B
“We’ve prepared some games for you. If you make it, you can get a stamp (盖章) which shows the logo of the 110th anniversary (周年纪念日) of our school,” said the teacher. To celebrate the founding of the school, it designed the special seal (印章). The seal shows the long history and culture of the school, just like the art of seal carving.
The Chinese art of seal carving puts together calligraphy (书法), sculpture (雕像), painting and designing. The history of seals goes back to before the Qin Dynasty. At that time, seals were used as a symbol of power. Both emperors and officers called their seals xi. However, starting from the Qin Dynasty, only the emperors’ seals could be called xi. The officers’ seals were named yin. For centuries, seals were mostly functional (功能性的). It was during the Song and Yuan Dynasties that seal carving became a form of art.
Now the art of seal carving has caught young people’s eye again. Fang Xiaoxi, a 36-year-old artist, set up a seal carving workshop. Offering hands-on experience of carving seals, the workshop has seen people come up with their own ideas or designs, including logos, cartoon characters like Peppa Pig and pictures of food.
▲ Once an old couple came to carve a nine-square hotpot (火锅) because they first met each other when eating the hotpot. This was a way for them to keep the sweet memories (回忆) of the past. Another girl carved out her boyfriend’s name. “I’ll give this seal to him as a gift so he’ll think of me whenever he sees it,” she said.
“Experiencing seal carving is only a start to learn about the art, and people are free to carve whatever they want. They are giving a new life to traditional seal carving,” Fang said. “It might not be a wonderful work of seal carving in some ways but I think it is a kind of beauty.”
(
D
) 5. How does the writer start the passage?
A. By listing numbers. B. By asking questions.
C. By telling a story. D. By giving an example.
(
C
) 6. Which sentence can be put in “ ▲ ”?
A. However, behind these interesting designs, there were some sad stories.
B. Fang Xiaoxi was also willing to share her own stories to develop her workshop.
C. Besides showing creativity, seals become a way to express personal feelings.
D. To Fang’s joy, seal carving was seen and liked by more and more young people.
(
A
) 7. What can we infer from the passage?
A. Seal carving was functional and became a form of art.
B. In ancient times, only emperors and officers could use seals.
C. In the Qin Dynasty, emperors’ power became stronger than before.
D. Fang Xiaoxi thought people always wasted time carving what they liked.
(
B
) 8. What’s the best title of the passage?
A. The History of Seal Carving
B. Seal Carving Art Gets New Life
C. Traditional Seal Carving Art
D. The Beauty in Seal Carving
