阅读与填词move · give · press

1Every Saturday, Wang Lin takes the number 7 minibus home from her violin lesson. The trip takes about forty minutes. Last Saturday she was so tired that she fell asleep by the window.

2“Last stop!” the driver called. Wang Lin woke up, grabbed her bag and jumped off. As the minibus disappeared round the corner, she stopped. Her violin was still on the back seat.

3It was a gift from her grandfather, who had saved for two years to buy it. Nothing she owned was more precious to her.

4Her dad called the minibus company, but the office had closed for the night. So Wang Lin wrote a description of the case: black, with a yellow star on the side and her name inside. She posted it in the town's online group.

5The next morning, she waited at the bus station. At seven o'clock, the number 7 appeared. The driver stepped down with the case. “I found it after my last trip,” he said. “I didn't want to leave it on an empty bus all night, so I took it home.”

6Wang Lin wanted to buy him a gift, but he shook his head. “My daughter played the violin before she went to university,” he said. “Just play me something.”

7So, in a corner of the station, she played a short piece. The driver listened with his eyes closed.

1Do you love history? Do you enjoy talking to people? This summer, Hillside Museum is looking for students to work as volunteer guides in our new Silk Road Hall. Here, visitors can explore the history of trade between China and the West.

Who can apply

2You should be 15 to 18 years old. No experience is needed, but you must be free on a minimum of four Saturdays between July 6 and August 24.

What you will do

3Guides are on duty from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Each guide leads a group around the hall (maximum 12 visitors) and describes the objects on show, from old coins to a camel statue. Before you start, our experts will demonstrate how to lead a tour at two training classes on Sunday mornings, June 23 and June 30.

How to apply

4Fill in the form on our website and write a short statement of about 100 words on why you want to join. Forms are due by 5 p.m. on June 15. If you are chosen, our Visitor Services team will call you within a week.

What you will get

5Every volunteer will receive a certificate and a museum T-shirt. Those who serve on six or more Saturdays will also get a free family pass for a year. With the pass, your family can visit on any day without a reservation.

1Identical twins can be very hard to tell apart. They grow from the same egg, so they share the same DNA. Many have the same smile, the same voice and even the same way of walking. Their teachers mix them up, and sometimes their own grandparents do too. But there is one thing that identical twins never share: their fingerprints.

2At first glance, two twins' prints may look almost the same. They often have similar general patterns, such as loops or whorls. But when experts study them closely, the differences become apparent. The thin raised lines on the skin, called ridges, end, split and join in different places, and the spaces between them are different too.

3These differences begin before birth. A baby's fingerprints form between about the 13th and the 19th week, while it is still growing inside its mother. Genes decide the general pattern, but the fine details depend on conditions in the womb. According to Simona Francese, a fingerprint expert at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK, these conditions include the baby's position, how much nutrition it gets and the length of its umbilical cord. Blood pressure and the speed at which the fingers grow may also play a part.

4Twins share a womb, but they can never lie in exactly the same position, and each has its own cord. Small differences like these are enough to give each baby a set of prints of its own. Once formed, the ridges stay the same for life.

5This makes fingerprints very useful for identification. A routine DNA test cannot tell identical twins apart, because their DNA is the same. A trained fingerprint examiner, however, can confirm each twin's identity quite easily.

1Every December, our school holds a charity fair, and each class runs a stall. This year, our class committee decided to sell mango pudding, a dessert almost everyone likes. All the money would go to a remote village school in Guizhou, to buy books for its tiny library.

2We spent the whole evening before the fair making eighty cups and kept them cold in a mini fridge borrowed from the teachers' office. The mangoes alone had cost us 300 yuan, so Zhou Yi, the head of the committee, set the price at 15 yuan a cup. We put a slice of fresh mango and a mint leaf on top of each one. We were sure their appearance alone would sell them.

3By ten o'clock, we had sold six. Most students walked past us to the next stall, where a boy was selling bags of sweets for two yuan. Zhou Yi cut our price to ten yuan, but it made almost no difference.

