【推荐2】China announced a long-awaited plan to integrate(融合) the southern Pearl River Delta Area(PRDA) as an attempt to create a powerhouse to rival(相匹敌) the US Silicon Valley that is home to such well-known companies as Google, Facebook and Apple. The possibilities and challenges of the effort are both equally promising and challenging.

The plan is a natural result of the economic and technological development in the area. China’s opening up to the world more than four decades ago began in the south and PRDA has long been home to many of the country’s leading technological companies. includin, Huawei and Tencent.

“The plan is promising,” said Adam Xu, an analyst at OC & C Strategy Consultants. “If you really look at history in China, a lot of top-down plans always have very strong bottom-up support. And a lot of economic activities have already happened there. Now they have a big plan to officially recognize, promote and further accelerate.”

The key challenge will be execution(执行). The plan has to integrate three different legal systems among Mainland China, Hongkong and Macau. That makes PRDA unique compared to the other two major areas in China—the Beijing, Hebei, Tianjin Area and the Yangtze River Delta Area near Shanghai.

“We don’t know how effectively the top-down plan will guide the many independent growing forces at the local level,” Xu admitted. “This part will be quite an important challenge.”

China has already taken major steps to overcome some of the physical barriers such as linking Hongkong with Guangzhou and Shenzhen by high-speed railways and its recent opening of the 55-kilometer Hongkong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge. But other barriers, such as the flow of people, information and money, may prove to be a bigger challenge.

Xu said, “The biggest challenge and the biggest beauty—if they eventually succeed—will be linking all of these together.”

【推荐3】A new year 2022, a new plan.     1     . Here are several science-based strategies for nailing your New Year’s plans.

Make a cue-based plan

Just as cues tell Broadway stars when to step onto the stage, research has shown that adding a cue to your plan helps you remember when to act.     2    . If your New Year’s plan is to meditate (冥想) five days each week, a plan like “I’ll meditate on weekdays” would be too vague. But a cue-based plan like “I’ll meditate at the office on weekdays during my lunch break” would fit the bill.

Make it fun

Research has shown that focusing on efficiency can leave you helpless because you’ll ignore an even more important part of your life: whether you enjoy the act of goal pursuit.

    3    . But if you get pleasure from your workouts or study sessions, research has found you’ll persist longer. And in the end, that’s what often matters most to achieving a New Year’s plan.

One way to make pursuing a goal that normally feels like a chore more fun is to combine it with a guilty pleasure. Consider only letting yourself watch your favorite TV show at the gym, so you’ll start looking forward to workouts.

Get a little help from your friends

    4    . If your New Year’s plan is to run a marathon or write a book, you’d be wise to start hanging around friends who’ve made it to the finish line (literally or figuratively) and can show you how it’s done. You’ll pick up a bit just by spending time together because you’ll tend to follow their patterns of behavior.

Strangely enough, there is evidence that coaching friends with shared goals can improve your success rate, too.

    5    .

【推荐1】One thing that sets cycling apart from most other sports at the Olympics is technology. With the exception of a few other sports, such as sailing and rowing, most events that take place at the Summer Games usually just come down to the performances of the athletes. They try to swim and run faster, jump and climb higher, lift and hit with more strength.

In cycling, the competition is so close-often a hundredth of a second separates riders-that the difference in winning and losing can be found in the chain, the wheels, and even the helmet that they choose to wear. That is why the US team made headlines at Rio 2016 Olympics Games, when it rolled out a new bike design that moved the entire drive chain from the right side to the left. It might not catch the attention of the average bicyclists, who probably don’t even notice which side the drive chain is on their own bikes. But it caused plenty of outcry from the Olympic Committee, since Olympic rules state that any bike used in competition must be made available to the public. But the American bike-maker Felt Bicycles only sold the new bikes to the American team. The price? $25,999 per bike.

