What comes to your mind when you think of Beijing? The Forbidden City? Tian’anmen Square? The Temple of Heaven? All these famous landmarks     1     (locate) along the central axis (中轴线). As the best-preserved core area of the old city of Beijing, the central axis is now under     2     (consider) for UNESCO’s World Heritage status.

The central axis refers     3     the “line” that separates the eastern and western parts of Beijing. At 7.8 kilometers long, it runs from Yongding Gate in the south to the Bell Tower and Drum Tower in the north. Construction began in the Yuan Dynasty, and continued during the Ming and Qing     4     (dynasty).

The central axis, like the backbone of Beijing,     5     (smart) organized the palaces, temples, markets and streets in ancient times. It shows the traditional Chinese concept of     6    (respect) the center. This stressed the     7     (important) of imperial power, as the royal palace would be in the central spot. Other important buildings were placed around it. It also shows traditional Chinese ideas like harmony between man and nature and following order. It runs from the south to the north, the same as the direction of a meridian (子午线). The ritual (礼乐) culture     8     started from the Zhou Dynasty stressed balance, symmetry (对称) and order. There are lots of symmetric buildings along the axis. The Forbidden City is the most well-known palace     9     (build) along the central axis.

The central axis is more than     10     material relic. It is also a continuation of the traditional Chinese city layout concept.

3 . Volunteer Ruth, a member of Porthcawl lifeboat station shore crew in South Wales, enjoyed a short period on the boats. On her first “shout”, she helped to _________ a fisherman’s life. But sea sickness and “all that kneeling down and bouncing up and down on the _________” soon made it clear to her that the role didn’t suit her mid-life body.

The warm welcome Ruth received from fellow volunteers, _________, meant she didn’t want to _________ at all. “As soon as I joined, it was fantastic. I spent eight years in the Army and there was a(n)_________ feel about the work: the _________ and everybody supporting each other,” she says. So she _________ Porthcawl lifeboat station shore crew to take joint responsibility for making sure that lifeboats are launched _________. Twice a week Ruth attends training sessions, _________ new skills, and she carries a pager(寻呼机). Whenever it goes off, she __________ to the station two minutes away from her home and helps get the boat ready for launch while other __________ get changed to board it. When they return, she’s waiting to __________ them to solve any problems they may have experienced.

“The __________ and bond that are made between people from all different age groups and walks of life are __________. Even though I give my __________, what I get back is so much more,” she adds.

4 . Something You Should Know About Balance Exercises

You need balance to perform just about any task, from walking, standing, sitting down in your chair, to every workout. Good balance helps prevent falls and therefore injuries, and simply makes daily activities easier and safer to perform. How steady you are on your feet can indicate how likely you are to live a longer, healthy life.     1    , you should take some balance exercises. Don’t wait until it’s too late.

·What exercises should you take?

    2    . Other things that work your balance slightly differently, but again are really good, are ball games. It can be anything involving hand-eye coordination, such as tennis or table tennis.

·How often should you perform balance exercises?

Balance exercises are often low-impact, controlled movements, so there’s not really any risk of over-training. Older adults who are at risk of falls should try to do balance training at least three times a week to reduce risk.     3    .

·    4    ?

Training your balance three to six times each week should start to show results in 11 to 12 weeks. So, if you perform these exercises multiple times a week, you should see improvements in your balance in as few as three months.

·How long should you hold balance exercise positions?

The key to successful balance exercises is control and form. Move slowly with intention, focusing on bracing your core (稳住重心).     5    . For the movements that require a hold, try to hang on for at least 30 seconds, increasing each week as you improve.

6 . A few inspiring clues kept the rescuers going: the remains of fruit with bitemarks made by small human teeth, a pair of scissors and nappies (尿布) in the rainforest mud. All offered hope that four children, who come from the Huitoto Indigenous tribe, had miraculously survived a plane crash on May I in southern Colombia. The oldest of them was 13 and the youngest was only 11 months old. They were alive with tigers, poisonous snakes, storms and other threats under the dense green canopy of trees and vegetation.

The remains of the Cessna light aircraft were found two weeks later, with the bodies of three adults still inside. But there was no sign of the children. A long search through the forest began. Helicopters hovered over the area around the crash, broadcasting message s from the children’s grandmother, telling them they hadn’t been forgotten, urging them to stay in one place, and dropping packets of food that may have helped them survive.

“This isn’t a search for a needle in a haystack (干草堆), but a tiny flea (跳蚤) in a vast carpet, as they keep moving,” the captain of the search team told Colombian journalists. “Their bodies haven’t appeared, and I’m sure that we would have already found them if they were dead.”

Then on a Friday in June, army radios sounded. “Miracle, miracle, miracle, miracle”. It was the army code for a child found alive; repeated four times meant all four had survived.

Although malnourished, and covered in insect bites, none were in a serious condition. The military posted pictures of a group of soldiers and volunteers posing with the children, who were wrapped in blankets. The education of survival skills the children got from their grandmother, a respected elder in the Araracuara indigenous territory, was almost certainly vital to their survival.

“They’ve given us an example of total survival that will go down in history,” said Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, calling it “a joy for the whole country”.