Once upon a time, there was a little bird named Birdie. She was afraid to fly and always hid in the bushes. Some big crows(乌鸦) often made fun of her by saying, "You can't flyyyy. You are afraid to flyyyy. " Near the bushes, there lived some squirrels (松鼠). Every day, they would "fly" around the branches and "fly" up and down all the trees in the forest.

    One day, these squirrels asked Birdie to join them. Birdie came out of the bushes and wanted to have a try. The crows noticed that and started to laugh at her. They cried, "You can't flyyyy. You are afraid to flyyyy. " Birdie was so sad that she began to flap (拍打) her wings and shouted loudly, "I can fly!" The little bird flapped her wings so hard that she began to fly. These squirrels couldn't believe their eyes. They shouted cheerfully, "Birdie, you're flying! I'm flying?" Birdie said, "I am flying!" She was so excited that she flew up and down, and in and out of all the branches. Then she flapped her wings as hard as she could and flew all the way to the top of the tallest tree. Birdie wasn't afraid of flying anymore, and those big crows never came to bother her ever again.

    When you are little, the whole world feels like a big playground.

    It was a hot afternoon and my best friend Stephanie and I decided to have an adventure in his basement. As I opened the basement door, before us lay the biggest room, full of amazing things like guns, dolls, and old clothes. I ran downstairs and spotted a red steel can. It was paint. I looked beyond it and there lay even more paint in bright colors like purple, orange, blue and green.

    "Stephanie, I just found us a project for the day. Get some paintbrushes. We are going to paint. "She screamed with excitement as I told her of my secret plans and immediately we got to work. We gathered all the brushes we could find and moved all of our materials to my yard. There on the road in front of my house, we painted big stripes (条纹) of colors across the pavement (人行道). Stripe by stripe, our colors turned into a beautiful rainbow. It was fantastic!

    The sun was starting to sink. I saw a car in the distance and jumped up as I recognized the car. It was my mother. I couldn't wait to show her my masterpiece. The car pulled slowly into the driveway and from the look on my mother's face, I could tell that I was in deep trouble.

    My mother shut the ear door and walked towards me. Her eyes glaring, she shouted, "What on earth were you thinking? I understood when you made castles out of leaves, and climbed the neighbors' trees, but this! Come inside right now!" I stood there glaring back at her for a minute, angry because she had insulted (侮辱) my art.

    "Now go clean it up!" Mother and I began cleaning the road. Tears ran down my cheeks as I saw my beautiful rainbow turn into black cement.

    Though years have now passed, I still wonder where my rainbow has gone. I wonder if, maybe when I get older, I can find my rainbow and never have to brush it away. I guess we all need some sort of rainbow to brighten our lives from time to time and to keep our hopes and dreams colorful.

    I'm not much of a crier most of the time. But {#blank#}1{#/blank#} when I was reading a book on a plane, I started crying. Of course, it came as a big surprise when tears came up, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't {#blank#}2{#/blank#} myself.

    Oh no, not this now. I thought to myself. But even as the thought entered my brain. I felt the {#blank#}3{#/blank#} hot drop of salty water coming down my face. I put my head down, hoping that I could go on reading.

    In fact, the harder I tried, the more tears pushed their way out of my eyes. You could guess how surprised the man next to me looked.

    My head {#blank#}4{#/blank#} in shame. He must think I was crazy. Maybe I could turn towards him, hold up the cover of the book and say in my crying voice. "I'm sorry, sir. It's just a really good book!" But I didn't, say anything. Instead, I just put my head back against the {#blank#}5{#/blank#} and let the tears run. Do you know what decision I made while I was crying? My decision was that it was OK if he thought I was crazy. I preferred to be crazy instead of being the kind of person who wouldn't cry when the situation called for it, or who wouldn't let {#blank#}6{#/blank#} feel anything at all.

    I've been that girl who has spent so much time trying to make sure people didn't think f was crazy. But now I don't want to be that girl any more —that bored and {#blank#}7{#/blank#} girl. I'd rather {#blank#}8{#/blank#} this girl who is able to forgive (原谅), love and act, even if it means being disappointed or being hurt again and again.

When I was looking for a Christmas present for my daughter in a toy store, a nicely dressed little girl, with some money in her little hand, was looking at some beautiful {#blank#}1{#/blank#}. When she saw a doll she liked, she would ask her father {#blank#}2{#/blank#} she had enough money. He usually said yes.

At the same time, a {#blank#}3{#/blank#}, with old and small clothes, was looking at some computer games. He, too, had money in his hand, but it looked no more than five dollars. Each time he picked up one of the computer games and looked at his father, the father shook his head.

The little girl had {#blank#}4{#/blank#} a very beautiful doll. However, she noticed the boy and his father. She saw the boy {#blank#}5{#/blank#} a computer game with disappointment(失望) and walk to another corner of the store.

On Wednesday, August 7, China got its first-ever gold medal in artistic swimming at the Paris Olympic Games. 

Among the impressive performers were twin sisters, Wang Liuyi and Wang Qianyi. Born in 1997 and grew up in Shenzhen, the sisters took an interest in artistic swimming when they came to Shenzhen sports team in 2005, asking to learn artistic swimming. The twins almost didn't make it to the team because of their parents heights. 

There is an unwritten rule in artistic swimming. If a sportswoman is less than 1.68 meters tall, she is unlikely to become a professional. The twins' father is less than 1.7 meters tall, while their mother is a little taller than 1.6 metres, which means the daughters are unlikely to be tall enough. 

However, the twins' strong will and strengths impressed Hu, coach (教练) of Shenzhen team. She recalled that twins, who studied at Nanshan Foreign Languages School, went for training after school every day. At 20 years old, the twins grew to be 1.72 meters tall. They were among the tallest when joining the national artistic swimming team in 2017.

With good physical quality and willingness to bear hardships, through years of hard training, they became key players and got a lot of medals. In 2010, the twins won the gold medal at the provincial games. They also won a gold and a bronze medal at the national games in 2013 and 2017. Then, they won four gold medals at the 2022 World Championships in Hungary and a gold in the duet event at the 2023 Hangzhou Asian Games, winning the right for the Paris Olympics.

Once upon a time there was a happy paper doll that had no face. His whole body was perfectly cut out and painted, except for his face. However, he had a pencil so he could choose whatever face he wanted to have. How lucky! He then spent all day asking everyone he met, "What's a perfect face like?"

" One with a big beak (鸟嘴)." answered the birds.

" No. Not one with a beak," said the trees. " The perfect face is full of leaves."

" Forget the beak and the leaves," said the flowers. " If you want a perfect face, you fill it with colors."

The doll followed their advice. However, it turned out that nobody liked it. And now he couldn't erase it! " I only wanted a face that everyone would like," he cried. "And now look, what a disaster (灾难)!"

A small cloud heard his cries and came to him, " I think I can help you. As I'm a cloud, I can make any face you like. What do you think about me changing faces until there's one that you like? I'm sure we can fix you a little bit."

The doll again felt hopeful. The cloud made all kinds of faces for him. But none of them was perfect enough.

"Never mind," said the doll. " you've been a great friend." He gave her a big hug and the cloud smiled from ear to ear, happy at having helped. Just then the doll cried excitedly, " That's it! That's the face I want! It's a perfect face!"

"Which one?" asked the cloud. "But I haven't done anything."

"Yes, yes you have! It's that face you make when I hug you!"

The cloud finally realized that he was talking about her big smile. And together they took the pencil and drew the paper doll a big smile, ten times better than beaks, colors and leaves. And that face was indeed the only one that everyone liked because it had the secret ingredient (成分) for perfect faces: a big smile that could never be erased.