1 . A fresh and gentle wind on your face, soft sand under your feet and blue waters as far as the eye can see. Is there any other Olympic sport that is played in such pleasant conditions as beach volleyball？

“I’ve gone to a lot of beautiful places, and met a lot of beautiful people. That wouldn’t have happened if I had been playing another sport.” said Randy Stoklos, America’s most famous beach volleyball player.

The sport began as a four-a-side game on beaches in Southern California in the 1920s. The first recorded two-man game took place there in 1930, and the first tournament (锦标赛) was held in Los Angeles 18 years later. The winners were awarded a case of Pepsi. In the 1950s, women started playing and the sport soon spread to Europe and South America. Yet at that time, beach volleyball was more an entertainment show than a sport, with beauty contests included. The Association of Volleyball Professionals was founded in 1983 and beach volleyball developed into a fast, athletic sport. Its world-wide popularity won beach volleyball a place at the 1996 Olympics in Atalanta, where 24 male teams and 16 female teams took part. At present, the US and Brazil are the best in the world at beach volleyball.

The game came to China in the early 1990s and there have been national tournaments since 1994. It became an official event at the Eighth National Games in 1997. China’s You Wenhui and Wang Lu finished ninth in the women’s beach volleyball world championships in Brazil.

4 . Using Google's unique digital(数字的)technology, the stories of some English Heritage(遗产)sites around the country-from Tintagel Castle in Cornwall to Chesters Roman Fort on Hadrian's Wall-are brought to life and shared by way of the Google Arts & Culture platform.

Stonehenge Skyscape	English Heritage's Stonehenge Skyscape enables people around the world to experience the skies above the stone circle, to learn about movements of the sun, moon and planets. Experience a live and special sunrise over Stonehenge, see the journey of the stars and the moon from within the stone circle and learn more about the design of Stonehenge and how its builders may have understood their place in the universe.
Osborne, Isle of Wight	Take a 360 video tour of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's palatial(豪华的)holiday home on the Isle of Wight in the company of English Heritage director Michael Hunter, including the Italian terraces(露台)with views over the Solent, which reminded Prince Albert of the Bay of Naples, and the Indian-inspired Durbar Room, designed to show Queen Victoria's position as Empress of India.
Audley End House and Gardens, Essex	Explore the story of one of the greatest houses of early 17th-century England, deep in the heart of the Essex countryside, and fly over the great formal gardens designed by Capability Brown.
Tintagel Castle, Cornwall	Explore this medieval(中世纪的)castle set high on Cornwall's north coast. Linked with the legend of King Arthur, for centuries this impressive castle and coastline has inspired the imaginations of writers, artists and even the brother of a king. Discover the Early Medieval history of a distant outpost(哨站)trading objects from Spain, North Africa and Turkey.

5 . Tang Dynasty poets sang for about three centuries in different tones. There were many famous poets living in the Tang period, such as Li Bai, Du Fu, Bai Juyi and Li Shangyin. The Poems of Tang Dynasty edited in the Qing Dynasty is a collection of more than 28,900 poems that were written by over 2,200 poets. But it didn't cover all the poems of the Tang Dynasty.

During the Tang Dynasty, poems were recited when lovers walked under the moonlight. Poems were also recited when soldiers fought on the battlefield. People recited them in the open air or at temple fairs.

Tang Dynasty poets wrote poems to win fame and also to develop their temperament   (性情). They poured out deep feelings for their friends and criticized injustice in the world through poems.

In the Tang Dynasty scholars had to be poets. Their readers were not only people of high social position but also common people. Poets recited poems, women singers sang poems and other ranks of people, including old women and children, read Tang poems. This atmosphere affected foreigners who visited the country at that time. As a result, Tang poetry was introduced to some adjacent countries, like Japan and Vietnam.

Tang poetry is a most brilliant page in the history of ancient Chinese literature. It's a miracle   (奇迹) in the cultural history of mankind. The Tang Dynasty was a powerful empire with a vast territory. It inherited     (继承)   Chinese civilization that went back to ancient times, was combined with the best of other cultures and adopted the benefits of other nations in the world. Tang poetry wasn't the only spiritual wealth created by the Tang Dynasty people. Philosophy and religion, handwriting and painting, and music and dance all gained new peaks of development. Tang poetry, however, was the jewel in the crown and its greatest achievement.

The lion dance is one of the most outstanding     1     (tradition) folk dances in China. It can date back to the Three Kingdoms Period (220—280).

The lion     2     (regard) as a symbol of bravery and strength by ancient people. They thought that it could drive away evil and protect people and     3     (they) livestock such as cattle, sheep and so on. Therefore, lion dances are performed at important events,     4     (especial) the Lantern Festival.

The lion dance requires two highly-trained     5     (perform) in a lion suit. One acts as the head and forelegs, and     6     other the hind legs. Under the guidance of a choreographer (编舞者), the “lion” dances to the beat of a drum, a gong (锣), and cymbals (钹). Sometimes they jump, roll, and do difficult acts such     7     walking on stilts (桩子).

