1 . Have you seen people who take pictures of food for more than 10 minutes before eating? My friend Stella is such an example. Every time we went to a restaurant she would not take a bite until all the dishes we ________ were on the table. Then she would spend five minutes in ________ the dishes in a seemingly random but in fact ________ order. Then the most important part: taking pictures. After that, she would choose one of the ________ and click in the filter app. The food eventually looked 10 times more delicious than it really was, but we had no ________ to really enjoy it—it all went cold, actually Stella’s real life is much less elegant. For example, she hates to wash the dishes, so she leaves them in the sink for days.

Many people care too much about others’ opinions and try too hard to ________ others. They find it hard to be ________ and to accept themselves, and thus they are afraid to show their ________ life on social media. What they are trying to prove is ________ what they lack in reality. But this will not bring any ________ to reality, as they still ________ the same old pattern of life.

If they really want an elegant life, they should put more ________ into achieving it ________ fabricating it. Being more confident, ________ themselves and trying their best to be better are much more meaningful than ________ their life on social media.

Every day people throw away a lot of household garbage – paper, cans, kitchen waste, used batteries and glass     1    sorting it. There are many problems     2    (cause) by unsorted garbage. On one hand, it’s     3    great waste of resources. On the other hand, the disposal of unsorted garbage can cause serious environmental pollution,     4    does harm to people’s health. Now our government has realized the importance of garbage sorting. So far many activities     5    (hold) to teach people how to sort garbage     6    (proper).

People in cities, like Beijing and Shanghai, are required to sort garbage into four categories— kitchen waste,     7    (danger) waste, recyclable waste and other waste. Also, they can get certain points for sorting their garbage. When they accumulate enough points, they can go to the community     8    (exchange) them for some gifts of daily use. However, still a lot of people in China lack the     9    (aware) of garbage sorting. Changing people’s mindsets and habits will take a long time. But once one person     10    (develop) the habit of garbage sorting, more may be influenced to do the same.

4 . Every week in China, millions of people will sit in front of their TVs watching teenagers compete for the title Character Hero, which is a Chinese-style spelling bee. In this challenge, young competitors must write Chinese characters by hand. To prepare for the competition, the competitors usually spend months studying dictionaries.

Perhaps the show’s popularity should not be a surprise. Along with gunpowder and paper, many Chinese people consider the creation of Chinese calligraphy(书法) to be one of their primary contributions to civilization. Unfortunately, all over the country, Chinese people are forgetting how to write their own language without computerized help. Software on smart phones and computers allows users to type in the basic sound of the word using the Latin alphabet. The correct character is chosen from a list. The result? It’s possible to recognize characters without remembering how to write them.

But there’s still hope for the paint brush. China’s Education Ministry wants children to spend more time learning how to write.

In one Beijing primary school we visited, students practice calligraphy every day inside a specially decorated classroom with traditional Chinese paintings hanging on the walls. Soft music plays as a group of six-year-olds dip brush pens into black ink. They look up at the blackboard often to study their teacher’s examples before carefully attempting to reproduce those characters on thin rice paper. “If adults can survive without using handwriting, why bother to teach it now?” we ask the calligraphy teacher, Shen Bin. “The ability to write characters is part of Chinese tradition and culture,” she reasons. “Students must learn now so they don’t forget when they grow up.” says the teacher.

5 . Ask people in the UK what the words “Sunday roast” mean to them, and they’ll probably take you back to their grandmothers’ dining rooms - maybe with a few stories of “the greatest puddings” and “the best ever steak”. But now the traditional Sunday roast seems to have been left back in the old days. According to the Daily Mail, just one in 50 British families sits down to this weekly meal together.

There are many reasons why the roast is becoming less popular. In the busy modern world, where breakfast is a slice of toast eaten on the way to work or school and lunch is a quick sandwich in front of the computer screen, people just don’t seem to have the time or patience to make a roast.

And Sunday was once a day when people could easily go to the kitchen to cook. Nowadays, people are often out shopping or at the cinema until it’s far too late to start thinking about heating the oven (烤箱) up.

However, a recent article from The Telegraph warned against being carried away by our tight schedules: “It would be a shame to let this fine old tradition disappear.”

The Guardian further explained that the eating of the big meal is only the half of it. The Sunday roast also makes for relaxed morning activities in the kitchen, and the table becomes the perfect place to share good food and chat with family and friends. “For busy moms and dads, even if you can manage to turn off your mobile phone and the TV only once a week and turn the Sunday roast into a real family event, children can have fun cooking the food and clearing up together.”

6 . (A)

Ten Chinese students are demanding that Beijing Normal University Professor Yu Dan be away from her television show on CCTV­10. They argue that her on-­air explanations of Confucius's Analects(孔子《论语》) are “incorrect and misleading”.

Yu is known for explaining Confucius's Analects to a TV audience. But some complain that her explanations are unfaithful to Chinese tradition.

But Yu doesn't seem to worry about her critics, saying, “It's a matter of personal choice. Some like KFC, while others like McDonalds.”

(B)

“Stealing an online gamer's password might seem less harmful than credit card theft. It does keep the victim from wearing himself out all night playing. But it is not all that nice，” says 19-­year-­old Zhang Qiwen, in Shanghai.

Last August, Zhang accidentally downloaded a Trojan while playing Warcraft. The Trojan is a type of virus used by hackers to steal people's passwords. Overnight the Trojan transferred all the “gold” (game credits) from Zhang's private account to an unknown account. Zhang hopes the police will find and punish the thief, who can also pocket some cash since the stolen “gold” can go on sale online.

