Childhood is a time of limitless possibilities. And old age is the time of wisdom. But for children who face the monster of cancer, their lives are fast-forwarded into profound wisdom. Not only do they have hand-to-hand struggle with the limits of life, they face it with raw truth and courage. For them, life is hard-won yet full of unbelievable hope, and is to be lived to the fullest.

We have much to learn from these children.

That’s what art therapist, Lisa Murray, believed as she worked to help children with cancer to release their feelings through their drawings, which have turned into a book, Angels & Monsters.

Murray found that in their struggle, kids would tell her constantly, “I’m just a regular kid; I just want to play, to go to school, to go outside ... I just happen to have cancer.”

She was moved and inspired by their simple will to survive. The children were facing the disease head on. She saw some powerful images in their artwork. “What courage does it take to do that?” said Murray.

Murray selected 25 children aged 13 months to 18 years. She asked the four-year-olds and up, “If you could tell the world what it is like to have cancer, what would you say, what would you draw?” For two-to three-year-olds, she asked, “What do you want to tell people about yourself?” And for the youngest, she just took their handprints. It’s such a human expression, “Here’s my mark,” said Murray.

She then asked them about their pictures and wrote down exactly what they said. This gave the artwork a powerful voice. Coupled with Murray’s photographs of the children in the book, the three forms of expression leave both a permanent record and lasting impression with the viewer.

As a therapist, Murray doesn’t give the kids the impression that the drawing process is right or wrong. Whatever they draw is unconditionally acceptable. “Children play, they draw, and that’s the natural language of children. That’s why art therapy is so wonderful,” she said.

For many Chinese consumers, a satisfying breakfast is one that includes either hot porridge or steamed buns (馒头). Cold sandwiches, which are popular with Westerners, are probably one of the last options on their minds. But that is not to say that consumers, especially those in an international city like Shanghai, would avoid everything considered Western for breakfast. For instance, coffee, which has steadily grown in popularity in the country, is one drink that many cannot do without today.

To satisfy this growing demand for breakfast sets that combine elements from the East and the West, food companies have been rolling out (推出) a host of new offerings to attract the customer. One example is Shanghai Qiao Coffee, launched by local time-honored food company Qiaojiashan at the end of 2019. Apart from its traditional dim sum (点心), the store also sells various types of coffee.

According to Shen Yan, deputy manager of Qiaojiashan, the most popular breakfast set now is the steamed vegetable bun paired with black coffee. “The calories that one gets from a meal consisting of Chinese dim sum and coffee are less than those of a Western breakfast. Since a steamed bun has nearly 200 calories and a cup of black coffee barely has any calories, this combination can be considered healthy and delicious,” said Shen.

Even the smaller shoppers in the food scene are jumping on the East-West breakfast trend. Western food companies, too, have been rolling out Chinese breakfast options. “Consumers and even cultural heritage will also benefit from the increased competition. If not for the current trend which has revived interest in certain traditional dim sum, these foods could soon be lost to history,” Shen said.

What’s the effect of poetry on our brain? Scientists have been investigating the neuronal (神经元的) connections and brain circuits that can work in the reading of poetry for some time. And, even though the research has only just begun, the results are already fascinating.

Poetry has the oldest recorded texts in literature. Although it’s impossible to say exactly when it began to be used in the oral tradition, we dare to say that it’s accompanied humanity forever. This gives us an idea of the impact that poetic language can have on our emotional and cognitive state. The emotional response to literature in general shares areas of activation with music. However, more areas of the right hemisphere (半球) seem to be related to poetry. The researchers measured the goosebumps resulting from the tingling (强烈感受) sensation in reading poetry. This type of sensation has also been proven to result from music. However, the tingling sensations produced by poetry activate different areas of the brain compared to those activated by music.

Dr. Eugen Wassiliwizky’s team collected data on behavioral responses in people reading or listening to poetry. They proved that poetry is capable of causing emotional responses and rich emotional experiences. In addition, a poem expresses the poet’s ideas. From a psychological view, poetry is a game of language that manages to group words in a surprising way. We could compare this with how a chef combines ingredients that seem impossible to combine, producing extraordinary results. Poetry is based on rules of construction. It sets up a rhythm, which then breaks, before finally returning to it. The play on the meanings of words, sometimes several meanings in just one word, is extremely intellectually inspiring. We can read a poem a thousand times, and still find its new meanings.

Generally, our passage through the wonderful world of poetry is cut short by a rather reduced exposure during childhood and the overly analytical approach of this literary genre (类型),which is given in most schools. Although, the studies that experts have conducted on poetry get a lot of interesting results, poetry still holds a mystery that science hasn’t yet been able to investigate. For example, why a perfect cadence (抑扬顿挫) and rhythm can lift the spirit of people is the new challenge for the research.