Yang Jiang，the famous woman writer and translator is well-known to us all．

    She was born in Beijing in 1911．originally named Yang Jikang．As a baby she liked laughing．Her parents let every daughter develop their character freely．which is rare at that time and even at present．Jikang，therefore，had a happy childhood in the 1920s．

    She graduated from university and went to Tsinghua University as a postgraduate(研究生)in the 1930s．There she met Qian Zhongshu：they fell in love and married．

    In the l940s，she started to use the name Yang Jiang as her pen name．Since then she was commonly known as Madam Yang Jiang．

    In the l950s，she worked for Peking University，and started to learn Spanish．She was the first to translate Don Quixote《堂吉诃德》)into Chinese．

    She began to write short novels in the 1980s．The novel The Old Wang(《老王》)written in 1984 was selected as the passage in our middle school text book．

    Besides，her famous works After Baptism(《洗澡之后》)and We Three(《我们仨》)also became a household name in China．

    Sorry to hear that Madam Yang died at Peking Union Medical College Hospital in Beijing，on May25，2016．

    Such was Madam Yang，the best wife and the most talented woman!Her legend is still continuing!

    This term(学期) we have a new teacher of English. His name is Mr. Peterson. He is American. He is not very tall and he is thin. He has a round face and small blue eyes. He wears glasses and they make him look smart. He has dark brown hair.

    Mr. Peterson works very hard. In class, he has many good ideas to make the class very interesting. We all like his class. After class, he always encourages us to speak more English. Sometimes, he plays games with us. He is very strong and he can play basketball and football very well. He is good at sports. Sometimes he plays table tennis with us, but he doesn't play it very well.

    Mr. Peterson loves living in China very much. He enjoys lots of things in China. He really loves eating Chinese food. He loves traveling in China too. He is going to visit Xi'an next month.

    Jean is a bright young girl from a rich and famous family. She goes to a good university and has almost everything that money can buy. But all her family are so busy that they can hardly find time to be with her. In fact, Jean feels quite Lonely. So Jean spends a lot of her time on Facebook. She likes to be anonymous, using the name Linda on Facebook. She doesn't want people to know anything about her famous family and her rich life.

    Last year Jean made a very special friend on Facebook. His name was David and he lived in San Francisco. David was full of stories and jokes. He and Jean had the same interests in rock music and modern dance. So it always took them many hours to talk happily about the latest rock music and their favorite singers and sometimes they even forgot the time. Of course, they wanted to know more about each other. David sent a picture of himself: He was a tall, good-looking young man with a big, happy smile. As time went by, they became good friends and often sent cards and small things to each other.

    When Jean's father told her that he was going on a business trip to San Francisco, she asked him to let her go with him, so that she could give David a surprise for his birthday. She would take him the latest CD of their favorite rock singer. But when Jean knocked on David's door in San Francisco she found that the special friend she had chatted with on Facebook for so long was a twelve-year-old boy named Jim.

    Zheng He was an amazing man. He was born in 1371. Eleven years later, he was caught by the army of a rich young man called Zhu Di and made to work for him. Over time the rich man saw that Zheng He was very clever and strong and they became close friends. In 1403 Zhu Di became the emperor of China and he asked Zheng He to join his government.

    The emperor wanted to learn more about the world and show other countries his power. He ordered many new ships to be built and made Zheng He their leader. Between 1405 and 1433, Zheng He led seven sea trips to different parts of the world. He certainly travelled to India, Africa and the Middle East. A few people think his ships have even reached South America and Australia.

    Each trip lasted between two and four years and it is believed that he sailed more than 50,000 kilometres during the years of his travels. Zheng He led a fleet with about 28,000 men and over 300 ships, such as boats for food, water and even soldiers' horses.

    On these trips he brought with him many Chinese goods like silk and medicine to give to foreign kings or to sell for local goods. He returned from each trip with boats which were filled with expensive things such as gold and treasure, foreign guests and strange animals like a giraffe.

    It is a pity that we may never learn everything about Zheng He's travels. The Columbus of the East, Zheng He, died in 1433. After that, the new emperor had these trips stopped and he burned almost all the books about Zheng He's travels, because he believed the trips were unlucky and too expensive. It is only in the last 50 years that historians have begun to carefully study the adventures of great Zheng He.