In much of Asia, especially the so-called “rice bowl” cultures of China, Japan, Korea, 【小题1】 Vietnam, food is usually eaten with chopsticks.

Chopsticks are usually two long, thin pieces of wood or bamboo. They can also be made of plastic, animal bone or metal. Sometimes chopsticks are quite artistic. Truly elegant chopsticks might 【小题2】 (make) of gold and silver with Chinese characters. Skilled workers also combine various hardwoods and metal 【小题3】 (create) special designs.

The Chinese have used chopsticks for five thousand years. People probably cooked their food in large pots, 【小题4】 (use) twigs (树枝) to remove it. Over time, 【小题5】 the population grew, people began cutting food into small pieces so it would cook more quickly.

Food in small pieces could be eaten easily with twigs which 【小题6】(gradual) turned into chopsticks.

Some people think that the great Chinese scholar Confucius, 【小题7】 lived from roughly 551 to 479 B.C., influenced the 【小题8】 (develop) of chopsticks. Confucius believed knives would remind people of killings and 【小题9】 (be) too violent for use at the table.

Chopsticks are not used everywhere in Asia. In India, for example, most people traditionally eat 【小题10】 their hands.

Happy Birthday to You is a happy song, 【小题1】 the story behind it may not be known to all. Two sisters, Mildred Hill and Dr. Patty 【小题2】(write) a song for children 【小题3】(call) Good Morning to All. The song was sure to be 【小题4】 success due to【小题5】talents. The sisters published the song in 1893.

Thirty-one years later, a gentleman by the name of Robert H. Coleman published the song without the sisters 【小题6】( permit). And 【小题7】(make) matters worse, he added a second verse, which was the familiar Happy Birthday to you.

Mr. Coleman's addition of the second verse 【小题8】(popular) the song and eventually, Happy Birthday to You, the one and only birthday song totally replaced the sisters' Good Morning to All.

After Mildred died in 1916, Patty took Mr. Coleman to court. In court, she proved that she and her sister owned the melody. Because the family 【小题9】(legal)owns the song, they are entitled to royalties from it whenever it is sung 【小题10】commercial purposes.

The advent of the compass was a great 【小题1】 (contribute)of the Chinese people to world civilization. The compass is a simple instrument 【小题2】 (consist) of a magnetic needle that can be turned 【小题3】 (flexible) and a compass with a scale to indicate the direction of the earth’s magnetic field.

The earliest instruments that could indicate direction were called Sinan, 【小题4】 appeared around the Warring States period, when natural magnets were polished into the shape of 【小题5】 spoon and placed on a graduated square engraved plate to give a general indication of direction.

Later on, it was discovered that by rubbing a magnet against an object such as a steel needle in one direction several 【小题6】 (time), the needle could also be magnetised, so that it could point more accurately than the Sinan, and thus the compass 【小题7】 (invented). In the Song dynasty, an instrument was also invented to indicate direction, 【小题8】 (call) the compass fish, which floated on water.

【小题9】 the Southern Song Dynasty, people assembled the magnetic needle and the dial into a single unit, named the needle dial, also called the meridian dial, compass and so on. Our compass spread to Europe and the Arabian region around the 【小题10】 (twelve) century, greatly contributing to the development of world navigation and human society.