The Xi’an City Wall is the most complete city wall that has survived China’s long history. It     1     (build) originally to protect the city     2     the Tang dynasty and has now been completely restored (修复). It is possible       3     (walk) or bike the entire 14 kilometers.

We accessed the wall through the South Gate. The wall is 12 meters high and from here you can see streams of people moving inside and outside the City Wall.

After     4     (spend) some time looking at all the defensive equipment at the wall, we decided it was time for some action and what     5     (good) than to ride on a piece of history!

We     6     (hire) our bikes from the rental place at the South Gate. My bike was old and shaky     7     did the job. It took us about 3 hours to go all     8     way around the Xi’an City Wall. Supposedly you can do it in two hours, but we stopped at the different gates and     9     (watchtower) to take pictures or just to watch the local people going about their     10     (day) routines.

The “24 solar terms” are a vital part of the Chinese calendar, which has     1     (it) origin with the ancient Yellow River basin. The Chinese calendar     2     (include) “24 solar terms”provides detailed guidelines and timetable for agricultural     3     (activity).

A complete set of “24 solar terms” first     4     (appear) in an ancient book The Huainanzi in early Han Dynasty. These 24 solar terms were soon absorbed into The Taichu calendar, the first well documented calendar in     5     history of China.

The Chinese Agriculture Calendar is     6     (actual) a combination of the lunar and solar calendar systems. There     7     (be) 365. 2422 days in one “sidereal year” while 12 lunar months add up to 354 days. To make both the lunar calendar     8     the solar calendar agree, a leap lunar month needs to be added every 2 to 3 years. Since the early Han Dynasty, a lunar month without a major solar term     9     (adopt) as a leap month (闰月) .

With more far-reaching cultural exchanges, the “24 solar terms” have been known     10     people in other parts of the world and were added to the “UNESCO World Intangible Cultural Heritage” list in 2016.

A few weeks ago, I accidentally dropped a plate and it broke into a billion pieces! I’d had it for about 40 years. This morning, we had a parcel     1     (deliver) to my son. He opened it and     2     (proud) handed a new plate to me, which he had bought with his own savings, saying that he knew     3     upset I was and wanted to surprise me!

Lots of foreigners don’t understand why so many Chinese people are sorrowful about Yuan Longping’s passing away.

This reminds me     1     an issue more than 20 years ago,     2     I was a Chinese journalist in the US. Some American scholars     3     (think) China could hardly realize food-sufficiency because of the     4     (limit) water resources, decrease of agricultural land due to industrial     5     (expand) and the fast population growth. Just at that time, Yuan Longping announced breakthroughs in planting the new rice.     6     (bring) to large area application, this technique improved the annual growth of rice greatly, which fed     7     population of 60 million--equal to the whole of the UK.

Western scholars’ prediction of China back then was indeed analyzing China’s problems, but they failed     8     (realize) that the Chinese people have the capability to deal with these challenges.

If they had had any knowledge of Yuan who worked devotedly for our country, they wouldn’t have made such pessimistic evaluations. Why did the Chinese people make     9    ? Why are so many predictions about China in the West     10    (accurate)? It’s time to change minds to better understand China.