(C)

New England's largest indoor public garden has opened here in a historic park, and officials expect it to become a centre for learning about plants as well as a top attraction for visitors.

The glass­walled Roger Williams Park Botanical Centre, which opened on March 2, offers a tropical garden, an orchid garden, and a Mediterranean room with a collection of citrus trees. The centre also has two classrooms and will offer gardening classes provided by the University of Rhode Island.

Roger Williams Park, named for the city's 17th­century founder, also has a zoo. The park attracts more than 2 million visitors a year, and Providence Mayor said that he expects the new centre will attract more and more visitors to Providence.

7 . At first sight, Elana Schlenker’s pop-up store, Less Than 100, which was open in Pittsburgh during the month of April appeared just like any other gift store. However, when shoppers went to pay, they were in for a surprise. That's because while men paid full price, women received a 24% discount.

Though that may appear to be blatant(公然的) discrimination, Elana was merely obeying the store’s slogan “pay what you are paid”. And since women in the US get paid an average of 76 cents for every dollar men earn for the same job, it is only fair that they pay less.

As the store’s pricing policy was not enough to get the message across, Elana also distributed pamphlets(小册子). Entitled “What Are Women Worth?”, it explained the status of the wage gap both in Pennsylvania and across the country, and also gave women tips on how to better negotiate salaries. A 2015 study conducted by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research found that although the rate of women’s income has been rising, men still earn more in every state in the country.

Though the Less Than 100 project will not resolve the wage inequality, it is a thought-provoking way to bring to the forefront an issue that is increasingly causing a lot of worry among women. Fortunately, Elana is not the only one trying to change the unfair system. Ellen Pao, appointed as the temporary CEO of Reddit, recently announced that new employees would be forbidden from negotiating salaries. She believes that men are better negotiators than women, and therefore, tend to receive higher wages!

What’s encouraging is that male CEOs are also joining the fight! Earlier this month, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff launched a company wide program to address the issue. Called “Women Surge” it aims to remove all gender-based pay inequalities, hire and promote more women and ensure that they are better included in meetings! With all these visionaries taking the lead, it will not be long before gender pay inequality is something we will only read about in history books!

The Chinese language has become increasingly popular in the world. More British students chose to take Chinese tests than German in this year's A levels, showing a great     1    (curious) about the ancient Asian language.

This is the first time that Mandarin     2     (overtake) German at A levels, a British public exam taken by high school students,     3     (make) it the third most popular language in the UK.

A total of 3，334 candidates chose Mandarin     4     their foreign language, up 8.6 percent from 2017,     5     around 3,058 took German A level, down 16.5 percent year on year.

French and Spanish still remain the most popular foreign languages. The German language       6    (follow) by Russian and Polish.

According to the Office of Chinese Language Council International, as of 2017,   some 100 million people, excluding native speakers, use Chinese     7    (global), while the number of Chinese teaching centers has surpassed(超过)70,000.

South Korea has a     8    (large) population of Chinese language learners than any other country in the world with the number estimated at around 10.6 million. Last year alone, over 170，000 people     9    (sign)up for Chinese language tests, like the HSK,     10     name is Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi in Chinese.

The United Nations in 2010 suggested a Chinese Language Day which falls on April 20th each year to celebrate cultural diversity as well as to promote the equal use of all official languages.

9 . After bikes and umbrellas are made sharable across China, some companies started eyeing the fitness market, so shared gym rooms have hit the streets in Beijing.

Unlike regular gyms that provide large, open spaces for many members to share at the same time, the newly built shared gym rooms are small, stand-alone rooms for a person to use, often set up near living communities.

Every four-square-meter room is equipped with a treadmill (跑步机), an air cleaner, a mirror, a television and an air conditioner, and users can let down the curtains for privacy. When exercising, users can listen to music, watch movies and check emails by connecting to the Internet by the screen fixed on the treadmill. There’s no shower or washbasin.

Similar to using a shared bike, users can locate a shared gym room by smartphone application, book a room in advance and then need to scan (扫描) a QR code for use. A refundable deposit (保证金) of 99 yuan is required, and users are charged 0.2 yuan per minute.

The shared gym rooms are created by Misspao, a Beijing-based technology company founded in July. Within two weeks since it was founded, the company has already got two rounds of funding valued over 100 million yuan, Yicai Global reports. The idea of the shared fitness experience is not entirely nascent. Last December, the Shanghai-based technology company VRUN set up shared treadmills in office and apartment buildings.

The sharing economy is still becoming popular in China. According to Yicai Global, confident investors are pouring millions into sharing start-ups. In March, the State Information Center published a report which predicts that the total value of China’s sharing economy will see a yearly growth of 40% in the coming years, and it is expected to contribute around 10% to the country’s GDP by 2020.

Recently     1    Internet slang word Foxi, or "Buddhist", has become popular, encouraging young people to remain calm and peaceful and avoid conflict as much as possible,     2    other words, to live like a Buddha.

The phrase     3    (create) in Japan in 2014 to describe young men who no longer bother to follow someone else’s life path. They prefer to stay in their own world without     4    (disturb) and care little about passion and success.

Now, Chinese Internet users     5    (pair) the phrase with other words to describe a similar mindset. For example, "Buddhist students" are those     6    study just the right amount — they don’t cut class, but they don’t burn the midnight oil, either. However, some are worried about it, for they say that Foxi actually reflects the     7    (real) that young people are losing their will     8    (fight). They are pretending to keep a healthy and wise attitude toward failure     9    (simple) because they’re incapable of succeeding.

But no matter what, there is one thing that "Buddhist youngsters" should keep in mind: you may want to keep a calm mindset regarding failure,     10    you should also be passionate and positive about school, work and life.