The best London hotels near Oxford Street

    An expert guide to the top London hotels near Oxford Street—eight minutes' walk or less— including the best hotels for their family-friendly services and budget accommodation.

    The London EDITION

    Soho, London, England

    This place is just off Oxford Street in leafy Fitzrovia. It will suit those who want more than a bed for the night. The multi-functional lobby makes a great entrance, though it's the restored ceiling, old not new, that really grabs the attention. The picture- lined restaurant is an equally successful space. The rooms are a bit like being inside a luxurious cigar box, with their wood-panelled walls and artful fur sofa covers that add a feeling of warmth.

    The Langham, London

    Marylebone, London, England

    An advert from the late 19th century declares that the Langham is situated in the "most healthy, convenient and fashionable position in London. "Today this still holds true; the hotel is right in the centre of London. This is one of London's oldest grand hotels. Everything feels as if it has been running the way it should for a long time. Expect enormous vases of fresh flowers in public areas, oriental furnishings and marble baths in the rooms. This is also home to Michel Roux Jr's Roux, which does tasty French cuisine.

    The Grazing Goat

    Marylebone, London, England

    The hotel is located on New Quebec Street, a quiet road lined with clothing shops and beauty salons about three minutes' walk from Oxford Street. There's something of a village feel to this area of London that is difficult to correspond with the tourist groups moments away—but it's most welcome. Rooms have Egyptian cotton beds, Aesop toilets and walls in the color of moss green and steel blue. The food menu offers seasonal British foods with the latest trendy ingredients.

    Rome is recognized across the globe for its classical artwork, but recently the city's street art has been drawing attention. While many urban artists stick to painting murals（壁画），one Italian sculptor is resisting the trend with his wonderful works made from an unusual material. Andrea Gandini, a native of Rome in his early twenties, has been recognized for his wood carvings of old tree trunks scattered across the city's landscape.

    Gandini's Trocomorto, or "dead trunk" project, began in 2018, when the artist ran out of sculpting clay. That's when he noticed the remains of an old tree stump in his neighborhood. He realized that Rome was full of potential canvases (画布) just waiting to be given a new life. "Bringing trees back to life" is exactly how Gandini and others describe his art.

    Due to years of poor care by the city, many trees became diseased and had to be cut down. This resulted in lots of old stumps that degraded the streets of Rome, which were costly to remove. However, they have been a perfect canvas of Gandini, who has completed over 50 carvings across the city.

    Gandini gives each old tree trunk a face and personality of its own. By recognizing each formerly living tree as individual, he hopes to give them some dignity in death and respect each of them with their own headstone of sorts. For those that can't make the trip to Rome, Gandini documents his works of art on Facebook.

    Gandini's "dead trunk" project reminds us of what Auguste Rodin says, "There is no lack of beauty in the world, but a lack of eyes to find it." All is beautiful in the eyes of the artist, for his keen eye sees through the heart of all living things. To discover its character is to pierce its outer form and touch its inner truth. This "truth" is also "beauty".

    This new packaging material looks like conventional plastic, but it's actually made from fish waste and algae(海藻)--and unlike plastic, if it escapes into the ocean, a fish could likely eat it safely. The material, called MarinaTex, is the winner of this year's James Dyson Award.

    "It began with my desire to work with waste," says Lucy Hughes, a recent graduate from University of Sussex, who once visited a fish processing factory to see the massive quantity of waste generated by the industry and find new ways to use it. She focused on fish skins and scales (鳞片). "When I had it in my hands, I realized this has got potential, she says. "It's super strong and flexible." Hughes spent months experimenting with fish waste in her kitchen, running more than 100 experiments to find a binder and a process that could hold together the proteins in the fish skins and scales. "I had a lot of failed attempts—a lot of things either were too easily broken or too soft or easily went bad," she says. She finally landed on a type of algae that can be locally got.

    The material can be used to replace oil-based plastic in packaging such as bags or the half transparent windows used to show products in boxes. As her research continues, Hughes says that she'll be studying how MarinaTex works and how long it could be used to store food.

    Unlike some "compostable" plastics, which need to be processed in an industrial composting facility to break down, the new material can break down in four to six weeks in a backyard compost bin. ''All the ingredients are food-grade safe," Hughes says." So, this breaks down much like a piece of food would break down."

    Two years ago this month, a 19-year-old American shot and killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Fourteen of the victims were students; the other three were teachers. The gunman was a former student at the high school.

    On this anniversary, as with other anniversaries of school shootings, Americans continue debating how to make sure students are safe in schools.

    To increase preparedness for such an event, many schools now hold shooter drills for students and their teachers. A report released by Everytown for Gun Safety, a non-profit organization, notes the possible harmful effects of such exercises. It urges school administrators to look for better ways to make schools safe and to prepare children for an active shooter.

    One problem with the way schools carry out shooter drills is how much they frighten students. When a school fails to inform parents and students about plans for a drill, the children may think that the attack is real. In some communities, the report says, schools deploy individuals who are told to act like "masked gunmen". Students as young as three or four years old may be told to stay quiet in a small space for a long period of time. Experts on mental health say these experiences can have both short- and long-term effects on how well the children behave in school, as well as on their physical and mental health.

    Melissa Reeves, former president of the National Association of School Psychologists, said the drills may "trigger either past trauma or trigger such a similar reaction that it actually ends up scaring the individuals instead of better preparing them to respond in these kinds of situations."

    In 2007, one study found it better to prepare students for an "intruder", rather than a shooter. Another study noted the value of announcing drills in advance and following them with discussion. Students in that situation felt better prepared to handle possible violence.

    Whether through advertisements, news articles or social media posts, most of us by now have started hearing about the upcoming data network of the future. What is 5G?

