Harbin,    1     (know) for its ice and snow festivals, became very popular last winter. An increasing number of tourists rushed to the “Ice City of China” to experience the best of ice and snow culture. Besides the frosty delights, the city still has much more     2     (offer) all year around, including its traditional European-style architecture, unique cuisine and cultural events. The city’s individual attractions make     3     a must-see spot no matter the weather.

Zhao Chuang is a science artist working in Beijing,    1     job bridges science and art by painting and sculpturing ancient extinct species. Zhao reproduces each element described in papers on the history of life in an artistic way, and the     2     (blank) in scientific research are filled by his logic and imagination. His painting of a prehistoric flying animal became the cover of important scientific journal Nature in 2006, a highlight in his career     3     a science artist.

The dragon, a famous beast born from fantasy,     1     (exercise) a hold on people’s imagination over centuries. In traditional Chinese culture, a dragon is a symbol of luck, power and high status. They can cause weather changes and bring rainfall to the fields     2     (ensure) rich harvests. Therefore, to symbolize their power, ancient Chinese emperors decorated their clothes     3     dragon patterns. Many Chinese view the dragon as a national symbol,     4     (proud) referring to themselves as “descendants of the dragon”.

Saturday not only marked the last day of China’s 2024 Spring Festival holiday, but also closed out the eight-day domestic film period,     1     ended strongly as the highest-grossing Chinese New Year holiday in the history of domestic cinema. According to a report, over 163 million people     2     (go) to cinemas, a 26% increase from the 2023 Spring Festival holiday. And box-office sales reached more than 8 billion yuan, up 18%     3     (compare) to last year’s holiday period.

Humankind’s growing need for food is running up against thousands of other species’ need for space. By 2050, humans may need to clear an additional 3.35 million square     1     (kilometer) of land for agriculture.     2     (transform) these largely natural habitats would squeeze more than 17,000 vertebrate species from some of their lands. But changing how and where food     3     (grow) can minimize the impacts. “We can feed the planet without messing it up too badly,” says conservation scientist David Williams.

ChatGPT is a chatbot. Some schools     1     (ban) it since its birth. They need time to make rules about     2     it’s to be used properly in class. Some teachers see it as a     3     (cheat) tool. But many principals believe it’s too late to keep AI out of classrooms. A growing number of     4     (educate) say the panic about AI is a lot like the panic caused by the Internet when it was new. One of them says, “ChatGPT is to English and to writing what the calculator is to math.”

In early November in 2023, a diver, swimming off the coast of Sardinia,     1     (notice) pieces of metal on the ocean floor. He called the authorities and more divers were sent to look. The pieces turned out to be ancient Roman coins. The coins mostly lay     2     (bury) in sand and seagrass not far from the coast. It is said that more than 30, 000 coins have been found,     3     are close to 2, 000 years old. Experts call this a major historical discovery.

When I lived in Boston, I taught English as a second language to adult students from around the world. On the last day, they threw a nice party. I was amazed they had learned enough English     1     (organize) such an event altogether. At the end of the party, they proudly handed me a gift box. After the box     2     (open), I gently lifted a beautiful coat from it. “We went shopping for a new coat!” they all shouted     3     wonderfully perfect English.

Are you still discussing and getting your head round Chat GPT,    1    potential will disturb everything from marketing to education? Well, Sora is about     2    (blow) those debates wide open. OpenAI’s Sora, a text-to-video AI model capable of generating     3     (remarkable) realistic and imaginative scenes from text instructions, just entered the chat room. A world where reality bends to the will of words has arrived,    4    (shape)a new era not just for technology but for humanity itself.

Although Start of Autumn, the 13th traditional Chinese solar term, often indicates the     1     (begin) of autumn, heat waves will not come to an end. The period of high temperatures,    2     (call) “Autumn Tiger”, usually lasts for about 30 days. Because of decreasing precipitation(降水), it is even hotter during this period than Major Heat. As the saying goes, “If it rains     3    the day of Start of Autumn, a good harvest is expected.”