Health is wealth, not only for adults but for teens. Why do we get sick? Let’s read this passage.

We all get sick. It’s unavoidable, ______ we can do things to reduce how often we get sick and how long we stay sick. Why do we get sick? You usually get sick when something ______ gets inside your body, like germs and viruses.

What are germs and viruses? They are little creatures, kind of like animals or plants. They are so small that we can’t see them without some _____ like we wash our hands often. When someone coughs, sneezes, or touches something, germs are _______. If we touch something dirty or eat something without washing our hands, those germs may _____ our bodies. Once those germs get inside you, your body has to fight them. Your body has antibodies (抗体) to fight certain sicknesses and white blood cells (白细胞) to fight infections (感染). _______, it can still take days for your body to beat those bad germs and viruses!

What happens when you are sick? To start with, you might feel _______. That’s because your body is using its energy to make more white blood cells and antibodies to fight germs and viruses. You might have a ______. That’s your body way of fighting infections by raising the temperature to make germs and viruses too ______ and uncomfortable. Runny noses, sneezing and coughing are all your body’s reactions to the germs. Medicines make you a little more comfortable.

To ______ getting sick, wash your hands and eat healthy foods. A strong body is less likely to get sick and become well more quickly. Get enough sleep and proper exercise. Stay healthy, stay happy.

Learning is part of teen’s life. History makes men wise. Do you want to know more?

Many people think that the Chinese civilization (文明) began around the Yellow River, stretching back over 5,000 years without interruption (中断). Compared to other civilizations of the time, Chinese culture stayed largely the same as today’s culture. The other nations fell into wars and disappeared, or were controlled by other nations, though.

Reading makes men full. Do you like reading novels in your spare time?

Set in the German city of Hamburg, the Story of a Seagull and the Cat Who Taught Her to Fly is about a seagull called Kengah. While diving into the sea for food, she is suddenly hit by the “curse of the sea”—a wave in oil coming from an oil tanker (油轮) in trouble. With great effort, the seagull reaches Hamburg and lands on the balcony of a house. A fat black cat called Zorba lives there. Before dying, Kengah gives her first and last egg to Zorba, asking him to keep three promises: First, that he does not eat the egg; second, that he takes care of it until the chick is born; and finally, and most surprisingly, that Zorba teaches the chick how to fly.

Zorba promises to take care of the baby seagull and keeps his word. He sits on the egg until the chick is born. With the help of his cat friends, he raises the baby seagull with love and protects her from danger. The little seagull is named Fortunata, the “lucky one”. However, the trouble comes when Zorba teaches Fortunata how to fly. Of course, being a cat, it is not easy. After many failed tries, Zorba and his friends turn to a human—a poet. Thanks to their help, Fortunata is finally able to fly and returns to her own world—the sky.

The book is a story about seagulls, flying over the Hamburg sky. It is a story about Zorba and his cat friends, who raise the chick, protect her from danger, and above all, teach her to fly. It is a story about a poet who is able to fly with words.

It is a story about friendship and courage. At the end of the story, when Fortunata takes her first flight, Zorba talks to the poet, “On the brink of the abyss (在悬崖边上), Fortunata understood the most important thing finally.”

“Oh yeah? And what did she understand?” asks the poet.

“Only those who are brave can fly!”

DIY needs creative minds. To be creative means to be in love with life.

Daniella Hudson grew up in a very creative family. “Mum and dad made all our furniture,” she says. “Not because we couldn’t afford it, they just preferred making items to buying them. So visits to city furniture shops nearby just weren’t part of my childhood.” When Daniella visited a design show with her class at the age of ten, she realized she wanted to follow her parents’ example. “There were so many different styles of tables and chairs there,” she says. Since that day, she’s been making furniture. “I’ve learned by giving mum and dad a hand, and through watching videos on the Internet,” she adds.

Her first piece was a table, made soon after visiting the show. It was similar to one she had seen there. “They had furniture from the last hundred years, and I copied a 1920s design,” says Daniella. “Sadly, no one has wanted tables like that for years. I was pleased with the quality of my work, though. I’ve painted it recently because the wood I chose at the start was too dark.”

Daniella started selling her furniture at a local market. “I spent most of my free time inside, so this gave me the chance to get some fresh air and find out what people thought about my designs.” Judging by how many items Daniella sold, they thought it was pretty good. “In the end, I had to give up,” says Daniella. “I’d also started an Internet business, which was doing so well. It was taking up every spare minute I had. The market closed down just after that anyway.”

