He became a very successful player, winning the Wimbledon title again in 1986. Becker also helped West Germany win its first Davis Cup in 1988. In 1989, he won the Wimbledon, the US Open and another Davis Cup.
In 1991, he reached the World number 1 ranking by winning the Australian Open. Becker defeated Jim Courier in straight sets to win the 1992 Association of Tennis Professionals Tour World title. His final Grand Slam title was in 1996, where he beat Michael Chang for another Australian Open title in four sets.
Becker completed at the 1992 Summer Olympics where he won a gold medal in the men's doubles event.
Throughout his career, Becker won 49 singles titles and 15 doubles titles. He is known for his rivalry with certain players, including Ivan Lendl, Stefan Edberg and Michael Stich.
GCE Advanced Level
The General Certificate of Education Advanced Level (commonly shortened to A-Level) is a set of exams taken worldwide. They are usually taken during the end of secondary school. In the UK, they are usually taken two years after the students have completed GCSE or IGCSE exams.
A-Levels are usually split into six parts, each with its own exam.
Most people study three A-Levels, and one AS-Level. An AS-Level is the first half of an A-Level. An AS-Level can be studied on its own, but to get an A-Level the second half must also be completed. The second half of an A-Level is an A2-Level. I student might opt to appear for his AS (Advanced Subsidiary) and A2 together in one go.
A Levels are a requirement for most universities if the student wishes to proceed to degree level education.
Chinese New Year
Chinese New Year, known in China as the SpringFestival and in Singapore as the LunarNewYear, is a holiday on and around the new moon on the first day of the year in the traditional Chinese calendar. This calendar is based on the changes in the moon and is only sometimes changed to fit the seasons of the year based on how the Earth moves around the sun. Because of this, Chinese New Year is never on January1. It moves around between January21 and February20.
The Chinese New Year is one of the most important holidays for Chinese people all over the world. Its 7th day used to be used instead of birthdays to count people's ages in China. The holiday is still used to tell people which "animal" of the Chinese zodiac they are part of. The holiday is a time for gifts to children and for family gatherings with large meals, just like Christmas in Europe and in other Christian areas. Unlike Christmas, the children usually get gifts of cash in red envelopes ("hongbao") and not toys or clothes.
Chinese New Year used to last 15 days until the Lantern Festival on the year's first full moon. Now, it is a national holiday in the Republic and People's Republic of China, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia. It is also celebrated in some parts of Thailand. In some places, only the first day or three days are celebrated. In the PRC, nearby weekends are changed to create a 7-day-long "Golden Week".
The traditional new years in Vietnam (Tet) and in Korea (Korean New Year) are almost always on the same day as Chinese New Year but are sometimes different. The Japanese New Year used to work the same way but has been very different since some changes in the 19th century. Losar and Tsagaan Sar, the traditional Tibetan and Mongolian new years, are very close to the Chinese New Year but different ways of thinking about the moon's changes and adding months can make them happen weeks apart from the Chinese festival.
The Mandarin Chinese name of the holiday is "Chūn Jié", which means "Spring Festival". This is why it is often called the "Spring Festival" by Chinese speakers of English, even though the holiday always occurs in the winter months of January or February. Its name is written in traditional Chinese writing and in the easier writing now used by mainland China and Singapore. The Republic of China began to use this name in the 1910s, after it began to use the European calendar for most things.
Before that, the holiday was usually just called the "NewYear". Because the traditional Chinese calendar is mostly based on the changes in the moon, the Chinese New Year is also known in English as the "Lunar New Year" or "Chinese Lunar New Year". This name comes from "Luna", an old Latin name for the moon. The Indonesian name for the holiday is Imlek, which comes from the Hokkien word for the old Chinese calendar and is therefore also like saying "Lunar New Year".
Another old name for the holiday was "Lìchūn", meaning "Early Spring". In Chinese, this is also a special name for the sun's place from about February4 to 19 each year, when the sun is 45 to 30° ahead of its place on the 1stday of spring. The name is not often used to talk about the Chinese New Year any more. On Taiwan, the real "Lichun" has been called "Farmer's Day" since 1941. A year between two Chinese New Years without it is thought to be unlucky for marriages.
Chinese New Year always starts on a new moon, when the Moon is between the Earth and Sun and it looks all dark in the night sky. Because new moons happen about every 29.53 days but the year set by Pope GregoryXIII is 365.2425 days long, the Chinese holiday moves to different days each year. The Chinese calendar adds a 13th month every so often to keep the seasons in the right place, so the first day of the new year always happens between January21 and February20 on the 2nd or 3rd new moon after the 1st day of winter. The chart on the right gives the day of each Chinese New Year from 1996 to 2031.
In the past, the Chinese emperors did not number their years from one place. Instead, they gave names to eras (groups of years) any time they wanted. Since they still changed its number at every new year festival, the first year of a new era might only be a few days long. One example of this is the "1st year of Kaiyuan" during the Tang, which lasted a week or so in 713. In the same way, people in China and around East Asia did not count their ages from zero or add one year at every birthday. They counted birth as the start of their 1st year and added another year upon the 7th day of the New Year, which they called People's Day ("Rénrì"). This came from an old story about how a goddess named Nüwa made all the animals. The day she made people was used as the common birthday for everyone. In this way, people sometimes called a baby who born on the 6th day of the New Year a 2-year-old only a few hours after its birth. (Today, it is much more common in China to count age starting at zero and add years at birthdays, like in English-speaking countries.)
The Chinese used to keep time using 2 different lists of characters, known in English as the 10Heavenly Stems and the 12Earthly Branches. The stems were the 10 days of the week under the Shang dynasty, each with its own sun and a special gift to different dead family members of the king. The branches were parts of the almost 12-year path that Jupiter takes around the sun. Each is said to be yin (dark or female) or yang (bright or male), so that when they are put together they make a list of 60 pairs. (The current list began in 1984 and will end in 2043.) Later, each of the stems was also said to match one of the 5 Chinese elements—wood, fire, dirt, metal, or water—and each of the branches was said to be a different animal: Rat, Ox & Cow, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster & Chicken, Dog, and Pig. The Han Chinese list begins with the Year of the "Wood Rat"; the Tibetan list is much the same but begins with the Year of the "Fire Rabbit".