It has been over 500 years     1     the first journey around the earth in 1521. Long before the invention of trains and planes, many thought it was impossible. It nearly was. The journey     2     (start) by a Portuguese explorer, Ferdinand Magellan, but he never saw it finished.

Magellan was following in the footsteps of explorers like Christopher Columbus. He’d traveled from Spain to America in 1492 and encouraged others     3     (take) to the seas. But Magellan’s journey was even more daring. It was a journey around the whole world that would     4     (complete) show the still-questioned idea that the world was not flat, but round.

In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan set sail from Spain,     5     he got support from the Spanish King, Charles V. But Spanish sailors didn’t feel like     6     (lead) by a Portuguese man.

After fighting storms, losing ships and many of his men turning against him and returning home, Magellan was killed in the Philippines by local people.

After Magellan’s     7     (die), his group continued in the only ship that was left. Along the way, they traveled across a new ocean and     8     (map) new paths for European trade. For better or     9     (bad), they had made the way for modern world trade and proved that the earth was round.

The passage Magellan’s team went through, between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, was named after him: the Strait of Magellan, which is 570 kilometers long. His influence on the world did not end there. In 1989, NASA named     10     spacecraft after the explorer and sent it to Venus (金星).

4 . The ancient silk road was a once in a life time journey. It was one of the most important milestones of trade and culture in world history, and the pioneer, Zhang Qian, could not be easily forgotten by history. He was an outstanding diplomat, traveler and explorer in the Han Dynasty of China, honored as the “the first Chinese to open their eyes to see the world” and “the Columbus of the east”.

In 138 BC, at the reign of Emperor Wudi, Zhang Qian was sent to the west of China for an alliance with the Yue-chi people to fight against the Xiongnu. He started his trip from Chang’an(now Xi’an in Shanxi Province)to Longxi(in Gansu Province). Along the way, no matter how difficult the environment was, his faith was firm. But unfortunately, Zhang was caught by the Xiongnu people just as he left Han, and was held prisoner for ten years.

Zhang finally managed to escape with some of his men and continued to travel west without any dry food or drinking water. Due to the excellent skill of shooting arrows, they survived by eating some birds and other animals along the way. When Zhang at last reached the Yue-chi in Northern India, he was disappointed to find that they didn’t want to fight against the Xiongnu people. On the return journey, Zhang Qian and his men were again caught. It was not until 125 BC that they returned to Chang’an.

Though Zhang hadn’t finished his mission, he brought back first-hand information on the geography, ethnography, and societies of Central Asia. The paths Zhang Qian explored later served as the highways connecting Europe, the Middle East, Mesopotamia, Central Asia, and East Asia. Commodities, crops, animals, religions, ideas, music, technology, and artifacts have been transported by diplomats, merchants and soldiers along this network of highways, which have, since the 19th century been known as the “Silk Road”. Zhang Qian has been remembered as the great explorer that opened up a new era of cultural exchange between East and West with long-lasting treasure well observable today.

China celebrates the Chinese National Day on October 1st every year. The celebration marks the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

For centuries, a succession of different dynasties ruled China,     1     (follow) by the short-lived Republic of China (1912—1949). After a lengthy civil war, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) proclaimed China’s     2     (independent) and established the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

On October 1st, 1949,    3     official victory ceremony was organized in Tian’anmen Square,     4     Mao Zedong, the leader of the CCP, raised China’s first Communist national flag. On October 2nd, 1949, the day of foundation of China was officially declared    5     (be) National Day.

Since 1950, October 1st     6     (celebrate) as a great national festival in China every year and various    7    (activity) and events are organized annually to mark this day.

    8    (present), China’s National Day is celebrated over a one-week period. The 7-day holiday begins from October 1st and runs until the 7th, and this period is called “Golden Week” in China. China National Day holiday is the     9    (busy) travel period in China. Tourist attractions are crowded     10    hotels are fully booked.

7 . Back in 2019, three Chinese scientists were playfighting during a break from working in the Chongqing Province, China. One was kung-fu kicked into a rock, causing an opening in the rock face. Inside, a wonderful fossil (化石) lay undisturbed, preserved for millions of years.

