1 . My childhood is closely associated with the Yellow River. My father ______ to take me with him on his trips to Longyangxia Reservoir. At Longyangxia, I was ______ by the beauty of nature and as a child, I wanted to stay there and ______ up with the Yellow River. Li Bai, a poet of the Tang Dynasty, praised the ______ water of the Yellow River. He saw it as coming down from heaven and ______ the people living on the banks of the river. However, in 1997, for about 330 days, not a single ______ of water from the Yellow River went into the sea. ______ are not the only punishments given by nature. A friend of my father, a university professor, is doing ______ on the Yellow River. According to him, since there is no longer enough water to ______ the mud, the river may soon change its course ______ we allow this situation to continue. This is the ______ of unbalanced growth. If we’d taken care of the vegetation in the upper and middle ______ of the river, we would still be able to ______ it as Li Bai described it.

In fact, people have begun to ______ the problem. I have seen farmers _______ trees on mountain slopes in Shanxi province. I have seen them ______ up the hillsides carrying heavy buckets of water collected several kilometers away down in the valley to ______ around the trees. These farmers are ______ helping our Yellow River, just as the river has helped them. These unsung heroes gave me the confidence that with hard work of us all, we and nature will grow together, and ______ in the future, we will be able to drink the ______ water from the Yellow River-our mother river.

2 . In the early 1990s, Eric Domb, a highly successful lawyer, came up with the idea of building a bird park. His father-in-law ________ the idea in the beginning, but when the ________ started to make shape he backed out. Domb thus had to ________ money from former clients, his two brothers and father as well as a bank to build a zoological park known as Pairi Daiza.

After the park opened in 1994, his inexperience led to many ________, but he pushed on with his venture (冒险). By 2000, the park was turning a profit, and Domb’s ambitions were ________. The park needed more than birds, he believed, and other creatures and cultural gardens would help turn it into something ________.

Since his childhood he has been fascinated by Chinese ________. In 2006, he built the first Chinese garden, Dream of Han Wu Di in his zoo. It was said to be the largest Chinese garden in Europe. Domb kept ________ new elements. It finally took more than six years to complete the project.

Domb felt ________ by the joint panda breeding program. Domb and his people spent the following months ________ building giant panda houses with no guarantee that Pairi Daiza would be fortunate enough to ________ giant pandas. The huge enclosure built includes a pool, cave and ________ plantation.

Now, Domb is eager to tell how he ________ a pair of giant pandas, Xing Hui and Hao Hao in February 2014. The sense of ________ is all the more profound in that Pairi Daiza is one of the few private zoos outside China to ________ giant pandas.

3 . It was the third day after the quake already.

The rescue workers were still looking for ______ . They knew with each minute passing, the chance to find someone alive gets slimmer. They were ______ . Since the quake, many of ______ had been working constantly, without any good sleep. The ______ to these mountainous towns and villages were destroyed. They did not have   ______ to work with. All they had were shovels and their bare hands.

But they were still looking for survivors.

“Come here! There is a body!” ______ a rescue worker. Under a big chunk of roof was a ______. She was lying with a strange pose — she ______ on the ground with her upper body stretching forward. Her head was on the ground too, ______ she was praying for her survival.

The woman was not responsive to any call. ______ , just to make sure, the nurse still tried to test her ______, to see if she was still breathing.

Not really. She was breathless, and her body cold. Praying or not, it did not ______ . The team moved on.

When the team reached the ______ collapsed building, the captain suddenly ran back to the woman, as if ______ something. He lay down, and stretched his arm to touch the space ______ her.

“There is a baby! And he is alive!” He cried out.

It was a newly-born, neatly wrapped in a ______ decorated with flowers. Miraculously, he did not even have a scratch in his body. When taken ______ , he was still peacefully sleeping.

The nurse took the baby and started doing routine ______ . When unwrapping the blanket, she found a cell phone tucked between the baby and his diaper. ______ had a text message written on the screen, ______:

“My dear baby, if you can survive, please remember mom loves you.”

