1 . With the pandemic under control, China’s film industry is thriving. And it’s doing so without any help from Hollywood.

The country’s box office _________ $775 million over the lasts Lunar New Year weekend - its most ever for a single weekend. Much of that was due to Detective Chinatown 3, a heist comedy made in China, which grossed $424 million _________. That was the biggest opening of all time for a film in a _________ market. Avengers: Endgame only made $357 million during its opening weekend in the US in April 2019.

These massive figures prove the movie business in China is well on its way to _________. Since China began allowing foreign films into the country in 1994, films produced outside of China routinely accounted for more than 40% of the _________ of the Chinese box office. Hollywood is _________ for about a third of the highest-grossing films in China of all time.

But, even before the Covid-19 pandemic, China’s homegrown film industry was growing and depending less and less on Hollywood movies.

As recently as 2017, films produced outside China _________ 46% of the country’s box office revenue. In 2020, with Hollywood all but shutdown, foreign films accounted for just 16% of Chinese box office revenue.

The first few months of 2021 suggest that _________ could continue. Most big-budget Hollywood films have been _________ until later this year - and yet China’s theaters clearly don’t need any of them to have their own success. China’s huge weekend at the box office came even though most of its theaters are still operating at 75% _________. Its impressive totals, _________, may have been helped by the country’s travel restrictions, which kept consumers at home over the holiday.

China first accepted Hollywood films into its country to boost its own film ambitions, hoping the rising _________ created by the US film industry’s funding and expertise could lift all boats. Chinese consumers responded in kind, turning out in droves for films from blockbuster Hollywood franchises like Fast & Furious.

In 2012, China expanded the quota of foreign films allowed into the country to 34 per year. That agreement expired in 2017, and still hasn’t been renewed. With relations between the US and China _________ - and China improving its own ability to produce blockbuster films - China is in no rush to codify a new pact.

If the recent box-office returns are any _________, Chinese audiences are increasingly becoming accustomed to a movie selection that is entirely Chinese. That China’s box office recovered from the pandemic is a _________ sign for the US when its theaters return to some semblance of normal operation later this year. But that China’s box office did this without Hollywood’s assistance is a far more ominous sign for the long term future of the US film industry.

2 . Launched in 2010, iQiyi has grown used to the foreign press calling it “the Netflix of China.” Not the worst nickname, given the video-streaming pioneer's success. But Gong Yu, iQiyi's founder and boss, insists that his firm is more accurately _________ as “Netflix plus.” A bold claim for a loss-making business worth one-fifteenth as much as America's (cash-generating) entertainment powerhouse with a market value of $214 bn. Still, Mr Gong has a_________.

Like Netflix, iQiyi offers customers a catalogue of licensed and original content. Unlike Netflix, which relies almost entirely on subscription fees, iQiyi has _________ revenue streams. “Membership fees,” which start from 19.8 yuan ($2.87) a month, _______ just over half of iQiyi's 7.4 bn yuan in revenues in the second quarter. The rest came mainly from an online store (which sells “entertainment-related merchandise), mobile-gaming, an e-book business and advertisements: iQiyi operates a “freemium” model which allows users to stream some content free of charge _________ that they agree to watch ads.

Conveniently for iQiyi, which does little business outside its home market, Netflix is blocked in China, under laws that _________ a lot of foreign content. But that is not to say that China is free from the streaming wars of the sort between Netflix and rivals like Disney, HBO and NBC Universal.

Far from it. Mr Gong is _________ Tencent Video, which overtook iQiyi at the end of June with 114m video subscribers to iQiyi's 105m (see chart) . Mr Gong's firm lost 14m subscribers in the most recent quarter while Tencent Video, which also runs a freemium model and_________subscribers 20 yuan a month, added Zin. Tencent Video offers a richer selection of English-language _________, including hit television series like Chernobyl and Silicon Valley. More important, the rivalry between Tencent Video and iQiyi is the war between mighty Tencent and ____________ Baidu, a search firm that is iQiyi's majority owner.

____________, as Westerners who pay for a few video subscriptions can prove, streaming is not a zero-sum game. Gigi Zhou of BOCOM International, a broker, believes the Chinese market will soon be big enough to ____________ both iQiyi and Tencent Video, which also has yet to make money. Ms Zhou expects 400m Chinese to subscribe to video-streaming platforms by 2023, up from some 300m in 2019. So long as no new rival ____________, each firm could capture around 150m, helping them spread costs over more subscribers and so turn a profit.