In one lion dance, the “lion” moves from place to place looking for some green vegetables, in     8     red envelopes with money inside are hidden. The acting is very amusing and spectators enjoy it very much.

Nowadays, the lion dance     9     (spread) to many other countries with overseas Chinese. In many Chinese communities of Europe and America, Chinese people use lion dances or dragon dances     10     (celebrate) every Spring Festival and other important events.

The history of football     1     (go) back to Ancient China. But football we know today     2     (start) in Great Britain. That football is such     3     simple game that is perhaps the     4     (base) of its popularity. All over the world you can see kids     5     (play) to their hearts’ content     6     a ball. Another factor behind its popularity is the creativity and excitement. It is fun enough     7     (attract) millions of people. What’s more, it has become one of the best     8     (way) to communicate. For example, on Christmas Day 1914, World War Ⅰ     9     (break) out months before, but British and German soldiers put down arms and played football together. So football is much more     10     just a sport.

8 . On April 10, 1912, the ocean liner Titanic set off on its first voyage with more than 2,200 people on board. It was a historic moment. The ship was the largest passenger ship in the world.

But on the night of April 14, the Titanic struck a giant iceberg. Within hours, it sank to the bottom of the ocean. There were only enough lifeboats for about half the people on board. More than 1,500 passengers and crew members died.

The tragedy made headlines around the world. The tale of the ship has inspired many books, plays and movies. That includes 1997’s Titanic---one of the most popular films in history.

Now, more than a century later, a replica (复制品) of the ship is being built. The Titanic II is expected to follow the route of the original ship. It is scheduled to launch in 2022 and sail from Southampton, England, to New York City.

In many ways, the Titanic II will be hard to tell apart from the original ship. It will have the same cabin layouts (布局) and serve the same fancy meals. But according to the Blue Star Line, the company building the ship, there will be some important differences. The Titanic II will have the latest technology and safety features---including enough motor-driven lifeboats for everyone on board. Though the ship itself will be more modern, sailing on it will be a journey back in time, says Clive Palmer, the Owner of Blue Star Line.

“It is a tribute (致敬) to the spirit of the men and women who worked on the original Titanic,” he says.

9 . They asked Katherine Johnson for the moon, and she gave it to them. With little more than a pencil, a slide rule and one of the finest mathematical minds in the country, Mrs. Johnson, who died at 101 on Monday, calculated the precise track that would let Apollo 11 land on the moon in 1969 and, after Neil Armstrong’s history—making moonwalk, let it return to Earth.

Yet throughout Mrs. Johnson’s 33 years in NASA and for decades afterwards, almost no one knew her name.

Mrs. Johnson was one of several hundred strictly educated, supremely capable yet largely unrecognized women who, well before the modern feminist movement, worked as NASA mathematicians. But it was not only her sex that kept her long unsung. For some years at midcentury, the black women were subjected to a double segregation (隔离)：They were kept separate from the much large group of white women who in turn were segregated from the agency’s male mathematicians and engineers.

Mrs. Johnson broke barriers at NASA. In old age, Mrs. Johnson became the most celebrated of black women who served as mathematicians for the space agency. Their story was told in the 2016 Hollywood film Hidden Figures, which was nominated for three Oscars, including best picture.

In 2017, NASA dedicated a building in her honor. That year, The Washington Post described her as “the most high- profile of the computers”—“computers” being the term originally used to describe Mrs. Johnson and her colleagues, much as “typewriters” were used in the 19th century to represent professional typists.

She “helped our nation enlarge the frontiers of space,” NASA’s administrator, Jim Bridenstine, said in a statement on Monday, “even as she made huge steps that also opened doors for women and people of color in the universal human quest to explore space.”

As Mrs. Johnson herself was fond of saying, her term at Langley—from 1953 until her retirement in 1986—was “a time when computers wore skirts.”

Most of us have recently experienced quarantine (隔离) to minimize the risk of meeting somebody who may be carrying the virus. It is certain     1    being under quarantine is no fun. However, with our access to food,     2     (deliver) services and the entertainment    3    (offer) by the internet, we're actually very lucky. Let's take    4    quick look at the history of quarantine.

The idea of quarantining sick people dates    5    ancient times. Yet the word "quarantine" first came into use in the 14th century Europe during the Black Death. People were dropping like flies from the mysterious disease, and as the death toll climbed into the millions-eventually killing    6    (approximate) half of the European population, cities began to take     7    (measure) to protect their citizens. The port city of Venice, Italy, was an important trading center with ships    8     (come) from all corners of the Earth every day. If a ship    9     (suspect) to be harboring the plague (瘟疫)，it was sent to an offshore quarantine place and ordered to wait there for 40 days when those abroad either recovered, or     10    (likely), died. The waiting period gave rise to the term quarantinario, from the Italian word for 40.