5 . It was dark and I was standing in front of a _________ house in an unfamiliar street in Sydney’s northwest, rescue box in hand, leather gloves under my arm, my head full of instructions to _________. The little bird waiting inside the house would be my first _________ as a volunteer wildlife rescuer since I’d completed a two-day training course the previous month. A call had come through that afternoon asking for help _________ a bird of an unknown species was being attacked by two youngsters in his garden. He _________ the children and grabbed their victim.

I went inside to see my very first patient. I was _________, yet with the man watching on, I would have to look confident. With great care, I lifted the edge of the shoe box very _________ to see a tiny-looking bird standing to attention on very thin legs.

The bird was shivering, so I decided not to grab it by hand but just transfer the whole shoebox into my rescue box. I didn’t want to appear incompetent.

Back home, I couldn’t see any obvious _________ of injury. I hadn’t seen this species of bird before, so I googled for a _________ on the Internet. After a while, I came across something that looked like a match: a fantail, so called because of its __________ feathers that, when fully open, spread out into a neat little “fan”.

I phoned the bird specialist of my local rescue group. She told me this species hunts __________ on the wing, and I needed to release it the next day on the same street it came from.

I waited until evening the next day, which would provide the cover of __________, to release it. I was back on the street where I’d rescued it, gently holding the bird, and wondered what would be __________ for this delicate creature this time around. Nothing. It would have to take care of itself just as before, and be strong enough to catch some insects and recover its energy levels without delay.

I held the bird as __________ as I could to give it a good lift-off: the little bird __________ swiftly into the darkness without a pause. My first rescue had ended in a successful release.

6 . Steven Chilvers and his wife Dawn, realised their two-year-old daughter Emily wasn’t hitting her milestones at the same pace as her twin sister._______, after a psychological assessment, Emily was diagnosed with autism (自闭症). But instead of feeling_______, Steven and Dawn were pleased they had a diagnosis, and they could _______ to find therapies to help their daughter.

As they noticed Emily _______ animals, especially big ones, the devoted parents considered how dogs could help ease her _______. After conducting some of their own research, they _______ a charity called Dogs for Good. It matches people living with_______with specially trained assistance dogs, which the couple thought it was a(n)_______ idea for their daughter.

After filling out the paperwork, they waited for a(n)_______ for their daughter with patience. __________, they were paired with Oslo, an 18-month-old black Labrador, who had been through a four month training programme to __________ things like socialization and how to __________ different situations.

Since Olso __________ the family, he has been critical in helping Emily __________. According to Steven. Emily was really __________ the day Oslo moved in. The family let him have a run around in the back garden and the girl couldn’t take her eyes off the __________. Since then. Emily has become less and less anxious. And now she is delighted to hold onto Oshamess (背带) and go for a walk with her parents.   

“She’s really __________being with him and once she even reached out her arms to __________ him. For a child with autism, that’s a __________ thing and clear evidence of her __________with him, ” Steven said.

7 . Xia Boyu is a 73-year-old Chinese mountaineer. He successfully climbed to the top of Mount Qomolangma on two artificial legs. Xia was a professional soccer player before he got into the Chinese national ________ team. During his first ________ to climb Qomolangma in 1975, Xia gave his sleeping bag to one of his teammates,________ he could resist (抵抗) the cold. But in the end the extreme conditions on the mountain ________ his legs from the knees down.

At the beginning, Xia was unable to ________ life in a wheelchair and having to say goodbye to his career as a mountain climber. He was confused and ________, but his passion for life was ________ again when he met a foreign medical expert who told him that artificial legs could help him walk, run and even climb again.

Xia made numerous efforts to climb the mountain again. Since his artificial legs cannot give him a ________ for the land while climbing, Xia relies ________ on his trekking poles (登山杖), which he holds in his hands firmly (紧紧地).

“Sometimes the paths are very slippery and I can easily fall if I don’t notice it right away.”

But Xia has never given in. He ________ that after losing his legs, he did not want to be defeated and that he wanted to ________ himself to continue to climb mountains. In 2018, Xia successfully climbed to the top of Mount Qomolangma, becoming the world’s ________ double amputee (被截肢者) to climb to the top.

With his very life, he ________ the distance between humans and Mount Qomolangma and let everyone see the ________ of never giving up. He is a true ________.