In the long history of humans, women’s stories have often been overlooked. Yet as modern society has allowed women to speak for themselves, more and more women are standing up to choose how to live their lives. Here are five powerful films that just might inspire you to re-imagine what it means to be a woman.

Hi, Mom (2021)

Directed by Chinese comedian Jia Ling, this heartwarming comedy, about a woman who accidentally meets her mother during time travel, became a hit with audiences this year, leading the mainland box office right after Chinese New Year. The success of the movie also became a milestone to mark the growth of “She power” in the man-dominated film industry in the last decade.

Leap (2020)

This 2020 film about the Chinese national women’s volleyball team presents their history from 1981, when they won the Women’s World Cup, to the year 2016. Actress Gong Li stars as the legendary volleyball player Lang Ping, and Peter Chen from Hong Kong is the director.

The Joy Luck Club (1993)

Based on Amy Tan’s 1989 best-selling novel The Joy Luck Club , Chinese director Wang Ying tells the stories of four women who were born in China and eventually came to America, and of their daughters. The misunderstanding and arguments between mothers and daughters will most likely never go away. They also reflect the conflict between traditional Chinese culture and American culture.

Coco Avant Chanel (2009)

The life of Coco Chanel serves as a guide to all women wishing to establish their own careers. Audrey Tautou, famous for her iconic performance in Amelie , stars as the glorious French fashion designer. It is French director Anne Fontaine’s most famous film.

1 ． What do the four films have in common?

A ． They speak highly of great mothers.

B ． They support women’s fight for equality.

C ． They give an insight into the world of women.

D ． They make the actress become famous worldwide.

2 ． Which film concerns the generation gap?

A ． Hi, Mom B ． Leap

C ． The Joy Luck Club D ． Coco Avant Chanel

Our house was across the street from a hospital. We rented the upstairs rooms to outpatients at the clinic. One summer evening as I was preparing supper, there was a knock at the door. I opened it to see a truly awful looking man hardly taller than my eight-year-old daughter.

But the frightening thing was his swollen face. He told me that he’d been hunting for a room since noon but no one seemed to have a room. For a moment I hesitated, but his next words convinced me: “I could sleep on the porch ( 门廊 ). My bus leaves early in the morning.”

I went inside and finished getting supper. When we were ready, I asked him to join us. “No, thank you. I have plenty.” And he held up a brown paper bag. When I had finished the dishes, I went out to talk with him for a few minutes.

He told me he fished for a living to support his daughter, who was hopelessly disabled, and her five children. He didn’t tell it by way of complaint; in fact, he was grateful that no pain accompanied his disease. He thanked life for giving him the strength to keep going.

At bedtime, we put a small camp bed in the children’s room for him. When I got up in the morning, the bed linens were neatly folded and the little man was out on the porch. He refused breakfast, but just before he left, he smiled, “Your children made me feel at home. Grownups are bothered by my face, but children don’t seem to mind.” I told him he was welcome to come again.

In the years he came to stay overnight with us there was never a time that he did not bring us fish or vegetables. Other times we received packages. Knowing that he must walk three miles to mail these, and knowing how little money he had made the gifts more precious. I know our family always will be grateful to have known him; from him we learned what it was to accept the bad without complaint and the good with gratitude.

1 ． What led to the old man’s failure to get a room before?

A ． His ugly appearance. B ． His fishing job.

C ． His disabled daughter. D ． His lack of money.

2 ． What can we learn about the old man?

A ． He often took his daughter to hospital.

B ． He suffered great pain due to his disease.

C ． He took great trouble to send the author gifts.

D ． He often came to offer the author help from then on.

3 ． What is the best title of the text?

A ． A precious gift. B ． A caring family.

C ． A generous fisherman. D ． An unspoken complaint.

They asked Katherine Johnson for the moon, and she gave it to them. With little more than a pencil, a ruler and one of the finest mathematical minds in the country, Mrs. Johnson, who died at 101 on Monday, calculated ( 计算 ) the track that would let Apollo 11 land on the moon in 1969 and, after Neil Armstrong's history—making moonwalk, let it return to Earth.

Yet throughout Mrs. Johnson's 33 years in NASA and for decades afterwards, almost no one knew her name.

Mrs. Johnson was one of several hundred strictly educated, extremely capable yet largely unrecognized women who, well before the modem feminist( 女权 ) movement, worked as NASA mathematicians. But it was not only her sex that kept her long unsung. For some years at mid-century, the black women were forced to a double segregation ( 隔离 ) ： They were kept separate from the much large group of white women who in turn were segregated from the mathematicians and engineers.

Mrs. Johnson broke barriers at NASA ． In old age, Mrs. Johnson became the most celebrated of black women who served as mathematicians for the space agency. Their story was told in the 2016 Hollywood film “Hidden Figures,” which was nominated ( 提名 ) for three Oscars, including Best Picture.

In 2017, NASA devoted a building in her honor. That year, The Washington Post described her as “the most celebrated of the computers” — “computers” being the term originally used to describe Mrs. Johnson and her colleagues, much as “typewriters” were used in the 19th century to represent professional typists.

She “helped our nation enlarge the frontiers of space,” NASA's administrator, Jim Bridenstine, said in a statement on Monday, “even as she made huge steps that also opened doors for women and people of color in the universal human effort to explore space.”

As Mrs. Johnson herself was fond of saying, her term at Langley — from 1953 until her retirement in 1986 — was “a time when computers wore skirts."

1 ． What is the first paragraph mainly about?

A ． Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk.

B ． Katherine Johnson’s contributions

C ． The Apollo 11 mission to the moon.