4Then a little girl from Grade 7 stopped at our table. “What's the money for?” she asked. We looked at each other. We had put up posters to promote the pudding, but not one of them said where the money would go.

5Zhou Yi tore a page out of her notebook and wrote in big red letters: 10 YUAN = 1 NEW BOOK FOR A VILLAGE LIBRARY. Within minutes, people began to gather around our table. A maths teacher took a photo of the sign with his mobile phone and bought five cups for his office. A boy who had only six yuan asked if he could donate it anyway.

6We sold the last cup at half past eleven. Altogether, we raised 836 yuan, including one six-yuan donation. The next Monday, Zhou Yi pinned the bookshop's receipt to our noticeboard: eighty-three books, on their way to Guizhou.

1For centuries, the Chengdu Plain in today's Sichuan Province suffered from the Min River. Rushing down from the mountains, the river often burst its banks, and a single major flood could be a catastrophe for the farmers below. Around 256 BC, Li Bing, an official of the State of Qin who administered the region, was asked to investigate the problem and find a solution.

2Li Bing did not try to block the river with a dam. His key innovation was to divide it instead. His workers built a long bank of stones in the middle of the river, shaped like the mouth of a fish. The outer channel followed the river's old course and carried floodwater away. The inner channel led water towards the fields. Because the inner channel was deeper and narrower, it took about 60 percent of the flow in the dry season, when farmers needed water most, but only about 40 percent in the rainy season, when too much water was the danger.

3Two more parts completed the design. A low spillway let extra water flow from the inner channel back into the outer one, which also helped remove sand and stones. And to bring water through a mountain to the plain, workers cut a narrow opening in the rock, later called the Bottle-Neck Channel. Without modern tools, they heated the rock with fire and then cooled it quickly with water until it cracked. Together, these three parts constitute the heart of what is now known as the Dujiangyan Irrigation System. From the Bottle-Neck Channel, smaller canals distribute the water across the plain.

4The system was also designed to be easy to look after. Its banks were made of stones packed into woven bamboo cages, and its channels were cleared of mud regularly. Over time, the plain became so rich in crops that it was called the “Land of Abundance”.

5More than 2,200 years later, Dujiangyan has not simply been preserved as a monument; it is still in use. According to UNESCO, which listed it as a World Heritage Site in 2000, it irrigates 668,700 hectares of farmland. Statues of Li Bing and his son stand in Erwang Temple nearby.

1In many Chinese families, a piano comes with a plan. A child starts lessons at five or six, takes a grade exam every year and collects a certificate for each level. Parents commit years of weekends and a great deal of money to it. By the time the top level is reached, the child is in middle school, and the piano often goes quiet for good. I have watched this happen to many of my friends. I believe the problem is not the music. It is the way we measure it.

2Grade exams are not useless. They give young learners clear objectives, and passing one can be a real boost to a child's motivation. But when a certificate becomes the only reason to practise, something goes wrong. Students spend a whole year polishing three exam pieces and play nothing else. Parents praise the result, not the playing. And once the last exam is over, there is no motive left to continue.

3Exams also turn music into one more school subject, and a matter of status. Parents compare levels the way they compare test scores, and a twelve-year-old who has “only” passed Grade 4 may feel like a failure. Yet only a small minority of learners will ever become professional musicians, and the majority do not need to. They play for themselves, their families and their friends. For them, the real prize is being able to sit down and express an emotion that words cannot.

4Some will say that without exams, children will simply stop practising. Not every child loves the piano, and a little pressure can carry a young learner through the dull early stages. But there are alternatives to the grade ladder. A child could learn a song to play at a cousin's wedding, prepare a film tune for a class party or start a band with friends. Goals like these still demand commitment, and they teach something an exam cannot: music is for sharing.

5I am not asking parents to cancel every exam. I am asking them to change the question they ask after a lesson. Instead of “Which grade are you on now?”, try “What are you playing these days? Can I hear it?”