It seems inhuman to care more about a building than about people. That the sight of the Notre Dame's
It is not just the economy that is
However, the emotions are less about the building itself than about
And it will be rebuilt. It will never be the same, but that is as it should be.
2 . It is likely that on American TV shows you at times will be attracted by rubber balls on people’s desks.
Indeed, stress is a big problem for many people.
A.This helped them relax as well. |
B.These gadgets may look like simple toys. |
C.It keeps your hand busy with an easy task. |
D.These balls are known as “stress relief balls”. |
E.Fortunately, we have many ways to deal with it. |
F.This was the perfect way to ease away your tension. |
G.A focused activity helps take your mind off the problems of your day. |
A fan can drive summer heat away and help bring a cool breeze (微风).
The fan first appeared in China about 3,000 years ago, in the Shang and Zhou dynasties. In the early period, the fan was called “the fan of honor”,
After the Qin and Han dynasties, the main
During the Sui and Tang dynasties, the common fans were round fans, feather fans, and some paper fans. The folding fan
When the Library Cave, known as Cave 17 from the Mogao Cave Complex at Dunhuang, China, was opened in 1900, several tons of manuscripts, scrolls, booklets and paintings on silk and paper
Cave 17 is only one of the 735 human-made caves
The Dunhuang Academy was set up in China in
China boasts its brilliant and long history, in
Bi Sheng of the Northern Song Dynasty (AD 960 —1127) invented the movable type printing, using individual blocks. The blocks could each print a single character and then be used
In general, doctors in those days had two contradictory theories to explain how cholera spread. One theory was that bad air caused the disease. Another was that cholera
7 . Ancient Chinese folk paintings and many other art styles have been passed down from generation to generation, and are still practiced in different parts of China. Here's a look at four unique Chinese folk-art forms.
Chinese Opera is the traditional form of Chinese drama. According to incomplete statistics, in China's various ethnic regions there are about more than 360 kinds of operas. The most famous ones include Peking Opera, Kunqu Opera, Yueju Opera, Yuju Opera, Sichuan Opera, Fujian Opera, Hebei opera, Huangmei Opera arid so on, in total more than 50, among which Peking Opera is the most popular in China.
Shadow Play (皮影戏) dates back to Western Han Dynasty in Shaanxi more than 1,000 years ago. The moving figures, usually carved out from leather, are operated by folk artists, accompanied by music and singing. It is the world's first dubbed (配音的) motion picture art form, thus considered the “ancestor” of modern film. Today this art form is still popular in northern China.
Paper-cutting is one of the most popular traditional decorative arts in China with a long history. Paper-cutting can be seen across China and it has even developed into different local genres (流派). They are usually used to decorate gates and windows during festivals.
The Kite was invented by Chinese people. According to legend the earliest kite in China was a wooden bird by Mo Di in the Eastern Zhou Dynasty. Later his student Lu Ban improved the tech and used bamboo as material to make a kite. Today, various kite-flying activities can be found in different regions of China. Shandong Weifang Kite Festival is held every year and attracts lots of kite lovers and travelers.
1. Which Chinese Opera is the most popular in China?A.Peking Opera | B.Kunqu Opera |
C.Yueju Opera | D.Yuju Opera |
A.It has a history of more than 1,000 years. |
B.It was operated by ancient folk artists. |
C.It is accompanied by music and dances on the stage. |
D.It is the world's first dubbed motion picture art form. |
A.Paper | B.Wood |
C.Bamboo | D.Leather |
A.Chinese folk art | B.Chinese folk paintings |
C.Chinese operas | D.Chinese folk plays |
The 1918 Spanish flu was the most deadly outbreak in history. It was caused by an HIN1 virus found in genes of birds’ origin. Although there is no
It
9 . Scientists from the University of Texas at Austin have finally solved the mystery of a huge fossil that has been unlabeled and unidentified sitting at a Chilean museum for almost a decade. The relic, which looks like a deflated football, is the largest known soft-shelled egg from a marine reptile that lived on the earth over 66 million years ago. Measuring more than 11 by 7 inches, it is also the second-largest egg belonging to any known animal, only behind the now-extinct elephant bird.
