I arrived at my mother's home for our Saturday family dinner. The smells of food flew over from the kitchen. My mother was pulling out quilt after quilt from the boxes, proudly showing me their beauties. I knew they were all made herself. She was preparing for a quilt show on TV. When we began to fold and put them back into the boxes, I noticed something at the bottom of one box. I pulled it out.

    "What's this?" I asked.

    "Oh?" Mom said, "That's Mama's quilt."

    I spread the quilt. It looked as if a group of school children had made the pieces together. "Grandmother made this?" I asked in surprise. My grandmother was a master at making quilts. This certainly didn't look like any of the quilts she had made.

    "Yes, right before she died. I brought it home with me last year and made some changes," Mom said, "I'm still working on it. See, this is what I've done so far."

    I looked at it more closely. She had made a line straight. At the center of the quilt, she had stitched a piece of cloth with these words: "My mother made many quilts. She didn't get all lines straight. But I think this is beautiful. I want to see it finished. Her last quilt."

    "Oh, this is so nice, Mom." I said. I was sure now that by completing my grandmother's quilt, my mother was honoring her own mother. I realized that I held in my hands a family treasure. It started with the loving hands of one woman, and continued with the loving hands of another.

    Mo Yan was born in 1955 in Gaomi, Shandong. His real name is Guan Moye. Mo Yan is his pen name. It means “no speaking”. Mo Yan's parents are farmers.

    When he was young, Mo Yan had to leave school and start to work, first as a farmer and then in a factory. In 1979 he married Du Qinlan. Two years later, their only daughter Guan Xiaoxiao was born. Xiaoxiao likes literature (文学) very much. She is a famous writer like her father.

    In 1981, Mo Yan's first novel (小说) Falling Rain on a Spring Night came out. His works — Red Sorghum Clan, The Republic of Wine, Big Breasts and Wide Hips, Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out and Frog are very famous. Mo Yan won many prizes (奖). In 2012, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

    Most children like the summer holiday. It is usually long. During the summer holiday, children like to have a good time outdoors (在户外).

    Jimmy is a 15⁃year⁃old American boy. His summer holiday is coming. It is from July 1st to August 20th. He wants to travel. He usually travels in America, but this summer he wants to do something different. He learns a lot about China on the Internet, so he wants to take a trip to China. He also wants to learn about Chinese history, so he plans to visit Beijing and Xi' an. He is going to leave on August 3rd and take a plane to Beijing first. He plans to stay in the two places for 10 days. During these days, he plans to visit the Summer Palace, the Great Wall, the Terracotta Warriors (兵马俑) and Huashan Mountain. He hopes he will have a great time in China. He can't wait!

    On October 17,2016 the Shenzhou-11 manned spaceship was sent into space from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in Gansu. Two days later the spaceship successfully connected with the space laboratory Tiangong-2. It meant China got closer to its plan of building a space station in 2020.

    The spaceship took two Chinese astronauts to space this time. Jing Haipeng was an experienced astronaut who flew on Shenzhou-7 in 2008 and Shenzhou-9 in 2012. But it was Chen Dong's first space flight.

    Jing and Chen were given a 30-day task on Tiangong-2. They tested new technology and did experiments to prepare for future space station tasks. The astronauts themselves were also the subject(对象) of those experiments. The life support devices(设备) they used and how they lived inside the space laboratory were studied. No Chinese astronaut had stayed in space for that long before.

    A month-long space task was not easy, so Chinese scientists and engineers had come up with lots of new technologies to allow astronauts to stay more safely and more comfortably in space.

One of the new technologies tested during this task was a device called "space hospital". The space hospital was two little silver boxes tied around the two astronauts' legs. Through the "space hospital", scientists and doctors on the Earth could watch the astronauts' heart rate and temperature. When the astronauts felt tired, the "space hospital" could even massage(为……按摩) them.

    After this task, China is expected to send an unmanned cargo spaceship(无人货运飞船) in mid-April next year. It will dock with Tiangong-2 and take new fuel to the space laboratory.

    Look! This is a picture of my teacher's family. This is Mr. Smith. He is my English teacher.

    His wife is a doctor. She is nice. They have a son and a daughter. The boy's name is Sam and the girl's name is Kate. They are students. They are in the same school. They go to school on their bikes.

    Look! The son is like his mother. The daughter is like her father. Now they are all in China and can speak Chinese. They love China.

    In 1254, Marco Polo was born in Italy, in the city of Venice. At that time Europeans knew almost nothing about other continents(大洲),except some areas of Asia and Africa(非洲)touching the Mediterranean Sea(地中海).

    In 1271. Marco Polo. His uncle. And his father started a journey to China. For four years they travelled on foot and on camels, across the deserts and through the mountains of Central Asia. Finally they arrived at the city of Kublai Khan(可汗),the Mongol(蒙古)ruler of China at that time.

    In China, Marco Polo found people with a very different culture from his own. He saw a new world with lots of wonders. After leaving China, Marco Polo traveled to Japan, Southeastern Asia, India, and Eastern Africa.

    In 1292-two hundred years before Columbus—Marco travelled back home. The stories of China he brought back quickly spread all over Europe.