Lin Congying, Chairman of JOEONE, a Chinese brand focused on men’s trousers created in 1989,     1     (announce) that the company would remove the English word “JOEONE” from its logo, leaving only the Chinese characters     2     part of its new branding (品牌设计) strategy.

This represented a sharp turnaround of the conventional way of branding, where some Chinese companies tended to design their products with a name sounding the     3     (little) “Chinese.” Examples include Metersbonwe and Semir, both     4     (found) in Zhejiang Province. The names almost have no literal association with Chinese.

Recent years have witnessed     5     increasing trend of Chinese companies becoming popular by integrating Chinese elements into their design and marketing     6     (operation), forming styles known as China Chic. Li Ning, a professional sportswear company, in 2012 suffered a major setback with a huge annual loss of over 20 billion yuan. The situation barely improved     7     (significant) in the subsequent years. Later in 2018,     8     (it) new products, combined with Chinese elements, were quickly sold out and the company returned to the center of the fashion world with a brand-new image.

As reported,     9     over half of the oh-oh group believe is that a foreign brand by itself is not an advantage. They tend to focus on the experience of using the products. With the quality of products of local brands     10     (arise), people’s affection for these brands is also growing.

The UK is one of the world’s richest countries, but people are having difficulty     1     (pay) energy bills. Electricity and gas bills could rise fourfold this year. Even people on good salaries are feeling the pressure. Lower-paid workers and retirees may be faced with a hard     2     (choose) of heating or eating. Many towns have a temporary solution. They are converting libraries into spaces,     3     people can stay warm for free. These     4     (call) “heat banks”. Money-saving expert Martin Lewis says he is astonished by the idea of warm banks in a supposedly     5     (wealth) country. The UK already has     6     (hundred) of food banks for those who struggle to afford to eat.

    7     (avoid) rising energy costs, Britons are taking serious measures. One woman has turned off her fridge. Now she’s keeping her food in cold water. A man has switched off his electric kettle     8     is drinking water instead of hot drinks. Last winter, a lady used her free bus pass to sit on a warm bus all day     9     (patient) instead of sitting at home in the cold. People are angry with oil companies who are making record profits. Each year in the UK, around 11,400 deaths are caused     10     cold weather. This figure will rise further this year.

Perhaps the most exotic fruits in China, the lychee is not only full of flavour and nutrition, but it’s also full of history.

Low in calories and rich in fibre, lychees are     1    (extreme) delicious and juicy. Legend has it that, Yang Yuhuan, one of the “Four Beauties of ancient China ”,     2    (adore) lychee so much that the Emperor had couriers ride night and day to bring her the sweet treat from Guangdong,     3     is 1,900 kilometres away from her home in the capital.

Today, lychees are available across the globe, making     4     easier for lychee lovers to obtain their favourite fruit. The king of China’s exotic fruits remains as popular as it was in Yang Yuhuan’s day, being consumed in greater     5    (quantity) worldwide every year.

    6    (globe) production of the fruit has nearly doubled over the past 15 years – most of it in China. As the world’s     7    (big) producer of the fruit, China accounts     8     more than 60 % the global output, Guangdong ranking first in the country. Advanced technology enables producers     9    (store) longer and ship over greater distances. The growers,     10    (include) the producers in Guangdong, see many new markets to conquer.

There is no doubt that the vaccine(疫苗) wars have already come to Europe. For months now, wealthy countries have been clearing the world’s shelves of coronavirus vaccines,     1     (leave) poorer nations with little hope of exiting the pandemic this year. But     2     fresh conflict has forced the rich to compete against the rich—Britain versus the European Union—in the fight for medicinal bottles, opening a new and fierce nationalist     3    (compete) that could poison relations and set back previous collective efforts     4    (end) the pandemic.

    5     more than 13 percent of Britons have so far received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, only about 2.5 percent of EU residents have had a shot. The European Union,     6    (annoy) by its slow progress on vaccinations, threatened to tighten rules on the shipment of Belgian-made shots to Britain. British law makers, in turn, have accused their Europe an counterparts     7     a blackmail campaign     8     could disappoint relations for a generation.

And poorer countries, already at the back of the line for vaccines, will probably face even     9     (long) waits if the intense argument among rich countries     10     (drive) up prices for everyone else.

Friends who are not     1     (biological) related still tend to resemble each other when it comes to genetics, according to a U. S. study     2     (publish) recently that proves that “Friends are the family you choose.”

“    3     (look) across the whole genome (基因组), we find that, on average, we are genetically similar to our friends,” lead author James Fowler, professor of the University of California, San Diego, says. “We have more DNA     4     common with the people we pick as friends than we do with strangers in the same population.”

On average, friends are as “related” as fourth cousins or people who share great, great, great grandparents,     5     translates to about one percent of our genes. One percent may not sound like much to the layperson (外行). “But to geneticists it is a     6     (significance) number. And how remarkable: Most people don’t even know who their fourth cousins are! Yet we are quite likely     7     (select) the people who resemble our relatives as friends.”

One of the most interesting     8     (discovery) in the study is that genes more similar between friends seem to be evolving faster than other genes. This may help explain why human evolution     9     (quicken) over the past 30, 000 years, which suggests that the social environment itself is     10     evolutionary force.

On November 15th, 2022, the world’s population reached 8 billion people, a milestone in human development. While it took the global population 12 years to grow from 7 to 8 billion, it     1     (take) approximately 15 years—until 2037—to reach 9 billion,     2     sign that the overall growth rate of the global population is slowing down.

    3     (current), China and India are the most populated countries in the world,     4     1. 4 billion people in each country. However,     5     (base) on UN projections, India will surpass

China for the first time in 2023. More than half of the predicted increase in the global population up to 2050 will be concentrated in eight countries. On November 15th, China Daily published United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s article,

    6     title was “Eight billion people, one humanity”.     7     he puts it, with our human family growing larger, our world is growing more divided, challenged by food insecurity, deepening inequalities, the climate crisis and an unequal COVID-19     8     (recover). He stresses that global gatherings in November— COP 27 and the G20—are chances     9     (bridge)divides,

Restore trust, and ensure that our 8-billion-strong world could yield enormous     10     (opportunity) for some of the poorest countries.