If a person lost an arm, how could he or she still play basketball? Zhang Jiacheng, a 17-year-old Chinese boy, did it and     1     (impress) everyone.

After a short video of the teenage basketball player playing a     2     (compete) was recently posted online, Zhang soon became a hit and     3     (praise) for his strong will and extraordinary skills. In the video, Zhang showed his unusual abilities and shooting skills and received     4     loud cheer from the audience. He posted some short     5     (video) of him practicing basketball skills on social media,     6     has earned him over one million likes in just a few days.

Born in Guangdong, Zhang lost his right arm in an accident at just five years old, which was a disaster for a little kid. But Zhang never gave     7     to his bad fortune as his love for basketball grew stronger. The one-armed teenager dreamt of     8     (become) a basketball player. “Give it a try, or give it up,” he wrote when posting a video.

“I didn’t even realize he had only one arm when I first watched the video,” one commentator said. Another said, “Hard work makes dreams come true. He is living his unique life to the     9     (full).”

Zhang said he was     10     (extreme) thankful for the support and praise he had received and he would keep studying and training hard.

A black slate (石板), an alloy steel needle and decades of practice are     1     Li Yahua needs to create the perfect Huihe stone shadow carving work of art. With her left hand     2     (gentle) leaning against the mirror-like stone to support the heavy chisel (凿子) she’s holding in her right hand, the artist creates a black-and-white landscape by intensively chiseling dots in various sizes and density on the stone.

    3     (difference) from traditional Chinese art types that emphasize the beauty of lines, stone shadow carving highlights the size and     4     (deep) of dots.

“We use an alloy steel needle to chisel white dots to create images on a polished and smooth black slate,” Li explained, adding the pressure     5     (use) to chisel them was the key to getting the carving right.

“On an A4-paper-size black slate, we need to chisel about 100 million dots     6     (create) an image,” she continued, adding it would take 7 to 20 days to complete the work depending on its level of complexity.

Born into a family of stone carvers, stone and alloy steel needles     7     (be) Li’s best friends since childhood and the sound of chisel     8     (knock) on the slate is the soundtrack to her life.     9     56-year-old has devoted nearly 40 years to the craft. For her, shadow carving is about preserving history, culture and art,     10     recording the stories of the times.

    1    (locate) inside a downtown hutong in Beijing, the Star Theater has become a landmark stage for new dramas, where, since June, Wang Guang     2    (play) the leading role in more than 30 performances of the drama, The Desperate Love.

In the small theater,     3     can only hold an audience of 200 people, the distance between actors on stage and the first row of seats is about three meters. “When I am on the stage, I can     4    (easy) interact with the audience through eye contact,” Wang Guang says, talking about his special moments on stage. “On one occasion, I made eye contact with an elderly woman, with tears in her eyes. Maybe she     5    (touch) by the play, perhaps because it brought back     6    (memory) of her youth.”

Wang Guang’s outstanding performance in The Desperate Love has won him opportunities to participate     7     more plays staged by the theater. He says he is taking music and dance courses to improve his overall skill set. Wang Guang says that performing at the small theater has provided him with a sound start to his career. “I hope someday to become     8     director of stage dramas,” he adds.

The theater provides about 1,000 performances a year and it has produced over 50 original plays,     9    (attract) audiences of all ages. It creates an immersive (沉浸式的)     10     interactive atmosphere that involves the audience in the charm of dramatic stories.

One of the most popular American     1    (singer) of 20th century was Elvis Presley. Elvis Presley made the music     2    (call) rock’n’roll popular around the world. He sold millions of records and made many successful films,    3     he helped change the direction of popular music in the 1960s. Elvis Presley was born in 1935 in a small town in Mississippi in the southern United States; he came from     4     very poor family.     5     (he) parents were simply country people who often took Elvis to church. At church he learned to sing, and he never forgot the kind of songs that he used to sing in church     6     a child. When he was a school boy, Elvis moved to the town of Memphis in Tennessee. He     7     (begin) to sing in the style that is popular in Tennessee, a style called country and western. The people at the     8     (record) studio liked Elvis’s singing and music. There was something     9     (difference) about it. It was country and western music, but it also sounded a little like the music which black people used to sing in the American South. It     10     (call) blues.

William Caxton was born in 1422 in England. He is the first English printer and plays an important part    1    English literature.

