts and home-made cookies to raise money, and she hosts a party about the gorilla yearly.

Addy asked Meredith Bastian, a zookeeper, about the challenges that wild gorillas are facing and that many people ignore. Bastian said it’s because of habitat loss, climate change and the spread of disease. But there is also the problem of mining. “Some mines in Congo, Africa destroy gorillas’ habitats and make their living conditions worse,” Bastian told Addy.

Addy decided to start the Gorilla Heroes project. She has held fundraisers (筹款活动) hoping to start a conversation on the risks to gorillas. The animals, which are native to Central Africa, are endangered. There are fewer than 900 mountain gorillas and about 100,000 western lowland gorillas in the world. So far, Gorilla Heroes has raised more than $11,000. Addy was recently named a winner of the 2019 Gloria Barton Prize for Young Heroes for her work.

Addy hopes to get close to a gorilla in the wild, but she can’t because she is too young. So for now Addy is sticking to raising money for gorillas.

8 . New discoveries and technological breakthroughs are made every year. Yet, as the information industry moves forward, many people in society are looking back to their roots in terms of the way they eat. A “locavore” movement has emerged in the United States. The movement supports eating foods grown locally and sustainably, rather than prepackaged foods shipped from other parts of the world.

Experts hold that eating local has many merits, and is expected to become a trend featuring sustainability. Erin Barnett is the director of Local Harvest, a company that aims to help connect people to farms in their area. By eating local, she argues, people have a better and more personal understanding of the impact their food consumption has on the rest of the world. “There is a way of connecting the point, where eating locally is an act that raises our awareness of sustainable living,” Barnett says.

The United States’ agricultural output is one of the highest in the world, says Timothy Beach, a professor of geography and geoscience at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas. “There’s just no other place on Earth where the amount of input is so productive,” Beach says of American agriculture. “Nobody can cut off the food we need.”

However, the US food system is not sustainable because of its dependency on fossil (化石) fuels, says Beach. Equipment used on “extremely productive” farms is quickly consuming Earth’s natural resources, particularly oil. Additionally, the production of agricultural supplements (补充剂)，such as fertilizer, uses large amounts of energy.

The world has used close to half of the global oil supply, Beach says, and the second half will be consumed at an even faster rate because of the growing population and economic development. Although many businesses are experimenting with wind, solar, and biofuel, Beach says there’s nothing that we see on the horizon that can replace it. “There is no way on Earth we are using fossil fuels sustainably. Then we have to reconsider the impact of eating local,” he says.

10 . Life was not kind to a sweet Boxer-Pit Bull mix. Dog fighting had cruelly taken away his left ear. In 2019, the 4-year-old arrived at a shelter in North Carolina and was then named Van Gogh. Christy Langley explains he was named after the famous painter “not because he is an artist, but because he is a work of art”. What Langley couldn’t predict was that Van Gogh would actually go on to be a successful artist.

Gartner owns a shelter that helps dogs in shelters that are at risk of being put down. She saw Van Gogh and immediately knew she needed to help him. So, she took Van Gogh in from North Carolina in June 2022. Gartner started telling everyone about the friendly and lovely dog on Facebook, Pet Finder, and Rescue Me, but no one responded.

After months of searching for a new owner, Gartner had a new idea. Why not take Van Gogh’s name literally? Gartner explained, “He certainly had the name and the ear for it.” Gartner got to work, putting some paint on a canvas(油画布), wrapping it in a plastic bag, and coating it with peanut butter(花生酱)as a tasty treat for the pup. It only took five minutes for Van Gogh to lick the plastic-coated canvas clean and for a work of art to be created.

They worked on paintings for about a week and then, Gartner invited people to an outdoor art gallery event on October 23, 2022. Sadly, only two people showed up. The next day, Gartner put out a post on Facebook that she felt bad only two people showed up, and said the rest of the paintings were still waiting for their owners. Suddenly, Van Gogh’s pieces were hot items. After two minutes, the paintings were sold out and Gartner raised around $1, 000 for her rescue. The biggest success of all, though, was that on the last day of the silent sale, Van Gogh was finally adopted(收养).