The rare fossil named “The Thing” was discovered inside a rock formation in Seymour Island off the coast of Antarctica in 2011 by a team of researchers including David Rubilar-Rogers. Over the years, the paleontologist at Chile's National Museum of Natural History has showed the strange fossil to every geologist that came to the museum. However, no one was able to identify “The Thing's” origin until Julia Clarke, a professor at UT-Austin's Jackson School of Geosciences, visited in 2018.
“I showed it to her, and, after a few minutes, Julia told me it could be an egg!” Rubilar-Rogers said.
To confirm Clarke's suspect, Lucas Legendre, a student at UT-Austin who led the study, examined the fossil under a microscope. Sure enough, he found several layers of membrane, confirming that the fossil was indeed a soft-shelled egg, similar to the obvious, quick-hatching eggs laid by some modern-day snakes. “The shell is very thin,” said Clarke.
The fossil's identification led to an even bigger mystery — what animal could have laid an egg this size? After considering several potential parents, the researchers concluded that the egg was laid by an ancient marine reptile like a mosasaur. The fact that the rock formation where the egg had been found had fossil evidence of baby mosasaurs and the offspring of other marine animals further strengthened their theory.
1. What can we know from the first paragraph?A."The Thing" is the largest egg laid by animals. |
B."The Thing" has been discovered for a century. |
C."The Thing" looks like a football not having enough gas. |
D.“The Thing” belongs to an elephant bird. |
A.It may be laid by a snake. | B.It could be an egg. |
C.It has a very thick shell. | D.It has existed for 66 thousand years. |
A.Use a microscope to examine "The Thing". |
B.Analyze a lot of data collected by researchers. |
C.Do as many as experiments with his colleagues. |
D.Compare the fossil with the eggs of various animals, |
A.An ancient marine reptile laid the egg. |
B.The egg's potential parents are snakes. |
C.The way of rock formation affects the egg. |
D.The size of the eggs lies in the weight of the animals. |
10 . To take the apple as a forbidden fruit is the most unlikely story the Christians ever cooked up. For them, the forbidden fruit from Eden is evil (邪恶的). So when Columbus brought the tomato back from South America, a land mistakenly considered to be Eden, everyone jumped to the too obvious conclusion. Wrongly taken as the apple of Eden, the tomato was shut out of the door of Europeans.
What made it particularly terrifying was its similarity to the mandrake, a plant that was thought to have come from Hell (地狱). What earned the plant its awful reputation was its roots which looked like a dried-up human body occupied by evil spirits. Though the tomato and the mandrake were quite different except that both had bright red or yellow fruit, the general population considered them one and the same, too terrible to touch.
Cautious Europeans long ignored the tomato, and until the early 1700s most of the Western people continued to drag their feet. In the 1880s, the daughter of a well-known farmer wrote that the most interesting part of an afternoon tea at her father’s house had been the “introduction of this wonderful new fruit---or is it a vegetable?” As late as the twentieth century, some writers still classed tomatoes with mandrakes as an “evil fruit”.
But in the end tomatoes carried the day. The hero of the tomato was an American named Robert Johnson, and when he was publicly going to eat the tomato in 1820, people journeyed for hundreds of miles to watch him drop dead. “What are you afraid of ?” he shouted. “I’ll show you fools that these things are good to eat!” Then he bit into the tomato. Some people fainted. But he survived and, according to a local story, set up a tomato-canning factory.
1. The tomato was shut out of the door of early Europeans mainly because ________.A.it was religiously unacceptable | B.it was the apple of Eden |
C.it came from a forbidden land | D.it made Christian evil |
A.The process of ignoring the tomato slowed down. |
B.The tomato was still refused in most western countries. |
C.There was little progress in the study of the tomato. |
D.Most western people continued to get rid of the tomato. |
A.To make himself a hero. |
B.To persuade people to buy products from his factory. |
C.To speed up the popularity of the tomato. |
D.To remove people’s fear of the tomato. |
A.To present the change of people’s attitudes to the tomato. |
B.To give an explanation to people’s dislike of the tomato. |
C.To challenge people’s fixed concepts of the tomato. |
D.To show the popularity of the tomato in Europe |