Videos of 77-year-old Xu Xiuzhen, who speaks different languages with foreigners while working at a scenic spot selling water, postcards and headdress flowers, have brought her instant fame.

Xu’s village     1     (locate) at the base of Moon Hill, a popular tourist destination famed for a moon-shaped hole at the summit. She has been working as a tour guide and vendor (小贩) in Yangshuo,     2     county and resort town in southern China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region since 1998,     3     the area became famous for foreign backpackers and organized tours.

Xu, who dropped out of junior school in the third grade, began to learn different languages to attract more foreign customers. Xu said she would convert words in any language into Chinese characters     4     (base) on their pronunciation and then memorize them. Repeating the words in her head before going to bed and     5     (immediate) after waking up has given her fluency in basic conversations with foreigners.

Over the past two decades, Xu     6     (teach) herself 11 foreign languages, including English, Spanish, Japanese and Korean. In addition to     7     (make) her incredibly popular, her excellent linguistic ability has made it easier for her to communicate with foreign tourists. Xu has also become one of the busiest tour     8     (guide) in Yangshuo. Her reputation draws a large crowd of tourists every day, especially foreign visitors, who come to meet the multilingual guide out of     9     (admire).

“More and more foreign tourists are coming to Yangshuo, and I hope they will feel     10     home here with my help,” she said.

I have a fifteen-year-old son. He    1     (be) a perfect boy. I love my son with all my heart.

Last summer he worked to earn money for his new bicycle instead of     2     (ask) money from me. Then he spent hours and hours on it. Later I bought him a pair    3    glasses and gloves. My son rode the bicycle with the glasses and the gloves, and he looked so cool. He dreamed of taking part in a race and winning.

On November 10, my birthday, when I went to the kitchen to start the milk and bread in the morning, I     4     (notice) a beautiful guitar on the table, beside which was a card. It said, “Happy birthday to my    5     (wonder) mother, all my love, your son.” I was very    6    (surprise) and then began to sob (抽泣). I remembered once I joked to my family that I wished    7     (learn) to play the guitar to make my life more colorful. I had forgotten it, but my son remembered. He took it    8     (serious), and bought one for me as my birthday gift. When I wondered     9     my son could buy this expensive gift, I realized that my son sold his bicycle to get me     10     guitar.

Like most other toddlers (初学走路的孩子), one curious 20-month-old from Brazil loves to explore and gets into trouble. The story goes like this. When the child     1     (leave) home alone with an older brother, everything was fine at first. But not long after that, the baby got angry and wandered away from home. When his parents came back, they found their baby     2     (go). The parents were so worried about their baby and his     3     (safe) that they had to turn to their families and neighbors for help. They immediately set out     4     (look) for the missing child everywhere,     5     failed to find anything.

Eventually, the family called for help from the police     6     arrived with a search and rescue dog named Luke to look     7     the child. Luke managed to catch a scent, and led rescuers into the jungle and straight to the child within twenty-five     8     (minute). Rescuers found the scared child     9     (stand) in some bushes in the jungle, so they immediately picked the toddler up and rushed back to the worried family.     10     (thankful), Luke managed to find the toddler before he suffered any serious injuries.

Anne lived in Amsterdam in the Netherlands during World War II. Her family was Jewish     1     they had to hide or they would be     2     (catch) by the German Nazis. During that time she wasn’t able to go     3    (outdoor) for so long that she had grown so crazy about everything     4    (do) with nature. One evening, she stayed     5    (wake) on purpose to have a good look at the moon by herself, but she didn’t dare open a window. Another time she happened to be upstairs at dusk     6     the window was open. The dark, rainy evening, the wind, the thundering clouds held her     7    (entire) in their power. It was the first time in a year and a half that she     8    (see) the night face to face.

Anne felt very lonely without seeing her old friends, so she had to make     9     new friend, her diary Kitty, whom she could tell everything to.     10     (sad), at last, her family was discovered and caught by the German Nazis.

Pan Shixue, a silversmith (银匠) in Maliao village in Guizhou Province, used to dream of people living     1     abundant life in his village, where nobody has to work far away from home and customers go there for beautiful silver jewellery. Now his dream has come true.

Maliao village is famous for its silver jewellery. In fact, Miao ethnic silversmith technique     2     (list) as China's national-level intangible cultural heritage in 2006. But with cheaper, machine-made trinkets (小首饰)     3     (rule) the market, they couldn't rely on the old technique to survive.

At that time, most people in the village lived under the poverty line,     4     means they could simply afford food and     5     (base) clothing, but seldom purchase things like bicycles or televisions. So many villagers left their hometown     6     (hopeless). But in 2018, the government allocated 580,000 yuan of poverty funds to set up the Silverware and Embroidery Workshop of Maliao Village, helping Maliao villagers fight poverty     7     their own crafts.

Since that year, most young craftsmen     8     (return) to their hometown and found a bright future. With the help of the government, they learned     9     (fashion) trends and how to meet clients' various     10     (request). Instead of holding on to old ideas and existing design, villagers enhanced their skills and made their products customized.

She looks like any other schoolgirl, fresh-faced and full of life. Sarah Thomas is looking forward to the challenge of her new A-level course. But unlike her school friends, 16-year-old Sarah is not spending half-term resting. Instead, she is earning £6500 a day     1     a model in New York.

Sarah     2     (tell) that she could be Britain’s new supermodel earning a million dollars in the next year. Her father Peter, 44, wants her to give up school to model full-time. But Sarah,     3     has taken part in shows along with top models, wants to prove that she has brains as well as     4     (beautiful). She is determined to carry on with her education.

She has turned down several invitations to star at     5     (show) in order to concentrate on her studies. After school she plans     6     (take) a year off to model full-time before     7     (go) to university to get a degree in engineering or architecture.

Sarah says, “My dad thinks I should take the offer now. But at     8     moment, school comes first. I don’t want to get too     9     (absorb) in modeling. It is     10     (certain) fun but the lifestyle is a little unreal. I don’t want to have nothing else to fall back on when I can’t model any more.”

Chengdu has dozens of new millionaires, Asia’s biggest building, and fancy new hotels. But for tourists like me, pandas are its top attraction.