Yang Xiuying, 76, sits at a wooden loom(织布机). As her fingers pass the shuttle back and forth through the cotton threads, the old machine comes to life.

Ever since she was a young girl, Yang has been making indigo(靛蓝的) cloth. “You can never buy this type of handmade cloth at the market," she says.

For the Dong people in Guizhou, making indigo cloth has a long tradition. The skill has been passed down from mother to daughter over generations. Nearly every family makes its own cloth.

This traditional skill, unfortunately, is now under threat. Young people show little interest in it. Some of them have moved to big cities to find better jobs. Local officials are trying to change young people' S attitude. One program has set up several cloth-making factories in Guizhou. After learning how to make indigo cloth, young Dong people can now find jobs easily. They can also work closer to home.

Traditionally, the Dong people consider indigo cloth as important as rice. Many Dong women spend countless hours making the cloth. They rise and start working very early in the morning. To make the cloth shiny, it must be rubbed and beaten hard. The noise of cloth being beaten often wakes the whole village up.

Almost every Dong woman over the age of 40 has a large round container for indigo dye(染料). The cloth has to be placed in the dye over dozens of rounds to gain the rich color. The process of coloring usually takes two weeks.

Yang holds out her purple and winkled hands. “They say she who has the darkest indigo marks on her hands makes the best cloth,” the old lady says.

A．

B．

C．

D．

What’s the first thing that pops into your mind when you think of wheat straw? Most people would probably just see it as a pile of waste in a farmer’s field. However, Wu Cui, an intangible cultural inheritor, can turn the straw left over from harvested wheat into eye-catching functional artworks.

Straw weaving is a method of making daily items or artworks by braiding straw. It was listed as a national intangible cultural heritage in 2008. The earliest straw-woven products were unearthed at Hemudu Cultural Ruins, a Neolithic (新石器的) cultural site located in Zhejiang province. The Book of Rites, one of the classical works of Confucianism, also records that there were mats made of cattail grass (香蒲) during the Zhou Dynasty.

Wu explains the process of straw weaving: you need to select the materials first, and then sketch the piece on paper, which requires drawing skills. Next comes the weaving, shaping and finally the preserving of the work. Even by sticking to that process, it does not mean that you will always create a good piece of work, and the hardest part is to make it lifelike and solid.

Wu recalls that, when she was a child, woven straw items could be found almost in every household in the countryside, such as straw hats and straw shoes, because they were practical in everyday life. “Due to the impact of industrialization, manufactured goods have replaced such products, which provide low profits, and there are only about 100 individuals engaging in the work across the country,” she notes.

From her perspective, straw weaving should respond to people’s needs and preferences, while still drawing inspiration from traditional culture. “For straw weaving to blossom, craftspeople should make joint efforts to grasp the trends and opportunities of the times to create new and relevant products,” she says.

When asked about her plans, Wu says she longs to dig deeper into local traditional culture and create cultural creative products by making full use of the straw weaving technique.

Should we allow modern buildings to be built next to older buildings in a historic area of a city? In order to answer this question, we must first examine whether people really want to preserve the historic feel of an area.Not all historical buildings are attractive.However, there may be other reasons—for example, economic reasons—why they should be preserved.So, let us assume(假设) that historical buildings are both attractive and important to the majority of people.What should we do then if a new building is needed?

In my view, new architectural styles can exist perfectly well alongside an older style.Indeed, there are many examples in my own hometown of Tours where modern designs have been placed very successfully next to old buildings.As long as the building in question is pleasing and does not dominate(影响) its surroundings too much, it often improves the attractiveness of the area.

It is true that there are examples of new buildings which have spoilt(破坏) the area they are in, but the same can be said of some old buildings too.Yet people still speak against new buildings in historic areas.I think this is simply because people are naturally conservative(保守的) and do not like change.

Although we have to respect people’s feelings as fellow users of the buildings, I believe that it is the duty of the architect and planner to move things forward. If we always reproduced what was there before, we would all still be living in caves .Thus, I would argue against copying previous architectural styles and choose something fresh and different, even though that might be the more risky choice.