A music concert “Echoes of Ancient Tang Poems” jointly performed by iSING! Suzhou and the Philadelphia Orchestra was staged at Kimmel Performing Arts Center in Philadelphia on Jan. 6.

Another concert featuring Tang poetry was    1    (successful) held at the Lincoln Center in New York on Jan. 7. Fifteen iSING! Suzhou singers from 10 countries led by Liao Guomin performed songs    2    (write) by young composers from 6 countries. The songs included many well-known    3    (poem) from the Tang Dynasty, such    4    Luo Binwang’s Singing of Goose and Li Bai’s Quiet Thoughts by Night.

The iSING! Suzhou International Young Artists Festival    5    (set) up in Suzhou in 2014 as China’s first international vocal (声乐) art festival. Over    6     past eight years, the festival has attracted outstanding young singers from all over the world, spread    7    promoted Chinese and classical music, and enhanced cultural exchanges between China and the West, becoming a cultural card for Suzhou to go    8    (globe).

The performances were also held to commemorate(纪念) the    9     (fifty) anniversary of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s China tour in 1973. The Philadelphia Orchestra, as the first American orchestra    10    (visit) China, bridged the two nations in the field of culture.

China’s next-generation rocket to carry humans is expected to make its maiden flight around 2027, said a project manager.

Zhao Xinguo,a senior rocket    1     (design) and head of the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology’s rocket development department, said the new rocket,which has yet to be named, is an important backbone in China’s ambitious plan    2     (place) its astronauts on the moon.“According to our schedule, all necessary conditions for the rocket’s    3     (one) launch mission will be ready in 2027,” he said on Monday in Zhuhai, Guangdong province, one day ahead of the 14th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, the largest arms show in the country.

Zhao said that the new rocket will be about 90 meters tall,     4     a diameter (直径) of 5 meters, which means it will be almost twice as tall as the Long March 5,     5     (current) the biggest in China’s rocket family. The craft will be capable of carrying spacecraft     6     (weigh) about 27 tons into an Earth-moon transfer trajectory (轨道),     7     gateway for lunar landing, or a70- ton spacecraft into a low-Earth orbit, according to the project manager.

Hu Xiaojun, a rocket researcher at the academy, said the new heavy-lift rocket     8     ( intend) for the country ‘s future manned spaceflights,     9     will be carried out by a new- generation spaceship, and manned lunar explorations that Chinese    10     (scientist) have been planning for a long time.

There is a day considered special by people     1     observe solar (太阳的) movement of the sun in many countries of the world. On its eve, in England, people go to Stonehenge     2     (welcome) the rise of the sun. In Latvia, people travel from the cities to the country- side to gather, eat and sing. Chinese people attach equal     3     (important) to this day,   known as the Summer Solstice (夏至), or xiazhi in Chinese.

It is the     4     (long) day of a year in terms of daylight. After the Summer Solstice, the subsolar point begins its moving south, and daytime     5     (gradual) shortens. Though people believe it is at the height of summer, xiazhi is not the hottest time of a year. After xiazhi, the temperature will continue to increase.

While in modern China, xiazhi is simply known as one of the solar     6     (term), in ancient times it was a major festival. In the Song Dynasty, the festival     7     (offer) officials a holiday of three days. A grand sacrificial (祭奠) ceremony was also held on the Summer Solstice during the Ming and Qing dynasties.

According to Guo Wenbin, a scholar of traditional culture, many customs from the ancient Summer Solstice festival     8     (be) now celebrated as part of events. “We often believe boat race was created     9     memory of Qu Yuan. But it is said that before the death of Qu, Chinese people had already had boat race as an event of Summer Solstice festival,” says Guo. Since the Summer Solstice is often a time when people harvest wheat,     10     is a tradition to eat noodles in many places.