If you have the chance     1    (return ) to ancient China and ask an educated man     2    his biggest dream was. He would tell you that he wants to become a zhuang yuan, a title     3    (give) to the scholar who came first in the highest imperial examination.

In ancient China,     4    was not that easy to be an official. You have to take exams first. The exams are very difficult and have many     5    (procedure). The outcome has to be confirmed by the Emperor     6    (he). The number one scholar with the best score in the imperial exam is called zhuang yuan. Once you are selected     7     zhuang yuan, you will be appreciated by the Emperor and appear in a parade downtown with a red robe and a tall, strong horse. Zhuang yuan is referred to the elite scholars. Now the imperial     8    (compete) examination has been canceled for many years.

However, people still like to call the    9    (good) person in their field a zhuang yuan. An old saying     10    (go) that there are 360 trades and every trade has his master, or zhuang yuan.

The ancient Olympic Games began in 776 BCE. They     1     (hold) at Olympia in Greece every four years for almost 12 centuries, until they eventually died out around the year 393. The modern Olympics were first held in 1896, in Athens. It was a Frenchman, Pierre de Coubertin,     2     brought the Olympics back to life. His dream was that the Olympics would help people of different     3     (race) origins and cultures live side by side in peace.

The 2008 Beijing Olympics called on the whole world to join in the Olympic spirit and build a better future for humanity     4     the slogan “One World, One Dream”. In addition to     5     (host) the Olympics for the first time, China also ranked first in the medal table. This success is     6     (true) remarkable. At the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, Xu Haifeng won our country’s first-ever gold medal. Since then the upward trend for Chinese sport has been unstoppable. At the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, Liu Xiang became the first Asian     7     (win) the gold medal in the men’s 110-metre hurdles, while at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, the Chinese women’s volleyball team won     8     hard-fought victory in the final.

As Coubertin believed, “With the Olympic Games, each generation     9     (celebrate) its advent, its joy of living, its faith in the future, its     10     (ambitious) and its will to ascend.”

Poetry (诗歌),     1     common form of literature, plays an important role in ancient China. At that time, there were no TVs or films, and     2     (write) had not been invented, so people would sit around the fire at night and sing songs. Since nothing was set down, different versions of these songs     3     (create), and each area would have its own rhythm (韵律). As these songs were often quite long, they often had rhyme and rhythm     4     (help) people remember them more easily. While in the     5     (begin) such songs had a very simple format, over time they became more difficult and     6     (pretty). These were no longer the works of amateurs (业余爱好者) sitting around a fire,     7     works of true poets who cared about their art and who sometimes made a living from it.

Poetry plays with sounds, words, and grammar,     8     makes poetry difficult to write but very interesting to read. In fact, the tradition of writing and reading poems     9     (pass) down over the generations.     10     is amazing that now even more people are trying to write poems by themselves!