Recently, Daniella was asked to take part in a local design show. “One of the organizers had bought one of my pieces off the Internet. I couldn’t believe it when she told me there would be a thousand visitors,” she says. Instead of worrying about this, Daniella was excited by the chance. “I was amazed she thought my work was good enough,” Daniella says. “I had little idea what visitors would think about it. My furniture is quite different from the designers whose work I’ve seen in magazines—mine is more traditional.” But Daniella received lots of orders at the show and the future is looking bright for this young design star.

Do you love Chinese silk? Silk has played a great role in Chinese communications with the rest of the world. The Silk Road,     51     the East with the West, was set up during the Han Dynasty and helped the exchange of goods, ideas, and cultural practices. Chinese silk was one of the     52     traded, travelling as far as Rome in Italy and becoming a symbol of wealth in many cultures along the road. Silk is mainly produced in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Sichuan provinces. Cities     53     Suzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjing, and Shaoxing are well-known for their silk industries. Silk is mostly used for clothing. If you want a Chinese gift, a Qipao might be     54    .

As a teenager in Nanjing, I have visited the Nanjing Yunjin Museum of China twice.There, I can see how to produce Yunjin, which is made of coloured silks. The museum is     55    . You can take Metro Line 2 to Yunjinlu Station or take Bus 204,7,37,61,63 to Jiangdongmen Stop. Go and see for yourself!

The twenty-first century is already turning out to be the century of modern technologies. The technological revolution (革命) that started after World War II is now developing more quickly. Computing and other technological development is beginning to reach into influence and take over nearly every part of our lives. The two main influences modern computing has had on our lives are in the areas of economics (经济学) and communications.

Technology has led to big changes in economic and business systems and operations (经营). Businesses now have to be using cloud services or machine learning or risk failure. As a result, every big company bases its operations on computing. For example, Coca Cola, Huawei and Tencent sell different products and services, yet they all share one basic feature—without modern computing services, their operations would break down. New technologies play an important role in economies. China and many other developing countries have large IT industries, which drive their economies. What’s more, developed countries, including Germany and the United States, are moving from an industrial-based economy to a computing and IT-based one.

The other important influence of technological change is in the way of communication. For example, in the past, people wrote letters or talked on fixed phones, which slowed down the communication process. Now they send e-mails and text messages, or chat using mobile phones. Instead of waiting weeks for a letter or spending time finding a fixed phone, we can communicate right away. New forms of communication are cheaper or free. As a result, now people who live thousands of kilometres away from each other can communicate as much as they want at any time.

In conclusion, computing and new technologies have had a great influence on our lives in many ways. And they have had the greatest influence in business and communication. In the future, if technology continues developing at such speed,our business practices and methods of communication will have even greater changes. It is already starting to bring changes to other parts of our lives, such as transportation and health.

China’s two favourite poets Li Bai and Du Fu were born about 1,300 years ago. In China, the language has changed so l    66     that poems remain easy for modern Chinese people to read. And their themes are still a    67     friendship, love and landscapes.

If you were to ask any kid in the street, “What was the greatest dynasty in China’s history?” Nine out of ten of them would a    68     the Tang. Every Chinese person learns poems by Li Bai and Du Fu from childhood. “They are as i    69     in Chinese literary history as Shakespeare (莎士比亚) is to people in Britain,” says historian Yuan Haiwang, writer of This Is China: The First 5,000 Years.

“I remember when my son was only a baby held in my a    70    , I began to teach him some of the poems, even though of course he couldn’t remember all of them. But that’s what the Chinese do.”

Back in the Tang Dynasty, Li Bai and Du Fu first m    71     in the year 744, when Li Bai, already a well-known poet, was 43 years of age and Du Fu was 32. They admired each other and quickly became friends. The two poets m    72     only a couple of times during their lives.

But they wrote many poems to and about each other. In one poem, Du Fu wrote: When can we again hold a cup of wine (酒), and chat about poem-writing line by l    73    ? (From “Missing Li Bai on a Spring Day”)

Li Bai and Du Fu formed a l    74     friendship, which ties one heart to the other no matter how far away they are from each other.

Today most Chinese people could still remember Li Bai’s and Du Fu’s poems. And they also e    75     their children to read their poems. Li Bai and Du Fu aren’t only in our textbooks but in our minds.