Nowadays, many foreign students fly to China, a country【B1】______kilometers

Nowadays, many foreign students fly to China, a country(26)thousands of kilometers from their own, just to learn this hard language, as well as to taste something of its(27)ancient culture.
    Frank Micheal from Germany is one of them, though he would rather be called Dashan, a Chinese name given to him by his friend. He has been at Shanghai(28)International Studies University(SISU)for a year. Before this, he had studied Chinese for a year at Heidelberg University, in Germany. "So far, I have had no(29)difficulty talking with Chinese people," He says, "But when they’re talking to each other I cannot easily understand them." he(30)adds, "Chinese culture is quite different from our own. Learning another language and another culture, is like(31)stepping out of a door, through which I can look back and see more clearly my own culture."
    For western students like Dashan, the block(32)characters! of Chinese are a big(33)headache. Pinyin is easier, he said, but you cannot(34)figure out what a word means just by reading the Pinyin, since there are so many homophones in Chinese.
    Professor Yang of SISU said that when the students are learning a language, they should also learn its culture, so the program includes a(35)course named Survey of China.