C

    A continuation to the 2015 hit Wolf Warrior opened across the Chinese mainland on July 27 and gained 1.7 billion yuan ($253 million) in five days,making it the highest-grossing movie in July.The popular review portal Douban.com gives it 7.5 points out of 10 thanks to its action sequences.

    The film,which features Wu Jing in multiple roles besides director and star,is set in an unnamed African country facing a civil war.It was a real-life adventure in Africa for him.At a recent event in Beijing,he speaks of his experiences while working on the military-themed movie Wolf Warrior 2.He saw colleagues bitten by spiders,acted with lions and nearly drowned at sea.

    Wu plays Leng Feng,a former Chinese special forces operative,who fights a US mercenary（雇佣兵）and his bloodthirsty soldiers.The cast includes Hong Kong actress Celina Jade and US action star Frank Grillo,who is known for his role as Crossbones in Captain America movies.

    For Wu,the movie is a dream project.The former martial arts champion shot to fame with kung fu productions, such as the 1999 TV series,Legend of Dagger Lee.Wu,who was then seen as a successor to the legacy of China's action superstars like Jackie Chan,Jet Li and Donnie Yen,wanted to go beyond just fighting on screen.So,after co-directing the 2008 thriller Legendary Assassin with Hong Kong filmmaker Li Chung-chi,Wu began working on the Wolf Warrior idea.He was inspired by reports about Chinese peacekeeping missions and efforts to evacuate Chinese who were caught up in war-torn areas overseas.He made Wolf Warrior 2 to showcase the kindness,wit, courage and sacrifice of Chinese soldiers.

    The crew also went to Iceland to film some scenes,a possible indicator of what will come next.

    With the rapid development of China's economy, more and more foreigners begin to learn Chinese because they are beginning to realize the importance and growing influence of China. Pupils in Warwickshire will soon be learning Mandarin after new links were forged(建立联系) with a region in China.

    Head teachers from the county spent a week in Shenzhen in South-east China, making links with schools and touring different education establishments.

    Schools that took part are now looking to introduce Mandarin lessons. Pupils from schools in Warwickshire and Shenzhen are starting to write and e-mail each other and plans are being made to share lessons over the Internet.

The trip was arranged by Warwickshire County Council and funded by the British Council as the first stage of development of a range of ties with the economically booming city.

    International development officer Judith Young said: “We are entering an exciting period of school relation between Warwickshire and Shenzhen. There is a real appetite for sharing ideas among the Chinese. We were able to see the differences and similarities between the education systems and there are many areas in which our schools, teachers and pupils will be able to benefit from a different cultural perspective(观点) and links with a country that is becoming very important on the world stage.

    Throughout the high profile(引人注目) visit led by our county education officer, Eric Wood, our group was made to feel very welcome and attracted a great deal of interest. Our visit to a primary school was featured as the main news item on television that night. A mark of how highly the visit was valued is that plans are being made for a return visit to Warwickshire of civic leaders, senior education officials and school principals.”

Crossroads International

    How does crossroads work?

    Crosswords is a resource network. We take goods Hong Kong doesn't want and give them to people who badly need them. We collect those goods and give them out in the welfare agencies in Hong Kong, Mainland China, elsewhere in Asia, Eastern Europe and Africa{#blank#}1{#/blank#}

    Who do we help?

    {#blank#}2{#/blank#} They are grass-root groups who have seen a need and tried to meet it. They can't get the job done without backup, though, so our task is to help them do their task. Our warehouse (仓库) is full of goods, from computers to high chairs, clothing to books, cupboards to dining sets. They send us a list of their needs and we try to match it with the resource we have in stock.

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#}

    Crossroads itself also operates on a low budget. We do not buy the goods we send. They are donated. Similarly, rather than raising funds for freight (货运), we ask transport companies to donate their services{#blank#}4{#/blank#}Even our full-time staff work on a voluntary basis.

    What can you do?

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#} While we receive large quantities of goods and there is never a short supply of requests for them, we are always in need of hands to help sort and prepare them for shipping. If you are volunteering regularly, we can offer work in some of the categories, some of the time.

A. What do we need?

B. How do we operate?

C. So Crossroads is just that: a Crossroads between need and resource.

D. Nobody in our organization receives a salary.

E. One resource that we are always in need of is people.

F. welfare agencies we help do not run on large budgets.

G. All volunteer work is done at our warehouse.

Four ways to get a feel for a college on your own

    There's more to visiting a college than a campus（校园）tour. And there's a critical part for students and parents: testing the school on your own. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}

    ⒈Go to a dining hall or student union.