D ． Breakthroughs in moon exploration.

2 ． Why were Mrs. Johnson described as “computers”?

A ． She helped invent the computer.

B ． She was NASA's human calculator.

C ． She calculated the track with computers.

D ． She was quite capable of using computers.

3 ． What can we learn from Mrs. Johnson’s experience?

A ． Change the world for the better.

B ． Use knowledge to wipe out ignorance.

C ． Don’t judge a person by his appearance.

D ． Never be limited by the labels given by others.

A little social support from your best friends goes a long way, whether you‘re a human or a chimp ( 黑猩猩 ). A new study that followed a chimp community in the forests of Uganda has found that quality time with close companions significantly decreased stress hormone ( 荷尔蒙 ) levels—whether they were resting, cleaning or facing off against enemies.

Researchers have long known that stress can worsen health and raise the risk of early death in humans as well as other social mammals. “It can have effects on immune function, cognition, and even your mood,” said study co-author Kevin Langergraber, a scientist at Arizona State University.

Maintaining close social bonds can help these animals reduce some of that stress, potentially reducing some health risks. But scientists have yet to work out how. “Social bonds make you survive and produce better—but how do they do that ？ ”Langergraber said.

To find out, the international team of researchers studied members of a chimp community in Uganda‘s Budongo Forest, a group of 15 males, 35 females and 28 young chimps. Like humans, chimps tend to have besties—bond partners with whom they appear to feel close. The researchers wanted to see whether interactions with these bond partners led to lower stress levels during particularly stressful situations, such as when fighting enemies, or whether time spent with friends helped lower stress levels more generally, throughout the day.

The scientists observed the chimps perform three types of activities: resting, cleaning or fighting with other groups of chimps. The researchers kept track of whether the chimps were doing any of these three things with their bond partners or with other chimps in their group.

A team of up to six observers watched the chimps and followed them around to collect urine( 尿液 ) samples. The samples, collected from nine adult male and eight adult female chimps, were tested to see how much of the stress hormone they contained.

The scientists found that chimps‘ levels were 23% lower, on average, during the activities when they were with their bond partner. This was especially true for stressful activities, such as the intergroup rivalries, where any chimp on the front line might face physical harm or even death.

The findings in chimps, some of our closest living relatives, could shed light on the role such close social relationships play in human health too, he said. Such friendships may be just as important during good times as bad—though more research needs to be done before any conclusions can be drawn.

1 ． How did the scientists carry out their research?

A ． By interacting with chimps.

B ． By studying a chimp community.

C ． By analyzing previous studies on chimps.

D ． By comparing chimps’ three types of activities.

2 ． What does the underlined word “they” in Paragraph 6 refer to?

A ． Observers. B ． Chimps.

C ． Bond partners. D ． Urine samples.

3 ． What’s the author’s purpose in writing the text?

A ． To emphasize the bad effects of stress on health.

B ． To show us how chimps control their stress level.

C ． To inform us friendships benefit both chimps and humans.

D ． To urge scientists to further study the benefits of friendships.

The first time I questioned the traditional wisdom on the nature of a healthy diet, it was 40 years ago, and the subject was salt. Researchers found that salt supplementation( 补充 ) was unnecessary after exercise, and this advice was passed on by health reporters. I recalled high school football practices in hot days. Without salt pills, I couldn’t make it through a two-hour practice.

Although sports nutritionists have recommended consuming more salt when we sweat hard in physical activity, the message that we should avoid salt at all other times remains strong. And salt is still considered deadly.

So why have we been told that salt is so deadly? The advice has always sounded reasonable: Eat more salt, and your body keeps water to maintain a stable concentration of sodium ( 钠 ) in your blood. This is why salty food might make us thirsty: We drink more; we keep water. The result can be a temporary increase in blood pressure. The scientific question is whether this temporary phenomenon leads to permanent problems: If we eat too much salt for years, does it cause high blood pressure, and then kill us? It makes sense, but it’s only a hypothesis( 假设 ), which hasn’t been proved but unfortunately accepted as a fact.

In reality, eating less salt can worsen health. Decades ago, Italian researchers’ study reported that reducing salt consumption increased the risk of dying early and that reducing sodium to a government-recommended “safe upper limit” is actually harmful.

Supporters of the eat-less-salt campaign( 运动 ) tend to deal with this opposing evidence ( 证据 ) by implying that anyone raising it is a shill( 同谋 ) for the food industry (widely criticized for adding salt to processed foods to improver taste). When several government agencies held a hearing last November to discuss how to ensure Americans eat less salt, anti-salt supporters argued that the latest reports suggesting damage from lower-salt diets should simply be ignored. This attitude, which lacks respect for science, has been held for the anti-salt campaign for decades. Maybe now is the time for it to change.

1 ． The underlined phrase in paragraph 1 refers to the belief that_________.

A ． people should take in salt after exercise

B ． salt intake was needless after physical activity

C ． salt pills were helpful during football practices

D ． a healthy diet does not necessarily include enough salt

2 ． What does the Italian researchers’ study show?

A ． Eating less salt can harm our health.

B ． Eating too much salt raises blood pressure.

C ． We should try to avoid salt on a daily basis.

D ． We should follow the recommended “safe upper limit”.

3 ． What do the eat-less-salt campaigners do with the opposing evidence?

A ． They treat it with some respect.

B ． They report it to the government agencies.

C ． They do scientific experiments to support it.

D ． They suggest that the food industry is behind it.

4 ． What is the writer’s attitude towards the anti-salt campaign?

A ． Supportive. B ． Unconcerned.

C ． Puzzled. D ． Negative.