Before streaming peace can break out, iQiyi faces another fight. On August 13th it said it was under ____________ by America's Securities and Exchange Commission after a short-seller accused it of cooking sales data, a charge it ____________. If found guilty, it may have to delist from New York's Nasdaq exchange. The firm's stable share price implies that investors' faith in battle-hardened Mr Gong remains unshaken.

3 . From Oxford’s quads to Harvard Yard and many a steel and glass palace of higher education in between, exams are given way to holidays. As students consider life after graduation, universities are _______ questions about their own future. The higher education model of lecturing, cramming and examination has barely _______ for centuries. Now, three disruptive waves are threatening to shake established ways of teaching and learning.

On one front, a funding _______ has created a shortage of fund that the universities brightest brains are struggling to solve. Institutions’ costs are rising, _______ pricey investments in technology, teachers’ salaries and increasing administrative costs. That comes as governments conclude that they can no longer afford to subsidize universities as _______ as they used to. American colleges, in particular, are under pressure: some analysts predict mass bankruptcies within two decades.

At the same time, a(n) _______ revolution is challenging higher education’s business model. A(n) _______ in online learning, much of it free, means that the knowledge once a lucky few had access to has been released to anyone with a smartphone or laptop. These _______ and technological disruptions coincide with a third great change: whereas universities used to educate only a tiny elite, they are now _______ training and retraining workers throughout their careers. How will they ________ this storm—and what will emerge in their place if they don’t?

The universities least likely to lose out to online competitors are elite institutions with established reputations and low student-to-tutor ratios. That is ________ news for the Ivy League, which offer networking opportunities to students alongside a degree. Those colleges might profit from expanding the ratio of online learning to classroom teaching, lowering their costs while still offering the prize of a college education conducted partly on campus.

The most vulnerable, according to Jim Lerman of Kean University in New Jersey, are the “middle-tier institutions, which produce America's teachers, middle managers and administrators.” They could be ________ in greater part by online courses, he suggests. So might weaker community colleges, although those which cultivate connections to local employers might yet prove resilient (有弹力的).

Since the first wave of massive online courses launched in 2012, an opposition has focused on their ________ and commercial uncertainties. Yet if critics think they are immune to the march of the MOOC, they are almost certainly wrong. Whereas online courses can quickly________ their content and delivery mechanisms, universities are up against serious cost and efficiency problems, with little changes of taking more from the public purse.

Without the personal touch, higher education could become “an icebound, petrified (石化的) cast-iron university.” That is what the new wave of high-tech courses should not become. But as a(n) ________ to an overstretched, expensive model of higher education, they are more likely to prosper than fade.

4 . Benedict Cumber-batch is not exactly conventionally handsome. However, in recent years, Cumber -batch has frequently been listed among the list of “World's Sexiest Faces”, a compliment that Cumber-batch himself finds _________, “I've grown up with his face and it's been in the industry for ten years and now it's getting on these hottie lists - it doesn't make any sense, because I am nowhere near the thousandth hottest face. So I know a lot of it is projection, which is a(n) _________ for the work I suppose”. Although he is “self-deprecating, ” he revealed _________ that could not be concealed from his words. Cumber-batch said frankly he was very happy to receive so much _________ for his looks. “I don't know anyone on earth who doesn't,” he replied.

However, the path of acting was not _________ with flowers and applause at first. It was not until 2010 that audience worldwide got to know him. Cumber-batch was praised for his vivid image of Sherlock Holmes that he successfully shaped, for which he _________ many awards locally and globally.

The difference between one's success and failure often depends on whether he dares to face up to his own _________ . In his respect, Cumber-batch does do a better job than most. FAcing all sorts of tricky questions from the media and the Internet, he can always step outside of himself, _________ himself from a fresh perspective, and then give people the intelligent and _________   answer. Cumber-batch said that he was accustomed to self-criticism, so it was not difficult for him to accept the __________ of others. Perhaps such way of thinking is exactly why he has the flexibility to play such __________ characters.

Despite the success, Cumber-batch is __________ about it all. “The __________ thing is amazing, but it won't carry on forever, and I want my work to carry on forever, ” he said. “I really, really love my job. ” For him, acting is a(n) __________ career. Now, Cumber-batch still remembers his “beginner's mind” at the critical point of his career. Although he played a lot of heroes, for Cumber-batch those are just __________. “I never forget that I'm mortal,” he said at last.