In Asia, especially the so-called “rice bowl” cultures of China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, food is usually eaten with    1    (chopstick).

Chopsticks are usually two long, thin pieces of wood or bamboo. They can also    2     (make) of plastic or mental. Sometimes chopsticks are quite artistic.    3    (true) elegant chopsticks might be with Chinese characters. Skilled workers also combine various hardwoods    4    metal to create special designs.

Five thousand years ago, Chinese people probably cooked their food in large pots,    5    (use) branches to remove it. Food in small pieces could be eaten easily with branches     6    gradually turned into chopsticks.

Some people think that the great Chinese scholar Confucius, who lived     7    551 to 479 BC, influenced the     8    (develop) of chopsticks. Confucius believed knives would remind people of killings and     9    (be) too violent for use at the table.

Chopsticks are not used everywhere in Asia. In India, most people traditionally eat     10    their hands.

Ball games are a big source of modern amusement. But they're nothing new. For instance, consider a 4,500-year-old ball     1    (find) in a child's tomb in Egypt or 3.600-year-old rubber balls from Central America-where the competitors were asked to play the balls with their hips(臀部）.

So far, researchers     2    (make) sure of a date of the oldest sporting balls in Europe or Asia: three balls, dug up from the tombs of horsemen in the deserts of northwestern China and crafted three thousand     3    (year) ago.

＂We are quite sure they were used in some sort of bat-and-ball game."Patrick Wertmann is an expert at the University of Zurich     4     analyzed the ancient sporting equipment. The balls are about three inches in diameter and filled     5    leather hair. “And then, also,     6    (look) at the Chinese character of "ball" itself, you'll find it quite     7    (interest) because this character is made up of the ideograms(表意文字）of hair and leather.”

As for how this ancient ball-and-stick game     8     （play)? “lt could be something like polo. But it could also be something like     9     early form of golf.

Since we don't have any textural evidence and we don't have any sticks from the same period, we don't really know     10    （exact).”