The curious European destinations that Chinese tourists love visiting

According to a 2019 VisitBritain report, more than 260,000 Chinese tourists visit the UK each year. And where do they go? It claimed that “they are mostly interested in symbolic elements: the Royal Family, Shakespeare, Sherlock Holmes, Harry Potter and Downton Abbey”.

Then there's the shopping. Bicester Village, a vast retail estate (零售产业) on the outskirts of the Oxford shire town, is the second most visited UK attraction for Chinese tourists after Buckingham Palace, and three in four Chinese visitors head there.

A famous tree, for Chinese people at least, can be found in King's College, Cambridge. The willow (柳树), considered to be a holy thing to lost youth, is mentioned in a much-loved poem by Xu Zhimo, who spent a year studying at King's College — Taking leave of Cambridge Again:

The golden willows by the riverside;

Are young brides in the setting sun;

Their glittering reflections on the shimmering river;

Keep undulating in my heart.

The former West German capital is another popular port of call. Chinese love classical music, particularly Beethoven, making his birthplace an obvious highlight of any trip to Europe. The city's tourist board offers maps in three foreign languages: English, Chinese and Japanese.

Both British and Chinese travelers flood to Venice, Rome and Florence, but Verona typically appears higher on the wish lists of China's tourists. That's because of the whole country 's adoration of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The play is popular on UK shores, of course, but the love is doubled in China as it was among the first of the Shakespeare's works to be translated into Chinese, because its plot bears a striking resemblance to a famous Chinese folk tale, The Butterfly Lovers. Expect to see queues at the popular House of Juliet on Via Cappello (a statue of the character stands beneath her balcony).

Seventeen-year-old Lindsey Stoefen loves to play tennis, softball and run until last October when a rare disorder paralyzed her legs and left her in a wheelchair. But in late April after becoming an in-patient at Marianjoy Rehabilitation Hospital in Chicago, the teen climbed into a specially designed exoskeleton (外骨骼) which supported her body and moved her legs.

“Yes, I'm gonna be a robot! And I was scared at first. Am I gonna like it? Is it gonna be okay? And then once I got into it, I loved it." Lauren Bularzik, Lindsey s physical therapist, says the exo robots help to accelerate the recovery process.

For someone who takes a lot of energy to only walk a few feet, exo can get them up and get them moving. Besides speeding up recovery time, these robotic skeletons are especially helpful for those with paralysis, from spinal cord injuries and strokes.

Using the machine can help some patients rewire their brains to use secondary muscles, so they can eventually walk again without the device. But Patrick Wensing, assistant professor at the University of Notre Dame says exoskeletons have one big drawback. While existing exoskeletons are very powerful, right now they don t understand what the user wants to do. So in order to switch between activities in daily life, you often have to press a button interface to tell the exoskeleton “I would like to stand up now".

Wensing and his team are cooperating with Ekso Bionics, a leading developer of wearable robots, to create a machine that can understand what its user wants to do without implanted sensors and complicated control panels.

Taylor Gambon has spent the last year analyzing data from exoskeleton users and comparing them to models of everyday walking. Later this year, the team will travel to Ekso Bionics' California headquarters, where they will work directly with exoskeletons to design programs that interact with users of various disabilities, so that more people like Lindsey Stoefen can get back on their feet again.

It was several years ago when my wife asked me to meet her at the local department store on Black Friday morning. They had advertised a child's bike that she wanted to purchase for our son. We stood with a very large crowd, waiting for the manager to blow the whistle. After a while the whistle blew. It was like throwing a basket of chum into a tank of sharks. I told my wife that if we obtained a bike, fine, but if we did not, I was OK with that too.

As the boxes of bikes began to gradually decrease, I saw my opportunity to wrap my hands around the corner of one of them. I lifted it off and suddenly felt some mild resistance. I looked up to see one of the largest men I had ever seen in my life. Frightening was not enough to describe his presence. He was decorated with numerous leather belts with metal buttons around both arms and even his neck. Tattoos (纹身) were an obvious passion of his.

I started to loosen the box but he gently pushed it back in my direction and back into my hands. He then directed it into my shopping cart. He looked at me, smiled, and said, “Merry Christmas.”

My wife and I went to the checkout, paid for the bike and went home. All the way home I was thinking that this moment was by far the best Christmas gift I had ever received. The kindness of a human heart in a simple act of a stranger broke all preconceived notions (先入为主) I may have had. I will never forget it.

United States health officials say an estimated 80,000 people died of influenza (流感) and problems resulting from the flu last winter, making it the worst season since 1977. The director for the U.S.Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported the number to The Associated Press. Health experts were expecting the winter of 2017-2018 to be a bad year for flu deaths, but not that.

Doctor William Schaffner is an expert on vaccines, at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. Schaffner noted that 80,000 deaths are nearly twice as much as what health officials once considered a “bad year”.

CDC officials say that between 12,000 and 56,000 Americans die every year from flu-related causes, but they do not have an exact count of how many people die from the flu each year. Influenza is a relatively common disease and not always listed on death records as the official cause of death. While last winter was a bad flu season in the U.S., it was not the worst. The 1918 flu lasted nearly two years. Historians estimate that the disease was to blame for between 500,000 to 700,000 deaths during that period. The exact number is still not known.

One thing that made the 2017-2018 flu season so bad was that the flu virus was strong. Usually the disease kills the very young, the very old or those who are already sick. However, last winter, the flu killed many healthy Americans. Another thing that made the flu season so deadly was that the flu vaccine was not as effective as experts had predicted. Drug makers have made changes to the vaccine. Even though the vaccine did not work well last year, health experts still strongly suggest getting vaccinated.