Have you ever heard of Jiang Mengnan? She is ________ unusual girl. She received the award (奖) of the Person Touching China for 2021 ________ March 3rd. In 2018, she was accepted by Tsinghua University as a PhD (博士) student. It was a long journey for her to become a student of the famous university because most of her life was in a ________ world. Her story has moved thousands of people.

Jiang was born in 1992. Her parents named her Mengnan which means “dream and south”. Her parents wished that their ________ would enjoy a life of peace. However, when she was six months old, her peaceful and beautiful life ________. She lost her hearing because of taking the wrong medicine. As she ________, she began to learn lip-reading (唇读). She overcame lots of difficulties and practiced more than 1,000 times to learn to pronounce each word correctly.

Through her hard work, she ________ Jilin University with a high score of 615 marks in 2011. Jiang decided to study life science because she hoped she could spend all her life on people’s ________. During her college days, she was a ________ to help the disabled children in her hometown.

“For people ________ are deaf like me, I want to tell them that we can do as much as the normal people, and maybe we can even do better!”

A Chinese knot (中国结) is woven (编织) with a single rope (绳). It has different shapes. Each shape has its own meaning. People can use ropes of different colors to weave a Chinese knot, but they usually use red because it means good luck.

The Chinese knot, a folk art, has a long history. People first made them to record information and send messages before they started to use words. The knots were used for decoration (装饰) and to express thoughts and feelings in the Tang Dynasty. They were later popular in the Ming and Qing dynasties. But this art wasn’t really accepted by the common people until the Qing Dynasty.

Even today, Chinese knots still hold the value of feelings when they are sent as gifts. For example, lovers may give a knot to show their love. The “double happiness knot” is given and used at weddings (婚礼) to express each other’s love and wishes for growing old together.

Knots are also used when people make traditional clothes in China. They can play the role of buttons (纽扣) and now silk is widely used to make these clothing knots.

Many tourists including foreigners like to buy Chinese knots as gifts during their trips. There are many shopping streets for people to buy Chinese knots. Yiwu Commodity Market in Zhejiang Province is a good place for that. There are many different kinds of beautiful Chinese knots there. They are popular with customers.

Now, more and more people have difficulties in falling asleep. “In fact, we can train our brain to fall asleep,” says sleep expert Michael Grandner. Here are his top ways.

Make a plan and stick to it.

Melatonin (褪黑素) is produced by the body to control when you get sleepy and when you wake up. As night falls, the levels of melatonin rise, telling the body that it’s time for bed. And the levels naturally fall as daylight comes near, getting you ready to greet the day.

The release (释放) of melatonin needs to be at regular (有规律的) times. So if your bedtime and wake-up time change from day to day, your body doesn’t know how to respond (回应). So it’s important to have a regular bedtime and wake up time, even on weekends.

Don’t lie in bed awake.

In fact, this way is very helpful. Whether it’s the beginning of the night or the middle of the night, if you’ve been awake for 20 or 30 minutes, get up. Maybe you just need five minutes to get sleepy, or maybe an hour, but don’t spend that time awake in bed.

Change your attitude (态度) about sleep.

Many people regard sleeping as the final thing in a busy day, so they would rather delay sleeping to do housework, schoolwork or others. That thought needs to be changed. Make sure your sleep time is enough in order to work better the next day. It may sound like a small change, but it’s an important one.

It’s often said, “You can’t live only on air.” But now the Chinese scientists can tell you: Maybe you can.

Recently, some Chinese scientists have made a big breakthrough (突破). They turned CO₂ into starch (淀粉).

Starch is the main part of rice and corn that we eat every day. Usually, it’s created by plants with CO₂, water and sunlight. According to the team’s director Ma Yanhe, it takes the plants nearly sixty steps to produce starch. But now, the team, after six years of hard work, has found a simpler way to do this, with only eleven steps.

“Our study shows that creating something like starch is possible in a laboratory, and this technology may be helpful in many areas,” said Ma.

The scientists first turned CO₂ and hydrogen (氢气) into methanol (甲醇). Then they made these methanol molecules (分子) into bigger and more complex (复杂的) molecules. Finally the starch came out.

This method makes it possible to produce food in factories instead of traditional farming. This will not only help make plenty of food, but also save water and land. It may also help recycle CO₂ to deal with climate (气候) change, according to China Daily.

The study can be helpful in space, too. Astronauts may no longer need to worry about their food as they travel in space. They may simply turn the CO₂ they breathe out into the food they eat!

Many people explain the meaning of purity (纯洁) to someone by giving the example of the lotus (莲花). The lotus is a plant growing in the dirty earth. But its
51． and flowers are not dirty at all. How does the lotus clean
52．? Scientists have got the answer.

The lotus leaf is round and large on the water. It is almost
53． to get it wet. Why? That’s because the lotus leaf has a kind of wax (蜡) on its surface. The wax can keep the water away
54．. If you put water on a lotus leaf, the water will get off it right away. At the same time, the dirty things will be
55． away by the water. This is the reason why the lotus leaf always stays clean. It’s the same to the lotus flowers. So we often see the lotus in bright colors.

Do you know the self-driving bullet (子弹) train just for the Beijing Winter Olympics? Is there anything new on the train? Let’s have a look!

The train links (连接) Beijing and Zhangjiakou, the co-host cities of the Games. With a top speed of 350 kilometers an hour, the train can run the 174-kilometer journey between the two cities in around 50 minutes, while a regular express (特快的) train takes three hours.

It is said to be the world’s first high-speed train with a 5G live broadcast studio (现场直播演播室). It can carry 564 passengers each trip in its eight cars (车厢). It has business, first-class and second-class cars. Besides, for the needs of media (媒体), it also has special working cars with 12 tables and international electric sockets (电源插座).

The train is painted in white and blue colors and there are 24 snowflakes (雪花) on the outside of the train, showing this is the 24th Winter Olympic Games. Inside the train, there are winter sports photos on the walls and paper snowflakes on top.

The Beijing Winter Olympic Games opened in February, 2022. The high-speed train provided transportation services for the 2022 Winter Olympics and the Paralympics (残奥会) from January 21 to March 16. Up to 40 pairs of trains traveled between the two cities every day.

前段时间，同学们观看了“天宫课堂”之后，纷纷表示要向三位宇航员学习，成为一名有理想、有抱负的青少年。请你根据以下的内容提示，以“How to be an excellent teenager”为主题，用英语写一篇发言稿，在下周的主题班会上发言。

Hello, everyone! I’d like to share my ideas about how to be an excellent teenager.

That’s all. Thank you.