To improve Chinese on our campus, several programs will be organized. Here is some information.

Language Partner Program

The aim of this program is to promote Chinese language study for American students, through this program, native speakers of Chinese can help our Chinese language students, who can help students or scholars from China with their English in exchange. If interested, please contact Yuan Lu, yuan-lu-2@uiowa.edu

The Chinese Corner

The Chinese Corner is a non-threatening, pleasant place for faculty and students who want to practice their oral Chinese. Learners of all levels are welcome to join, since we have topics suitable for each level. At the Chinese Corner, you can make friends with Chinese students and exchange opinions on cultural issues. You will surely learn something new every time you come! We welcome whoever wants to speak Chinese.

Contact person: Bo Sun, bo-sun@uiowa.edu

The Chinese Host Family Program

The purpose of this program is to help our American students to gain first-hand experience of Chinese culture, lifestyle, customs, and conventions through establishing friendship relations with Chinese families. Students who join this program will be invited by their Chinese host family to join their family activities on a regular basis. Please sign up for this program.

Cross-University Chinese Language Performance Competition

This competition gives students in and outside of Iowa a great opportunity to show their oral Chinese proficiency as well as their talent in performing. As many as four universities have participated in the competition, including The University of Iowa. Each university presents a set of programs, and then participants are awarded prizes at an awards ceremony.

Mid-Autumn Festival Celebration

The Chinese Program hosts an annual celebration for the Mid-Autumn Festival. We invite all students and faculty members to join our party. You will meet Chang’e, the goddess of the Moon, learn a beautiful Chinese legendary story and taste moon cakes as well as other Chinese food. If you know some Chinese characters, you may win a prize! Come and join us!

For more, please see the Flyer.

I drove a taxi for extra money east of Toronto thirty years ago. Each time a taxi drove up to the front of the Greenwood Racetrack, a group of local kids would run along the sidewalk angling for position by the passenger door. One lucky kid, or rather, the most aggressive one, would open the passenger door and say “Good luck, Mister!” The man getting out of the cab would vaguely say thanks and throw the kid a quarter. It was a routine everybody knew.

Throughout the summer, one kid caught my eye. He was bigger than most of all the other kids but pushed away by even the smallest. He never made it but never gave up. One day, his chance arrived. As I was pulling up to the sidewalk, all the kids were pushing for a cab just ahead of mine. The boy saw me and walked toward my taxi. As I positioned the passenger door right beside him, he never paused and opened the passenger door, warmly saying, “Good luck, Mister!”

But the man neither said thanks nor flipped him a quarter. He pushed him aside so hard that the boy fell on the sidewalk. I knew it hurt him badly. I got out in less than 10 seconds, but the man was gone in the crowd. So I looked for the kid. I decided to give him $20 for the effort. By the time I spotted him he was far up ahead, walking away in the opposite direction through the crowd and his head hanging down. When I got the cab turned around I lost sight of him. I never saw him again. I’d like to find him one day and tell him that if only he had stuck around a little longer I would have given him a whole $20.

I learned from this kid that when things seem so hopeless that you are ready to give up, it’s the time when things are most likely to turn around for you.

Sure, chocolate is a delicious treat, and it’s a staple of some of our favorite desserts. But it’s not a health food, so it should be enjoyed in moderation-right?

Well, it turns out that eating chocolate might actually have a pretty significant health benefit. According to research conducted by five scientists in Italy, compounds found in chocolate, called flavanols, can help boost cognitive (认知的) performance. Yup, chocolate’s good for your brain.

The scientists, studying at the Universities of Rome and L’Aquila, summarized research from ten different studies. The studies assessed people’s performance on cognitive tests before and after eating cocoa or chocolate. The results were pretty telling: in nine out of the ten studies, there was a noticeable improvement after the subjects had eaten the chocolate. The scientists found improvements in “general cognition, attention, processing speed and working memory.” Sounds pretty good to us!

And that’s not all. In subjects, especially women, who performed the tests while sleep-deprived, the flavanols helped relieve the negative effects of the sleep deprivation. And there’s even more good news. The researchers also found that eating chocolate daily (over periods ranging from five days to three months) produced noticeable long-term improvements in cognition. Older adults, whose memories were already declining, saw an especially significant improvement.

All chocolate has flavanols, since they occur naturally in cocoa. However, dark chocolate lovers feel happy, because it has more flavanols than any other type of chocolate. In fact, the scientists themselves have claimed that, after doing this research, they’ve started eating dark chocolate every day!

Now, we’re not saying you should start eating chocolate for breakfast, lunch and dinner - it’s still high in sugar and low in nutrients. But next time you find yourself yawning after a sleepless night, snack on some chocolate and let the flavanols work their magic.

The British custom of driving on the left side of the road isn’t a sign of eccentricity—there’s actually a very sensible reason for it.

Originally, almost everybody travelled on the left side of the road. For Medieval swordsmen on horseback, it made sense to keep to the left to have their right arms closer to their opponents. Mounting and dismounting horses were also easier from the left side, and safer done by the side of the road than in the center.

So perhaps the question here should be, why did people stop travelling on the left?

Things changed in the late 1700s when large carriages pulled by several pairs of horses were used to transport farm products in France and the United States. In the absence of a driver’s seat inside the carriage, the driver sat on the rear left horse, with his right arm free to use his whip to keep the horses moving. Since he was sitting on the left, he wanted other vehicles to pass on his left, so he kept to the right side of the road.

The British Government refused to give up their left-hand driving ways. Meanwhile post-revolution France, under their left-handed ruler Napoleon, stuck to a permanent move to the right side of the road. As the British and the French were yielding their power across the globe, they insisted that the countries they occupied drive like them. This explains why former British colonies such as Australia, New Zealand and India drive on the left, while former French colonies like Algeria drive on the right.

When Henry Ford made his Model T in 1908, the driver’s seat was on the left, meaning that for Americans, cars would have to drive on the right side of the road to allow front and back passengers to exit the car onto the sideway. This influenced a change in many countries, such as Canada, Italy and Spain. However, British drivers remain on the left, and this is highly unlikely to change.