It was Jimmy's fifth birthday. He got quite a lot of nice birthday presents from his family, and one of them was a beautiful big drum(鼓).

    “Who gave him that thing?” Jimmy's father asked when he saw it.

    “His grandfather did,” answered Jimmy's mother.

    “Oh,” said his father.

     Of course, Jimmy liked his drum very much. He made a terrible noise with it, but his mother did not mind. His father was working during the day, and Jimmy was in bed when he got home in the evening, so he did not hear the noise.

    But one of the neighbours did not like the noise at all. So one morning a few days later, she took a knife and went to Jimmy's house while he was playing his drum. She said to him, “Hello, Jimmy. Do you know there's something very nice inside your drum? Here's a knife. Open the drum and let's find it.”

    Liu Yingying is a student at No. 17 Middle School in Shanghai. She is 14 years old. She likes English and she often (经常) reads English books at home. She can speak English well and write many English words. She likes speaking English with her classmates and teachers at school. Her teachers like her. Liu Yingying likes music and she can play the piano. She often practises (练习) it at home in the morning.

    Liu Yingying has got a happy family. Her father is a worker in a car factory and her mother is a hotel manager. Her father likes sports. His favourite sport is table tennis. Her mother likes sports, too. But she likes swimming. What about Liu Yingying? She likes playing tennis.

A Trip to the Forest

    One day Bob took two of his friends into the mountains. They put up their tents and then rode off to a forest to see how the trees were growing.

    In the afternoon when they were about ten kilometers from their camp（营地）, it started to snow. More and more snow fell. Soon Bob could hardly see his hands before his face. He could not find the road. Bob knew there were two roads. One road went to the camp, and the other went to his house. But all was white snow. Everything was the same. How could he take his friends back to the camp?

    Bob had an idea. The horses! Let the horses take them back! But what would happen if the horses took the road to his house? That would be a trip of thirty-five kilometers in such cold weather!

    It was getting late. They rode on and on. At last the horses stopped. Where were they?

    None of them could tell. John looked around. What was that under the tree? It was one of their tents!

Matt and his wife lived in the country. One day a fair_came to the nearby town.

"Let's go to the fair, Matt." his wife said. "We didn't go anywhere for a long time."

Matt thought about this for a while. He knew he would have to spend money at the fair. At last he said, "All right, but I'm not going to spend much money."

They went to the fair and looked at all the things. There were many things Matt's wife wanted to buy, but he would not let her spend any money.

Then, they saw a small airplane.

"Fun flights!" the notice said." $10 for 10 minutes."

Matt had never been in an airplane and he wanted to go on a fun flight. However, he didn't want to pay for his wife. "I've only got $10," he told the pilot. "Can my wife come with me for free?" The pilot wasn't selling many tickets, so he said, "I'll make a bargain (协议) with you. If your wife doesn't scream (尖叫) or shout, she can have a free flight." Matt agreed, and got into the small airplane with his wife.

The pilot took off and made his airplane do all kinds of things. At one moment it was flying upside down. When the plane landed, the pilot said, "OK, your wife didn't make a sound. She can have her ride free."

"Thank you," Matt said. "It wasn't easy for her, you know, especially when she fell out."

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

Yang was born in Beijing in 1911. Her real name is Yang Jikang. 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 got married. In the 1940s, she started to use the name Yang Jiang as her pen name. Since then, she has been commonly known as Madam Yang Jiang. In the 1950s, she worked for Peking University and started to learn Spanish. She began to write short novels in the 1980s. Many of them are famous, such as The Old Wang (《老王》), After Baptism (《洗澡之后》) and We Three (《我们仨》).

Although Madam Yang has passed away, we will never forget the great madam.