Going back to campus every September can be stressful for most students. However, some universities in China manage to make this process easier.

Teachers from the university recently held a treasure hunt challenge to lighten up the atmosphere of getting back to campus for students. Teachers hid coupons (奖券) in surprising places around the campus, such as the top of bookshelves or the bottom of basketball hoops. Students who managed to collect the coupons were rewarded with gifts, including books and stuffed toys.

Has carrying your suitcases up and down in your dorm building been a headache? Zhejiang University has come up with some interesting methods to solve this problem. They use a scaling ladder to lift luggage from the first floor. Instead of sweating buckets, students can sit in their dorms and wait for the suitcases to be transported to them.

Getting along with roommates can be tricky when everyone has different habits and personalities. Chengdu University offers a “roommate-selection system” based on big data. After students fill out the questionnaire, including questions about their hobbies and sleeping habits, their roommates will be automatically assigned (分配) by the system based on their preferences. This way, students have more control over who they share their room with.

With considerate teachers and a personalized atmosphere, students will be more ready for the upcoming semester.

Dinh Thu, a Vietnamese (越南的) woman, was fascinated by the Chinese language and culture since childhood and she pursued Chinese as her major in university. After graduation, Dinh entered a Chinese waste incineration (焚化) power plant in Vienam as a translator.

At first, the tough working environment made Dinh unsure how long she could do the job. But the demanding environment was not her only challenge. Dinh soon found out that she had to be an expert in the field of garbage disposal (处理). “The biggest challenge was the translation of technical terms, many of which I couldn’t understand at the time,” Dinh said. “Luckily, whenever I ran into words or expressions that I wasn’t familiar with and couldn’t look up myself, I would ask my Chinese colleagues. They were always eager to help.”

Hu Changbing, the manager of the Vienam branch, has worked with Dinh for over four years. “I discovered that Dinh has this special ability — no matter how difficult a task, she could finish it effectively,” Hu said.

In Dinh’s words, her work belief was to complete whatever boss gave her and provide a satisfactory outcome. She didn’t mention the fact that, to complete certain tasks, she would make dozens of phone calls and sometimes even make multiple trips to talk to someone in person. Her efforts and contributions were appreciated by her superior.

The waste incineration power plant has significantly promoted the sustainable development. Dinh is very proud to have contributed to this project. “I hope to improve my information research and negotiation skills in the future and to further explore the Vietnamese market with my colleagues.”

A new study from the University of Cambridge shows how small environmental changes can have great effects on human behavior. Even the rise of skateboarding is the result of the deep relationships between humans and the climate.

“To make connections between climate and society, we often look into the past, but as we go further back, the evidence gets thinner,” said lead author Professor Büntgen. “We wanted to find a more modern example where we had lots of data to look at. That is how we began to study skateboarding.”

As was recorded, the prosperity (繁荣) of post-war America resulted in the building of more than 150,000 swimming pools in California during the 1960s. However, California suffered the greatest drought (旱灾) in the 1970s. The government’s water agencies responded by mandating strict cuts, including a ban stopping people from filling backyard swimming pools. As a result, many of these pools were empty, making them ideal playgrounds for freestyle skateboarders. Naturally, skateboarding exploded in popularity.

Büntgen said, “California used to be the center of US surf culture. The popularity and influence of surf culture was very important to the rise of skateboarding, which is why it could have only happened in California. You could have had the same drought, the same pools in somewhere like Phoenix, but since Phoenix doesn’t have a rich surf culture, professional skateboarding couldn’t have started there.”

With the rise of professional skateboarding came the industrial production of polyurethane (聚氨酯) wheels, which allowed skaters to make faster turns at higher speeds than they could with earlier steel wheels. All these factors made skateboarding more popular. Nowadays, it is a multibillion-dollar industry.

The example of California best shows that local climate change can have major effects on human society.