Do you have any idea of New Year paintings?     1    (know) as “paper paintings” and “painted pictures”, New Year paintings are a special art form in Chinese folk culture. Without New Year paintings, our traditional Chinese folk culture would be much less     2    (color). The paintings get such a name because they are     3    (most) posted during the Chinese New Year holiday for     4    (decorate) and they are also accepted as a symbol of New Year’s greetings.

NewYear paintings appeared around the Tang Dynasty,     5    (replace) the previous door pictures believed to be able to protect the residents and drive away ghosts. In the Song Dynasty the New Year paintings     6    (create) on a large scale (规模).    7     the printing techniques improving, the content and forms of New Year paintings became various. The development of the paintings matured (成熟) in the Ming and Qing Dynasties,     8    the art reached its golden age.

There are many     9    (tradition) printing methods of New Year paintings, including woodblock printing, stone-block printing, offset printing, watercolor painting, etc.    10     is reported, woodblock-printed New Year paintings are the most popular and interesting ones, according to a recent survey.

My friend Tony and I always walk hoe together after school. Last Monday, however, something happened     1     our way back.

We were walking that day when we heard     2     loud cry behind us. Looking around, we were     3     (surprise) to see a woman lying on the ground. It seemed that she was     4     (injure) badly. We hurried to her,    5     a man came over to stop us from     6     (help) the woman. Some     7     (girl) walking by even laughed at us. We got very angry with the people     8     were cold to the woman. Then the man     9     (ask) us to turn around to see a man carrying a video camera on     10     (he) shoulder. They were just making a film!

The Yellow Crane Tower is one of the Four Great Towers of China.     1     (sit) at the top of Snake Hill, on the banks of the Yangtze River, this symbolic building is one of the     2     (great) landmarks in Wuhan. There are a number of legends     3     tell how the Yellow Crane Tower came into being. One of them is the story of a wine merchant named Xin. It is believed that one day,     4     immortal being (神仙) pretended he was a poor man and got into Xin’s wine store. Xin, showing no judgement,     5     (offer) the man some free wine. The poor man came back day after day for several years and Xin always welcomed him with the same     6     (warm). One day, as the poor man left the store, he took some orange peel and drew a picture of a crane upon the wall. He said if he clapped his hands, the crane would come down from the wall and dance for him.     7     (surprise), what the poor man said was true. The dancing crane brought     8     much business to Xin that he soon became a very wealthy man. About ten years     9     (late), the immortal being came back to Xin’s store, called out the crane and left with it.     10     (honor) him and the crane, Xin built the Yellow Crane Tower.

By far, the most     1    (technology) challenging railway ever built was probably the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, completed in 2006, which connects Xining to Lhasa. The railway was first planned in the 1950s, but the technical difficulties were too much     2     (overcome). It was not until 1984    3    the first 814-kilometer section of the railway, from Xining to Golmud, was completed.

The biggest issue was the permafrost(冻结带)-frozen earth. In the summer, usually melting at a fast speed, the top layer of the permafrost turns to mud,    4    (make) the ground unstable. A    5    (various) of solutions were used to get around this. In some cases, railway bridges     6    (build). In other cases, engineers installed pipes under the ground to keep it frozen during the summer. Finally, in some areas, it was impossible to build the railway over the permafrost,     7    engineers tunneled through it.

It is hoped that the experience of building the Qinghai-Tibet Railway can be used in    8     new project, linking China with Pakistan. This railway    9    (travel)1,000 kilometers through the Pamir Mountains, which are nicknamed the Roof of the World. Building such a railway will be    10    (doubt) a technical challenge. It has not yet been announced when construction on this project will start.

Known as the father of hybrid rice, Yuan Longping always considers     1     (he) as a farmer. As     2    young man, Yuan were concerned about farmers’ poor harvests and shortage of food to eat.     3    (solve) this crisis, he chose to study agriculture and received an education at Southwest Agricultural College.

After     4    (graduate) in 1953, Yuan worked as a researcher,    5    was convinced that the solution lay in the creation of hybrid rice rather than larger fields. One characteristic of hybrids is that they usually attain a     6    (high) yield than conventional crops. Through intense effort, Yuan     7     (overcome) enormous technical difficulties to develop the first hybrid rice, enabling farmers to increase their output    8     (great) without expanding the fields. Today it’s reported     9     about 60 percent of domestic rice consumption in China is comprised of crops generated from Yuan’s hybrid strains. Yuan’s innovation has helped feed not just China, but many other countries that rely     10    rice as well.