Caxton learned how to do business at    2    age of 16 in London. Later, he moved to Bruges, Belgium, an important centre in the trade of paintings and manuscripts (手稿).     3     (actual), in Bruges, he became a     4     (success) and important member of the business community. And Caxton’s interests were also turning to literature during that time.

Although the    5     (invent) of printing with movable type had appeared in the 11th-century China, in Europe the technology was not developed until the mid-15th century. The first book that was produced with moveable type    6     (print) in the 1450s in Mainz, Germany, but Caxton had realized the need for English literature was greater. So, in the early 1470s, Caxton decided     7     (spend) some time in Cologne, Germany learning the art of printing. Toward the end of 1476 he returned to England and set up his company at Westminster. From then on he spent most of his time writing and printing.

The English language was changing fast in Caxton’s time and the works    8    were given to him to print were in different    9     (style). Caxton has won praise for     10     (make) the English language have one particular type through printing.

People generally agree that Pablo Picasso,    1     lived from 1881 to 1973, is the twentieth-century’s greatest western artist. He was born in Spain and at 10 was already     2     excellent artist. He     3     (have) his first exhibition at the age of 16. Picasso studied art in Spain, but moved to France     4     his early twenties.

From 1902 to 1904 he painted a series of     5     (picture) where the main colour was blue. These pictures showed poor, unhappy people and this period     6     (know) as Picasso’s “blue period”. From 1904 to 1906 Picaso painted much     7     (happy) pictures in the colour pink. This period was called Picasso’s “pink period”.

With another Spanish artist     8     (name) George Braque, Picasso then started an     9     (importance) new artistic movement called Cubism. People agree that Picasso’s greatest Cubist painting is Guernica, which was painted     10     (show) his feelings about what had happened to the town during the 1930s war in Spain.

As a     1     (gift) child, Beethoven was pushed by his father to study music. Not long after, he began to be appreciated     2     his piano performances. Many important figures like Mozart made     3     (predict) about Beethoven’s future.     4    , life took a sharp turn. He started to lose his hearing. The loss of hearing made him     5     (depress). Despite his hearing loss, he was determined     6     (continue) a life full of music. Although he was able to continue composing music, it became     7     (increasing) difficult to perform in public. Since he presented Symphony No.9 in 1824, the piece has become famous. He died less than three years after the concert in Vienna, aged 56. For his amazing     8     (achievement) and for his determination in     9     (he) darkest days, Beethoven     10     (regard) as one of the most remarkable musicians who ever lived.

Confucius, China’s most famous teacher and philosopher, was born Kongqiu in 551 BCE near Qufu, in eastern China. Confucius showed a great interest     1     academics early on. “At 15, I set my heart on     2     (learn),” he later told his followers. He studied music, mathematics, the classics, history, and more.

Confucius believed that education and reflection led to virtue. He once worked for the government, but     3     (find) far greater success as a teacher instead. Confucius broke with tradition in the    4     (believe) that all human beings could benefit from education. He gave his support for lifelong learning and attracted     5     wide circle of followers, who knew his as Kongfuzi (Master Kong). Those pupils recorded his     6     (word) in The Analects, a collection of sayings and ideas.

As stated in The Analects, Confucius believed that social harmony would     7     (natural) follow from the proper ordering of individuals in relation to one another, with the family unit as the basic building block of society.

Confucius     8     (ignore) largely in his own day. When he died in 479 BCE, he left behind perhaps 3,000 students, who devoted themselves to preserving and spreading     9     (they) master’s ideas. The Analects has guided governments and individuals for thousands of years, influencing Chinese history     10     civilization in the process.

If you have ever watched the Miss America competition, you must have seen that the young ladies wear tight swimming costumes     1     (show) off their shapes, or sing popular songs to reveal their beautiful voices in the talent show.

However, Virginia Camille Schrier,     2    was crowned Miss America 2020, was different. Dressed in a lab coat, the 24-year-old girl    3    (perform) an “elephant’s toothpaste” science experiment. She created an explosion by     4     (combine)hydrogen peroxide(过氧化氢) with potassiumiodide (碘化钾) in the talent show.

“    5    a student of medicine, I am raising social awareness about everyday drug     6     (safe)and abuse prevention,” Schrier told CNN. Meanwhile, her unconventional performance     7     (immediate) made headlines around the United States.

Many people think that Schrier breaks the     8     (fix) impression of Miss America.     9     (like) the other young women, Schrier presents    10     (her) as charming ,knowledgeable and confident, instead of just a pretty face.