Festivals and celebrations of all kinds have been held everywhere since ancient times. Most ancient festivals would celebrate the end of cold weather, planting in spring and harvest in autumn. Today’s festivals have many origins: some are seasonal, some for special people and some for special events.

Dragon Boat Festival celebrations take place in China on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. They are held in memory of Qu Yuan, a famous person who wrote poems in Ancient China. It was the first traditional Chinese festival added to UNESCO’S List of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Thanksgiving is celebrated mainly in North America, in October or November. Traditionally, it was a chance to give thanks for a good year. Now, it is also a time for families to get together for a big dinner.

May Day is a festival to celebrate the start of summer, with celebrations held across Europe and in parts of North America. People prepare decorations with flowers and dance around poles.

The Spring Festival that is also called Chinese New Year is one of the most important Festivals in China. It starts with a new moon and ends 15 day later on the full moon, marking the beginning of spring. During this festival, people eat dumplings, fish and meat and may give children lucky money in red paper. Nowadays, more and more countries around the world are holding celebrations for Chinese Spring Festival.

Festivals let us enjoy life, be proud of our customs and forget our work for a little while.

No one is born a winner. People make themselves into winners by their own efforts.

I learned this lesson from an experience many years ago. I took the head coaching job at a school in Baxley, Georgia. It was a small school with a weak football program.

It was a tradition for the schools old team to play against the new team at the end of spring practice. The old team had no coach, and they didn’t even practice to prepare for the Game. Being the coach of the new team, I was excited because I knew we were going to win, but to my sadness we were beaten. I couldn’t believe I had got into such a situation. Thinking hard about it, I came to realize that my team might not be the number one team in Georgia, but they were depending on me. I had to change my attitude about their ability and confidence.

I stared doing anything I could to help them build a little pride. Most important, I began to treat them like winners. That summer, when the other teams enjoyed their vacations. We met every day and practiced passing and kicking the football.

Six months after suffering our failure on the spring practice field, we won our first game and our second, and continue to improve. Finally, we faced the number one team in the state. I felt that it would be a victory for us even if we lost the game. But that wasn’t what happened. My boys beat the best team in Georgia, giving me one of the greatest thrills of my life!

From the experience I learned a lot about how the attitude of the leader can influence the members of a team. Instead of seeing my boys as losers, I pushed and encouraged them. I helped them to see them-selves differently, and they built themselves into winners. Winners are made, not born.

China is recognized as a world leader in the development of artificial intelligence and facial recognition systems. A Chinese company says it has created a new facial recognition system that can identify people even if they are wearing masks. Engineers at the Beijing-based company say their system is the first to be created to effectively identify people wearing face masks.

The company told a news agency that a team of 20 people built the system in about a month. The system is based on existing technologies developed over the past 10 years. The process involved adding a collection of about 6 million unmasked faces and a much smaller collection of masked faces, the company said.

The company is now selling two main kinds of products that use the new technology. One performs “single channel” recognition, which is designed to be used at the entrances to buildings.

The other product is a ”multi-channel! "recognition system that uses groups of surveillance(监视)cameras. It can identify individuals in a crowd of up to 30 people within a second.

“When people are wearing a mask that covers the mouth and the nose, the recognition rate can reach about 95%, which can ensure that most people can be identified,” said Huang, vice president of the company. He added that the system’s success rate for people not wearing a mask is about 99. 5%.

However, the new system struggles to identify people wearing both a mask and sunglasses. “In this situation, all of the key facial information is lost. In such cases recognition is tough.” Huang said.

People were reacting differently to the new technology. While some citizens have been against using such tools, the majority have accepted the technology as an elective way to decrease crime and catch criminals.