Round table

The most affectionate memory of my childhood is about     1     round table.

When I was still little, my entire family would reunite on almost every traditional festival to have dinner. While the grown-ups were discussing about something     2     our comprehension, we kids would be scuttling around or even crouching under the table to play hide and seek.

When I got a bit older, my aunt brought back her boyfriend, a tall and shy man, and my grandma joyfully added another seat to the round table. It seemed a little bit     3     (crowded), but we all felt closer to this new family member.

When I was 12, my grandpa passed away because of cancer, but when the entire family reunite once again, his chair, his bowl and his chopsticks remain the same.     4     his seat was empty, it felt like that he had never left us.

We all have a table like this in our homes, which is a symbol of the reunion of our families,     5     (represent) our sentiment and attachment to our families. As a matter of fact, in China, almost everything can be solved over a round table. The marriage vows between a loving couple, the mourning of the deceased, the negotiations between business partners and a state banquet to another president from another country     6     all happen on a same round table. So I started to wonder     7     is this round table to us and its true significance starts to unfold in front of me.

The food on the table may change with time; the people sitting beside it may come and go; the reasons why we come together may be various, but the sensation behind it remains, year after year, the same.

Every year, an annual epic migration takes place in China. Hundreds of people, men and women, young and old, the rich and the poor, the dead and the alive, will find a way to go back home and go to the round table     8     (reunite) with their families.

The power that drives him to do so has been a power that has been sustaining Chinese civilization for thousands of years. And the lives of us, or even the history of our nation have been the stories of looking for a running to the round table     9     we belong. The round table     10     (be) a symbol of the Chinese sensation. It was. It is. And it will always be.

3 . For nearly ten years, I have spent my Monday evenings attending rehearsals for my amateur choir (合唱队). Mondays are not my favourite day, and I often arrive in a bad mood but by the end of the rehearsal, I usually feel _________. The singing does me good. So do the people. With a few exceptions, I would not describe my fellow choir members as close friends. We exchange _________ chats, smiles and jokes - but that is enough for me to come away feeling a little better about the world.

There is no choir practice now, and won’t be for a long time. I miss it. In lockdown, I do not feel _________ emotional support, but I do miss the friendly faces and casual conversations. _________, I miss my “weak ties.”

In 1973, Mark Granovetter, a sociology professor at Stanford University, published a paper entitled “The Strength of Weak Ties.” Until then, scholars had assumed that an individual’s well-being depended mainly on the _________ of their relationships with their close friends and family. Granovetter showed that quantity mattered, too. He categorized a person’s _________ world as “strong ties” and “weak ties.” His central insight was that for new ideas, weak ties are more important to us than strong ones. As Granovetter pointed out, the people whom we often talk to usually turn to the same _________ of information as we do. We depend on acquaintances whom we _________ see to bring us news of opportunities.

This was the idea behind the Pixer building, the design of which was _________ by Steve Jobs, who was responsible for making sure that the Pixar building project runs safely and smoothly. The building has a large central hall through which employees from different departments have to pass several times a day. Jobs wanted colleagues to ______________ each other and shoot the breeze (闲聊). He believed in the power of these seemingly random conversations to ______________ creativity.

Encounters with weak ties can be good for our ______________, too. Gillian Sandstrom, a senior lecturer at the University of Essex, found that when a person had more casual interactions with weak ties - say, a local gardener, a neighbour, a member of yoga class — they experienced more happiness and a greater sense of ______________.

______________, we should continue to find ways to cultivate weak-tie relationships, during lockdown and beyond. Sandstrom adds that we can also ______________ more weak-tie-style interactions with our strong ties. The goal is to let others know that you are thinking of them without asking for a great deal of time, energy or attention.

5 . I live in the land of Disney, Hollywood and year-round sun. You may think people in such a glamorous, fun-filled place are happier than others. If so, you have some mistaken ideas about the nature of happiness.

Many intelligent people still equate happiness with fun. The truth is that fun and happiness have little or nothing in common. Fun is what we experience during an act. Happiness is what we experience after an act. It is a deeper, more abiding emotion.

Going to an amusement park or ball game, watching a movie or television, are fun activities that help us relax, temporarily forget our problems and maybe even laugh. But they do not bring happiness, because their positive effects end when the fun ends.

