For the Travel section, writers and editors selected special items to profile from a dozen cities.

Brussels: Chocolate

Nearly half the chocolate consumed in the world is eaten in Europe, and Belgium — with average consumption of 14.99 pounds per person a year — certainly covers its fair share. While Brussels, the country’s capital, is home to hundreds of chocolate makers, what makes a visit necessary is the rich heritage of traditional chocolate makers.

Budapest: Paprika(红辣椒)

The job of preparing Hungarian paprika was once considered too dangerous for mothers to do. A woman who touched her children upon returning from work risked burning them, so only the elderly and unmarried were allowed the delicate task of separating the skin from the flesh. But by the early 20th century, sweeter varieties and a machine turned paprika into a common feature of all Hungarian cuisine.

Lisbon: Tiles(瓷砖)

Is there a bluer country than Portugal? The blue sky and Atlantic Ocean embrace the land. The blue moods of Fado, the dark folk music, form the national soundtrack. And all across Portugal, the typically blue designs of azulejos — ceramic tiles — are spread across churches, castles, palaces, university halls, parks... The result is a beautiful land of Christian saints, Portuguese kings, historical glories, aristocrats(贵族) at leisure, seascapes and so on.

Madrid: Guitars

Walking into one of Madrid’s storied guitar makers’ workshops can feel like stepping into the past. Curly wood shavings, from the palest pine to ebony, fall onto the floor as artisans(工匠)turn some humble wood into works of art. It’s painstaking work — all done by hand — with classical guitar models and the methods of making them changing little over the last century.

1．What does the job of preparing Hungarian paprika suggest?

A.The popularity of Hungarian peppers.

B.The difficulty of processing peppers.

C.The unique tradition in Budapest.

D.The hot level of Hungarian peppers.

2．Which city can be a splendid setting for a film?

3．What’s the similarity of the four items?

A.They’re all treasures of a city.

B.They all date back several centuries.

C.Their production processes are all painstaking.

D.They all win popularity in most European countries.

I resisted for years becoming anything like my dad or at least acknowledging that I was anything like him because, well, because I wanted to be me, not him; but there I sat at his memorial service several months ago, telling myself, "You’ve got a lot more of your dad in you than you think."

There’s this phrase my dad used, and I know I’m going to sound rude to complain about it, but it did use to bother me. "I’m so proud of you," he told us kids, whether we’d won a sailing race or run a marathon or managed to get a book published. "I’m so proud of you." That should be a good thing, but here’s what always went through my unforgiving mind: You’re taking credit for what isn’t really yours but mine. "I’m so proud of you." It came out of my dad’s mouth all the time, on those long-distance calls where I might have mentioned something that happened at work or when he and Mom came to visit and we showed off the talents of our two boys.

I knew the feeling of parental pride well, especially when my boys achieved in ways that were beyond my comprehension and ability, but I looked for other ways to express it. "That’s an incredible story you’ve written," I would say about the composition. "I can’t believe how fast you solved that problem," I would admire the work of the math genius. But never just the blanket phrase.

But there I was at Dad’s memorial, about to praise him, thinking that I could say exactly what my brother said, "He lets me be me." That was his achievement. In the phrase that I promised I would never utter to my children was a world of forgiveness, care and appreciation. So just the other day when my older son, now a promising manager, sent me an email about the thank-you dinner his latest client threw him, I thought hard for clever things to say, finally realizing my kids just want what my dad gave me. "I’m so proud of you," I wrote. Just like the old man.

4．What do we know from Paragraph 1?

A.The writer took on his father’s characteristics.

B.The writer’s father loved him more than anyone.

C.The writer missed his father in his deepest heart.

D.The writer resisted accepting his father’s love for him.

5．What did the writer think when his father said "I’m so proud of you"?

A.He should work harder.

B.His achievement was wrongly claimed by his father.

C.His father went too far to praise him.

D.He didn’t clearly know what his father meant.

6．How does the writer express his parental pride?

A.By knowing well of his kids.

B.By inspiring his kids’ writing.

C.By admiring his kids’ work.

D.By being specific about his praise for his kids.

7．Why did the writer write the five words to his son?

A.He accepted his father’s way to show love.

B.He wished his kids to achieve more.

C.He couldn’t find another way.

D.He wanted to sound affectionate.

Mayor Bill de Blasio designated(指定) the Lunar New Year an official public school holiday in New York City in June, 2015.

The move came after de Blasio in March, 2015 declared school holidays on the most-observed holidays in Islam, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. De Blasio, making good on a promise made during his 2013 mayoral campaign, said students would also have a day off on the Lunar New Year, and not long ago the Asian holiday took place on February 8, 2016.