    To help all of us understand them, we have listed some facts everyone should know.

    ●First, what is 5G?

    5G is the 5th generation network. It is a new global network after 1G, 2G, 3G and 4G, which can connect everyone and everything together. With 5G there is a possibility that we can do everything.

    ●

    Self-driving cars, which will depend on ultra-fast data transmission speeds to communicate with other cars as well as their surroundings, promise a safer transportation system if and when technology is fully realized.

    ●5G will change the way we work or study.

    In the post-coronavirus world, having remote working capabilities will be more important than ever. Video meeting, e-learning and other Internet-enabled work applications will be possible to the point where people can use them as easily in their home or on the road as in the office or classroom.

    ●5G will change society in too many ways.

    The use-cases and applications widely talked about are only a part of what 5G will make possible. Just as in the early days of the Internet in the 1990s, few foresaw the rise of useful websites like Wikipedia, org. The same will surely be true of 5G.

    With 5G, other technologies don't seem like a dream anymore. Now say goodbye to 4G in your homes and be prepared for the new wave of 5G.

A. Self-driving will grow popular.

B. 5G will help make self-driving cars a reality.

C. The computer game players can have a faster speed.

D. Why does 5G matter so much in people's daily life?

E. The power to do anything we want will be at our fingertips.

F. 5G means faster data speeds and ultra-low latency （超低延迟）.

G. It will be also easier for doctors to treat patients remotely by 5G.

    The team I work in just had 2 new interns (实习生), and I happen to be their supervisor. After today's lunch break, I saw that one of them was reading things on her smart phone, maybe on some social network, I 1 . I went to her and said, "There's another document here 2 translation. Do you have time to finish it for me?" That document was not in her 3 workloads. But I thought I could let her 4 herself a little bit with it, seeing that she seemed to have5 . "Yes, I do have time." She said," but I'm just an intern." I didn't quite know6to say back then. After a while I mumbled, "Right. Yes." And I turned around and left.

    I 7 the time when I was an intern for the first time. I, too, managed to finish my workload so fast, just like her. So, I asked my supervisor "Is there 8 else that I can help?" And she happened to have a plan to make. But she didn't .have time. So she let me do the research and make a draft for her. I was not very familiar with the job 9still tried to carry it out based on my understanding and make it as 10 as possible. And my supervisor was really satisfied with the 11. Later, she told me "You 12 me a lot of time. I didn't need to create it from scratch." And she told me 13 how I should have done the plan differently. I learned a lot about the operation in the process. After that, she came to trust me completely. I got my current job all because of her recommendation.

    Yes, I was just an intern with a low salary, but I 14a better future with my extra labor. Time passing, I got it that there's a kind of 15called short-sightedness.

    Du Fu is to Chinese literature what Shakespeare is to English Drama. "We have Dante, Shakespeare and Du Fu. These poets create the very values by poetry is judged," remarked Harvard Professor Stephen Owen in Du Fu, China's Greatest Poet, a new BBC documentary that aired on April 7.

    (aim) at introducing the charm and beauty of traditional Chinese literature to viewers the world, the documentary invited famous British actor Ian McKellen, who (play) the Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings in 1999, to read 15 of Du's poems that have been translated into English.

    The one-hour film traces the poet's life (experience) in detail. Born in 712 AD, Du lived in the time governed by the Tang Emperor Xuanzong, which was marked by extraordinary prosperity. However, as the An Lushan Rebellion (安史之乱) in 755 AD (complete) shocked the empire, Du Fu had to take his family on the road as refugees (难民)，and endured (starve), poverty and other sufferings. Despite the ups and downs, the poet never stopped and about 1,500 poems (pass) down over the ages.

    In these poems, he expressed he was (concern) for his country and people. Besides, the importance of (celebrate) the simple joys of life was also emphasized.

1）举行成人礼的时间、地点；

2）举行成人礼的意义及其它相关信息。

参考词汇：成人礼 adult ceremony

注意：

1）词数80左右；

2）开头和结尾已给出,不计入总词数。

Dear Mr. Green,

Yours,

Li Hua

    On the morning of Jan 25, the very day of the Chinese Lunar New Year, I was unpleasantly woken up by a phone call. It was for my father. He picked it up, and I sensed from his shaky voice that something went wrong.

    As soon as he hung up, my father turned to my mother and then me, saying, "It was the secretary. He called everyone to meet in the office right now because of the outbreak of the COVID-19."

    "But dad, it's the Spring Festival!" How I wished my father could change his mind and stay with us. Wasn't the day meant for families to be together? My father, an official working in another town, seldom came back home. And was the virus serious enough to keep us apart? I was upset. To my great disappointment, father left home without hesitation, comforting me by saying that he would be back soon.

    In the following days, news loaded with the fast spread of COVID-19 and the astonishing death toll scared everyone in the country. Father never returned home, only occasionally talking on the WeChat, over which he told us how he went from door to door, checking every family and persuading people to stay at home. I realized that my father was working in dangerous conditions under incredibly great burden. He always looked tired but determined. Every time I told him to take care of himself, he would smile and say, "Don't worry, son. Your father is as strong as a bull." At those moments, tears would well up in my eyes, and all my complaints would go away before I could say anything. The talk was brief but meant a lot to me.

    I learned from the media that the medical staff, government officials, and almost everyone involved were working in the battle against the COVID-19. It was these guardian angels (守护天使) who, despite the possibility of getting infected themselves, were risking their life so that the rest of us could be safe. Among them was my father. He's protecting the people, me included.

Para 1: Then came bad news that my father was ill at hospital.

Para 2: Weeks later, my father came back home healthy.