Cloze Passages

The text below is about Mid-Autumn Festival.

Read the passage carefully and fill in each blank with an appropriate answer.

The Mid-Autumn festival is a (01) harvest festival celebrated by Chinese, dating back over 3,000 years to moon worship in China’s Shang Dynasty. In Malaysia and Singapore, it is also sometimes referred to as the

Lantern Festival or Mooncake Festival. The Mid-Autumn Festival is (02) on the 15th day of the

eighth month in the Chinese calendar. It is a (03) when the moon is supposedly as its fullest and

roundest. The traditional food of this festival is the mooncake, of which there are many different (04)

The Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the few most important holidays in the Chinese calendar, the others being Chinese

New Year and Winter Solstice, and is a legislated (05) in several countries. Farmers celebrate the

end of the summer harvesting season on this date. Also, traditional on this day, Chinese family members and friends will

gather to (06) the bright mid-autumn harvest moon and eat moon cakes and pomelos under the

moon together.

According to a widespread folk (07) , the Mid-Autumn Festival commemorated an uprising in China

against the Mongol rulers of the Yuan Dynasty in the 14 century. As group gatherings were banned, it was

(08) to make plans for a rebellion. Noted that the Mongols did not eat mooncakes, Liu Bowen, the

advisor to the Chinese rebel leader Zhu Yuanzhang, came up with the idea of timing the rebellion to coincide with the

Mid-Autumn Festival. He sought permission to distribute thousands of (09) to the Chinese

residents in the city to bless the longevity of the mongol emperor. Inside each cake, however, (10)

inserted a piece of paper with message “Kill the Mongols on the 15th day of the 8th month” On the night of the Moon

Festival, the rebels successfully attacked and overthrew the government.