【正文】 t into the evening. Murray hoped to finish the new dictionary in ten years. But after five years, he was still adding words for the letter A! then others went to work with Murray, including his two daughters. He worked on the dictionary until he was very old. Fortyfour years later, in1928, other editors finished it. It included more than 15,000 pages in twelve books. And you thought your dictionary was big!Unit 3My name is Wang Kun. Ever since middle school, my sister Wang Wei and I have dreamed about taking a great bike trip. Two years ago she bought an expensive mountain bike and then she persuaded me to buy one. Last year, she visited our cousins, Dao Wei and Yu Hang at their college in Kunming. They are Dai and grew up in western Yunnan Province near the Lancang River, the Chinese part of the river that is called the Mekong River in other countries. Wang Wei soon got them interested in cycling too. After graduating from finally got the chance to take a bike trip. I asked my sister, Where are we going? It was my sister who first had the idea to cycle along the entire Mekong River from where it begins to where it ends. Now she is planning our schedule for the trip.t know the best way of getting to places, she insisted that she organize the trip properly. Now, I know that the proper way is always her way. I kept asking her, When are we leaving and when are we ing back? I asked her whether she had looked at a map yet. Of course, she hadn39。 my sister doesn39。 Several months before our trip,Wang Wei and I went to the library. We found a large atlas with good maps that showed details of world geography. From the atlas we could see that the Mekong River begins in a glacier on a Tibetan mountain. At first the river is small and the water is clear and cold. Then it begins to move quickly. It bees rapids as it passes through deep valleys, travelling across western Yunnan Province. Sometimes the river bees a waterfall and enters wide valleys. We were both surprised to learn that half of the river is in China. After it leaves China and the high altitude,the Mekong bees wide，brown and warm. As it enters Southeast Asia, its pace slows. It makes wide bends or meanders through low valleys to the plains where rice grows. At last, the river delta enters the South China Sea.Although it was autumn,the snow was already beginning to fall in legs were so heavy and cold that they felt like blocks of you ever seen snowmen ride bicycles?That’s what we looked like! Along the way children dressed in long wool coats stopped to look at the late afternoon we found it was so cold that our water bottles froze..However,the lakes shonelike glass in the setting sun and looked rode in front of me as is very reliable and I knew I didn’t need to encourage her. To climb the mountains was hard work but as we looked around us, we were surprised by the view. We seemed to be able to see for miles. At one point we were so high that we found ourselves cycling through clouds. Then we began going down the hills. It was great fun especially as it gradually became much warmer. In the valleys colourful butterflies flew around us and we saw many yaks and sheep eating green grass. At this point we had to change our caps, coats,gloves and trousers for Tshirts and shorts. We will reach Dali in Yunnan Province soon, where our cousins Dao Wei and Yu Hang will join us. We can hardly wait to see them!Cambodia was in many ways similar to Laos, although it has twice the population. At another inn, we talked with a teacher who told us that half of the people in her country couldn’t read or write. Her village couldn’t even afford to build a school, so she had to teach outside under a large tent. When we said goodbye, we all felt very lucky to have studied in on the road, we passed between many hills and forests. Then we came to the plains and entered Phnom Penh,the capital of Cambodia. In many ways it looked like Vientiane and Ho Chi Minh City。The next morning our group slept late. We were very tired from the long bike ride the day before. Cycling in the hills had been our couins had the chance to make jokes about Wangwei and me. Perhaps,they said,they were the strong ones!We had lunch at a nice outdoor cafe,then rode out of the city.Unit 4 Strange things were happening in the countriside of northest there days the water in the village wells rose and fell, rose and noticed that the well walls had deep cracks in them. A smelly gas came out of the cracks. In the farmeryards,the chickens and even the pigs were too nervous to ran out of the fields looking for places to jumped out of their bowls and about 3:00am on July 28,1976,some people saw bright lights in the sound of the planes could be heard outside the city,who thought little of these events,were asleep as usual that night.1