The fossil was a jawed fish, some 439 million years old, and the findings from the Chongqing site, along with other fossil findings in nearby Guizhou province, have excited the science world, as they are 11 million years older than any fish fossil found before. It is a significant discovery because scientists have suspected that jaws evolved (进化) some 450 million years ago, but there had yet to be any fossils that supported this theory. The oldest fossils with jaws found were 439 million years old.

In this discovery, though, there was a new species of shark that was 439 million years old, with a full jaw.

“All these things are still like dreams,” said Zhu Min, who led the research teams that recently published four papers on the discoveries. “Today we are staring at complete early fishes, 11 million years earlier than the previous oldest finds. These are both the most exciting as well as the most challenging fossils I have had the privilege to work on.”

Some of the fish that were discovered were placoderms, an extinct class of fish that have hard plates that formed a shield around the head and trunk, while others were an ancient type of shark.

The scientists found the oldest-known teeth of any vertebrate (脊椎动物), 14 million years older than any previous findings, as well as two other shark descendants. China has been the site of numerous discoveries in recent years, including fossils of feathered dinosaurs, as well as the oldest known animals on Earth.

“The discovery of the Chongqing site is indeed an unbelievable miracle of fossil hunting,” Zhu added. “Suddenly we realized we have found a jaw-dropping fossil site. We are now close to the core of solving the fishy tree of early jawed vertebrates.”

Dumpling is a Chinese cuisine. Actually, the tradition of eating dumplings during winter solstice has its     1     (originate) in early times.

It is said that dumplings were invented by Zhang Zhongjing, a     2     (fame) physician from the Eastern-Han Dynasty. He was once     3     official in Changsha.When he returned home for private life, he saw people lived an     4    (extreme) hard life and that their ears were red with cold in the snowing winter. He was sad and let his follower cook     5     (drive) out the chill with mutton, hot pepper and some medicine. Zhang let him boil them first and cut them up, then wrap them with flour. After     6     (boil) them, he gave the medicinal food to the people there on the day of the winter solstice. Zhang Zhongjing called it “cold dispelling dumpling soup”. By eating this kind of ear-like food, people’s ears     7     (cure).

Thereafter, every winter solstice Zhang Zhongjing made “cold dispelling dumpling soup” in order to prevent and cure ailments     8     (cause) by the cold. Then there became a saying that     9     you eat dumplings during the winter solstice, then you won’t freeze your ears off.

Afterwards, Zhang Zhongjing died on the day of winter solstice.     10     honor of him, every household makes dumplings every year on the day of the winter solstice.

9 . When the discovery of fossilized (化石的) footprints made in what’s now New Mexico was made public in 2021, it was an astonishing moment for archaeology (考古学), seemingly rewriting a chapter of the human story. Now new research is offering further evidence of their significance.

While they look like they could have been made yesterday, the footprints were pressed into mud 21,000 to 23,000 years ago, according to radiocarbon dating of the seeds of a water plant that were preserved above and below the fossils. This date dramatically pushed back the timeline of humans’ history in the Americas, the last land to be settled by prehistoric people. The 61 dated prints, which were discovered in the Tularosa Basin, near the edge of an ancient lake in White Sands National Park, were made at a time when many scientists think that massive ice sheets had stopped human passage into North America, indicating that humans arrived in the region even earlier.

However, some archaeologists questioned the age of the footprints established by those initial findings. They noted that water plants such as Ruppia cirrhosa — the one used in the 2021 study — can acquire carbon atoms from the water rather than the air, which can result in a misleadingly early date.

In a follow-up study published Thursday in the journal Science, researchers said they have produced two new lines of evidence to support their initial dates. “Even as the original work was being published, we were speeding up to test our results with multiple lines of evidence,” said Kathleen Springer, co-lead author on the new Science paper, in a news release. “We were confident in our original ages, as well as the strong evidence.”

When and how early humans first moved to the Americas has long been debated and remains poorly understood. Current estimates range from 13,000 years ago to more than 20,000 years ago. However, the earliest archaeological evidence for the region’s settlement is insufficient and often controversial, making the footprints especially important.