    The best common place where students relax and hang out is the cafeteria or student center, where you can see what college kids are like in their natural habitat.

"Go to lunch in a cafeteria right at noon, "says Edward Walker, founder of Independent Consultants in Education," {#blank#}2{#/blank#}"

    ⒉Sit in on a class.

    A lot of high school students aren't sure what they want to study yet when they are visiting colleges, but familiarizing yourself with the academic atmosphere is important. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} You can come up with a few academic areas that you think you'd like to study and reach out to those classes.

    ⒊{#blank#}4{#/blank#}

    Chat with anyone walking around campus. Don't let mom and dad do it for you. "Your parents can talk to people, too and then you can compare notes, "says Walker." Talk to various groups of students so you'll get a well-rounded picture."

    Tour the community.

    Whether the school is in the countryside or in a city center, check out the off-campus area nearest the college. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}

A. Talk to parents.

B. Talk to students.

C. Many schools offer people chances to sit in on a class.

D. Here are four ways to get more familiar with a prospective（预期的）school.

E. That's one of the best places where you can learn about a school's atmosphere.

F. Big communities are still the major places that attract tourists in our society today.

G. If there's time, tour some of the museums or other points of interest and eat at a local restaurant.

    It is hard to say the first day of school in the United States because when the first day of school is and what happens on the first day of school usually are different by districts(地区).

    The first day of school for many school districts in different states is on the day after the first Monday in September. In some other school districts, school begins in mid-to-late August. For example, the Denver, Colorado schools go back in mid-August and schools in Cleveland, Ohio start back usually one week before the first Monday in September. The Boston, Chicago, New York City and San Diego schools start back on the Tuesday or Wednesday after the first Monday in September.

    Schools in Cleveland, Ohio used to start the school year on the day after the first Monday in September, but in the 1976-1977 and 1977-1978 academic years, the school year was affected by several bad snowstorms, extreme cold. In the 1978-1979 school year, the Ohio Department of Education moved the start of the year to late August, one week before the first Monday in September. This went into effect in the 1980-1981 school year.

    In most school districts in Utah, the school year starts between August 25 and August 30, and goes until the last week of May or the first week in June next year.

    In American high schools, the freshmen class usually goes back one or two days before the rest of the school body for an orientation(迎新)period. An orientation period helps the freshmen get familiar with their new school, its rules, and surroundings.

    In some schools, the freshmen classes have their photographs taken for identification purposes. Some high schools have tried to make the first week of school fun for incoming freshmen.

Gottfried Wilhelm von Liebniz was a philosopher and mathematician in search of a model. In the late 1600s Leibniz decided there was a need for a new, purer arithmetic than our common decimal (十进制) system. He got his inspiration from the 5000-year-old book that is at the heart of Chinese philosophy: the I-Ching, or Book of Changes.

This ancient text was such an influence on Liebniz that he titled his article on the new arithmetic "Explanation of a new arithmetic and the ancient Chinese figure of Fu X". Fu Xi was the legendary first author of the I-Ching. The arithmetic that Liebniz described was binary (二进制) code, which is used in almost every modern computer, from iPhones to China's own Tihane-2 supercomputer.

To figure out what Liebniz learned in the I-Ching, we need to understand something that most of us have taken for granted. When we listen to an MP3, look at a digital photo or watch the latest TV drama, we are experiencing a digital representation of reality. That representation is basically just a string of binary signals that are commonly known as 1s and 0s. What Liebniz's gained from the book was that even the most complex reality could be represented in the binary form as 1s and 0s.

In the philosophy of the I-Ching, reality is not entirely real. It is something more like a dream. This dream of reality arises from the binaries of Yin and Yang, as they play out countless combinations, practically everything in the universe. It's not surprising then, from the l-Ching's perspective, that anything in the dream of reality can be represented in a string of 1s and 0s, processed by a computer.

The I-Ching was far more ambitious than the current practical applications of binary code. It is claimed that the I-Ching represents nothing less than the basic situation of human life itself. As a system for predicting the future, the I-Ching might disappoint, but as a way of questioning your own unconscious mind, it can be remarkably useful.

The I-Ching's teachings also contain warnings about our digital revolution. Binary code, powered by modern computers, has an amazing capacity to represent reality. However, the ancient authors of the I-Ching might have understood its potential-and its dangers-even better than we now do.

So when scientific thinkers ask whether computers can create "virtual realities" or "artificial intelligence", they are missing the point. Of course, we can create ever deeper and more complex layers of the dream of reality. The real question is, can we wake up from the dream we're in already?