I have often thought that if Hollywood stars have a role to play, it is to teach us that happiness has nothing to do with fun. These rich, beautiful individuals have constant access to glamorous parties, fancy cars, expensive homes, everything that spells “happiness”. But in memoir after memoir, celebrities reveal the unhappiness hidden beneath all their fun: depression, alcoholism, drug addiction, broken marriages, troubled children and profound loneliness.

Ask a bachelor why he resists marriage even though he finds dating to be less and less satisfying. If he’s honest, he will tell you that he is afraid of making a commitment. For commitment is in fact quite painful. The single life is filled with fun, adventure and excitement. Marriage has such moments, but they are not its most distinguishing features.

Similarly, couples that choose not to have children are deciding in favor of painless fun over painful happiness. They can dine out ever they want and sleep as late as they want. Couples with infant children are lucky to get a whole night’s sleep or a three-day vacation. I don’t know any parent who would choose the word fun to describe raising children.

Understanding and accepting that true happiness has nothing to do with fun is one of the most liberating realizations we can ever come to. It liberates time: now we can devote more hours to activities that can genuinely increase our happiness. It liberates money: buying that new car or those fancy clothes that will do nothing to increase our happiness now seems pointless. And it liberates us from envy: we now understand that all those rich and glamorous people we were so sure are happy because they are always having so much fun actually may not be happy at all.

7 . I’ve worked in the factories surrounding my hometown every summer since I graduated from high school, but making the transition between school and full-time blue-collar work during the break never gets any easier. For a student like me who considers any class before noon to be uncivilized, getting to a factory by 6 o'clock each morning is torture. My friends never seem to understand why I’m so relieved to be back at school or that my summer vacation has been anything but a vacation.

There’re few people as self-confident as a college student who had never been out in the real world. People my age always seem to overestimate the value of their time and knowledge. In fact, all the classes did not prepare me for my battles with the machine I ran in the plant, which would jam whenever I absent-mindedly put in a part backward or upside down.

The most stressful thing about blue-collar life is knowing your job could disappear overnight. Issues like downsizing and overseas relocation had always seemed distant to me until my co-workers told me that the unit I was working in would shut down within six months and move to Mexico, where people would work for 60 cents an hour.

After working 12-hour shifts in a factory, the other opinions have become only too clear. When I’m back at the university, skipping classes and turning in lazy rewrites seems too irresponsible after seeing what I would be doing without school. All the advice and public-service announcements about the value of an education that used to sound stale now ring true.

These lessons I’m learning, however valuable, are always tinged with a sense of guilt. Many people pass their lives in the places I briefly work, spending 30 years where I spend only two months at a time. “This job pays well, but it’s hell on the body,” said one co-worker. “Study hard and keep reading,” she added.

My experiences in the factories has inspired me to make the most of my college years before I enter the real world for good.

Honesty, my mum always used to tell me, is the best policy. But when it comes to medicine, I had assumed it was important to always be honest with my patients. After all, the doctor-patient relationship is based on trust, and therefore honesty is essential, or so I thought.

I had just started working in geriatrics(老年病科). Mr. McMahon     1    （bring） in when his body was found very swollen（浮肿的）. I took a medical history     2    his daughter who had accompanied him in the ambulance. She'd been his main care for years. I stood     3     (look) at him as she gave a detailed history. "Has he lost any weight recently?" I asked, "Well, it's funny you should mention that, but yes." She said slowly. There was silence for a few moments. "Why? What are you worried about?" she asked. She was obviously very involved in his care and it was only fair that I told     4     the truth. "Well, we need to prove it's not cancer." I said and talked briefly about some of the tests I was going to order.

Half an hour later, a nurse called me: "Mr. McMahon's daughter broke down－she said you told her he had cancer." My heart sank. By the time I arrived at the ward, my consultant was already there, explaining that we still had to run lots of tests and that it was by no means confirmed     5     he had cancer. I stood silently at the end of the bed. My consultant was obviously angry with me and as we left Mr. McMahon, she turned to me. "Why on earth did you do that?" she asked in disbelief. I looked at her and bit my lip. "She asked me what I was worried about and I told her." I said, hanging my head. "And give her more     6     (worry) about?" replied my consultant. "You don't say the word 'cancer' until it's confirmed.     7     you suspect it, think very carefully before you tell people."

    8     it turned out, it wasn't cancer. But I did learn that when someone is stressed and worried about their loved one they're sometimes selective in     9     they hear－and as a doctor it's important to be mindful of this. In being truthful, I'd made the situation     10     (bad).