Standing on the top story of Basantapur Palace in Nepal, Yuan Mengxi is having a hard time connecting today’s reality with     1     she saw seven years ago.

The palace complex, located in the middle of Durbar Square in the country’s capital Kathmandu, was badly damaged in     2     massive earthquake in April 2015. The 9-story palace, a tourist landmark, was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1979.

The palace not only has great historical     3     (significant), but is also an architectural feat (功绩).

“You can see the whole place from here, and everything is beautiful and     4     order,” says Yuan, a 33-year-old originally from Zhengzhou, the capital of Central China’s Henan province. She is     5     (current) working for the Beijing-based Chinese Academy of Cultural Heritage and is in charge of a team sent     6     (rebuild) the palace.

She made her first work trip to Kathmandu in October 2015, six months after the earthquake     7     (shake) the city.

She says she was in shock     8     (see) the city after the quake at the time. Heritage buildings in Durbar Square     9     (destroy), with wooden statues buried and spread over a wide area. “Kathmandu Valley was still covered in the dust from the quake,” she recalls.

After the earthquake, both the Chinese and Nepali governments agreed to launch a project     10     (intend) for restoring the nine-story Basantapur Palace complex.

Zheng Chunhui, a wood carving craftsman for nearly four decades, has recently been busy with a new creation—a wood carving 100 meters long     1     2. 6 meters high, depicting(描绘)the Beijing-Hangzhou Canal. In his carving, Zheng     2     (hope)to show local traditions and customs of the areas along the canal’s route.

Born in 1968, Zheng     3     (become)a wood carving craftsman in 1983. His birthplace. Putian. Fujian Province, is known     4     Putian wood carving. “I was     5     (real)interested in painting and other arts during childhood, so I chose to become a craftsman,” Zheng said.

His love of painting can     6     (see)in his wood carvings. Similar to the landscape themes of     7     (tradition)Chinese paintings, Zheng’s artworks are also about nature. “I often draw my inspiration from the poems and paintings of ancient     8     (artist), and then express my understanding of them by creating new works with different types of wood,” Zheng said.

    9     (exhibit)his works and promote the craft, Zheng opened a wood carving gallery in Putian in 2015, the first run by an individual artist and free to the public.

Zheng plans to finish the Beijing-Hangzhou Canal wood carving in three years. “     10     will take a lot of time and energy to complete, but I am confident in my skills and experience,” he said.

Tomb-Sweeping Day is one of the eight most important traditional     1     (festival) in China. The actual day usually occurs around April 5 of the Gregorian calendar but the festival lasts longer. Traditionally,10 days before and after Tomb-Sweeping Day can be counted as the festival. The festival is said to originate from the funerals of emperors, generals and ministers     2     ancient times. The rituals (仪式)     3     (perform) at these funerals later became popular among ordinary people. Over time the tradition of offering sacrifices to the ancestors and sweeping tombs has been passed down from generation to generation and evolved into     4     custom widely observed by the Chinese nation. Despite the festival having no official status, the overseas Chinese communities take this festival     5     (serious) and observe its traditions faithfully .

Tomb-Sweeping Day is also known as the Qingming Festival-when spring is in the air, the earth looks clearer and     6     (bright) with increasing rainfall, and everything in the natural world waves goodbye to the unpleasant memory of winter. This     7     (consider) as a shift from yin to yang. During this beautiful season, flowers blossom in the     8     (warm) and everything is full of vitality. The tradition of spring outings     9     (date) back to the Tang Dynasty. Apart from enjoying glorious natural scenery, outings involve other activities     10     serve to bring out the best of the festival.