"About 15% of the city’s school system is of Asian descent(血统), and many students have been taking the day off as a sick day," said State Senator Daniel Squadron. "It’s a big deal," he said, whose district includes Manhattan’s Chinatown. "Families have had to choose between their most important cultural celebration and missing a day of school."

The city’s Department of Education had been working on the practical arrangements for adding another holiday while maintaining the legal 180 school days. The problem was solved by combining two half days that previously did not count towards the total to form a single full day that can be counted towards the total. After San Francisco, New York is the second major urban school district to add the Lunar New Year to the official school calendar.

"This holiday is not about kids just getting a day off from school," said Assemblyman Ron Kim. "It’s about the City of New York telling hundreds of Asian-American societies that America is a cultural melting pot." Kim said recognizing the holiday is one way of pushing back against feelings of isolation and marginalization(边缘化) felt by the Asian-American community.

8．What does the underlined part in Paragraph 2 mean?

9．How does New York make the Lunar New Year an official public school holiday?

A.By cancelling a legal 1-day holiday.

B.By copying the way of San Francisco.

C.By adding a new full day to the school calendar.

D.By changing the legal 180 school days.

10．What do we know from Ron Kim’s words?

A.He’s opposed to the new school holiday.

B.Asian culture is valued most in New York.

C.Asian culture is part of the American society.

D.The holiday wipes out Asian Americans’ isolation.

11．What’s the best title for this passage?

A.A new public school holiday in New York

B.A promise made by the mayor of New York

C.Cultural differences between America and Asia

D.A revolution of the Lunar New Year in New York

Jeremy Kerr, a researcher at the University of Ottawa in Canada, and his colleagues analyzed more than 400,000 observations of bumblebee species collected in North America and Europe from 1975 to 2010. When the researchers recorded the locations of these bee populations, they found that many of the 67 species analyzed were moving northward from their southern limits while the northern edges of the bees’ ranges are staying in place. What it results in is obvious.

Bees have been paid more attention to in recent years, with populations of honeybees and bumblebees obviously declining in some parts of Europe. Previously, attention on the decline of bee populations has focused on causes including habitat loss, pesticide use and the spread of bee parasites(寄生虫). But the work by Kerr’s team found something different.

"For every species, there is one or two species declining and others that are not moving at all," says Kerr. This shift has also been observed in other species, such as butterflies. But due to a new cause — the rise of temperatures instead of total pesticide use, a change in land use or parasites, bumblebees — unlike butterflies — have failed to extend the northern boundaries of their ranges into the territory that is now habitable for them, so bumblebee species across Europe and North America are declining rapidly, the latest study led by Kerr’s team finds. "Our data suggest that the new factor plays a leading, or perhaps the leading, role in this trend," says Kerr.

"This study shows that a fourth factor is also beginning to affect it. It is likely that the combined stresses from all of these pressures will have destructive impacts on bumblebees in the not-too-distant future," says Dave Goulson, a bee researcher at the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK.

Exactly what can be done to help bumblebees is not clear. Kerr’s team suggests that relocating colonies might be an answer but Goulson says that because the insects are mobile they are capable of moving northwards if there is suitable habitat available.

12．What does the move of the bees’ southern limits lead to?

13．What’s the new cause of bee populations’ declining according to Kerr?

14．Which statement may Goulson agree with?

A.Relocating bumblebees isn’t much good.

B.The findings of Kerr’s study are doubtful.

C.The future of bumblebees is still promising.

D.Knowing bumblebees’ living habits is the most urgent.

15．What kind of writing is this passage?

Unless you think you’re the smartest, who doesn’t want to be smarter? Of course I want to be smarter too. So I try to find out who’s the real smart guy that maybe I can learn from. 　16　 

▲They probably do social media. Not always, but probably. 　17　 They also use this to ensure they can feed their brains with things they otherwise wouldn’t have come across.

▲ 　18　They never bother their head about the problem of "work-life balance" and somehow manage to seem 100% engaged in what they’re doing, on all fronts simultaneously(同时), even though you know they’re taking appropriate steps behind the scenes to make sure their lives are well balanced.

▲They know they are the smartest in the room, but they don’t spend much time talking about that. 　19　 That is, they challenge themselves to make everyone else in the room the smartest person too.

▲They never, ever, under any circumstances, make you look stupid, even though it would be easy to do so. They’ve learnt through bitter experience that the only thing that happens when you make someone look bad is that you look bad yourself.

▲If they are managers, they will make every effort to get people more connected and more popular than them in their teams. 　20　 They’re not threatened because they know that smartness is synergistic(相互促进的).

A. It’s not only a chance to listen.

B. They know it is an advantage to them.

C. They take it as a personal challenge instead.

D. They will be smiling even when things go wrong.

E. Now I’ve got an answer about whether someone’s smart.

F. They also ensure their smart people look smarter than them.

G. They deal with home, work and personal interests perfectly.