Then the British adopted a more tactful(圆滑的)strategy. It teamed up with bike maker Hope Technology to create something extremely expensive for the Tokyo Olympics Games this year. The frame alone sells for about $23,500. Another $12,000 for the wheels. Throwing in the expensive suits, oil for chains, and sunglasses and shoes, the investment needed to compete for a cycling medal can be almost unaffordable for most of the athletes.

【推荐2】My 10-year-old son and two friends attended a 2-hour fantastic basketball camp on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. A few minutes before the session ended, there was a shooting contest. Only a few kids were chosen to compete, and my son was not one of them. The contest winners received prizes and recognition, as did a few kids chosen as “all-stars” for effort, skill and participation. Again, my son was not selected.

My son was struggling to deal with his disappointment.

At the camp, he played a basketball game with kids he had never met, guarded them fiercely and took shots easily against them. As his mom, I was thrilled that he spent the day without his iPad. All in all, the day felt wonderful. The last thing I wanted was for these awards to ruin the experience.

I decided to simplify it for him. I did the math and figured out the shooting contest and awards were about 6% of the total camp. The rest of the camp, the parts that he enjoyed, were 94% of the day. Even though the kid loves math, it was hard for him to see the contests and awards as a small part of his day.

My son once told me about a negative situation that played out at recess（课间休息）. The way he explained it felt like the disagreement lasted hours, but it turns out it was only the last few minutes of recess.

Now is the time for me as the parent to help my kids think more positively. If my son leaves a half-day camp and most of the day was great —that’s a win. If our family is able to go to Florida over winter break and enjoy time together, away from the everyday headaches, that’s also a win. We can acknowledge the aspects that disappoint us, as long as we are willing to then focus on the bigger picture.

It starts with me and my husband. Our kids will model the behavior we show. They need to see us thinking positively and not hyper-focusing on the negative 6%.

【推荐1】Wellington teenager Maia Mariner has won an award for a project—Lazy Sneakers, collecting and distributing sports sneakers to children, student athletes, families and social services all over New Zealand.

Over the weekend, the Festival for the Future saw young people come together to discuss new ways to improve the world, from dealing with climate change to inequality, and young leaders were also celebrated at an awards ceremony. Mariner took home the Local Impact Award

“I had just noticed in basketball a few of my friends couldn't participate because they didn't have the necessary footwear to do so. I went back to my parents who explained how much a problem being materially poor is in New Zealand and we came up with a few ideas to originally help out people on a tight budget for sneakers in my small community（社区However; as the years have gone by, the project has just snowballed, because there is that demand for bare essentials（必需品）in New Zealand,” she told Morning Report.

Shoes are gathered from collection bins outside sports places or offices. Mariner hopes to expand the number of these around the country—once a month before being prepared for distribution.

“Right now, storage has been a big problem. This year we have seen so much demand and it has been a lot busier and we're struggling to find places where sneakers will fit. What we're hoping to do is encourage people to find places outside Wellington to start their own collections. We just want more people in the communities to find ways to help out and spread the Lazy Sneakers message, which is to play, participate, and reach their full potential,” says Maia.

If you have a good pair of sneakers lying around that you no longer need, please pay it forward.

【推荐2】You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression — this was the theme of this year’s International Public Speaking Competition (IPSC), held in London from May 11 to 12. Thirty-three young speakers aged 16 to 20 from around the world gathered at The English Speaking Union to tell their stories, including Wu Dongxu, 19, a student from China. To him, the event wasn’t just about giving a speech on first impressions. It also made a strong impression on him.

“Rather than a competition, the experience was more like an inspiring research trip to me, a trip that allowed me to see firsthand the differences and similarities between Chinese and foreign cultures,” said Wu.

Apart from the obvious differences in food, transportation and climate, what impressed Wu most was the different styles of Chinese and foreign public speaking.

Although still a teen, Wu is no stranger to the public speaking podium (讲台). He has participated in many speaking competitions since 2017. But on the stage of the IPSC, speakers had no podium to stand behind. They just had to face the audience.

“This was the first time that I gave a speech without a podium, which made me realize how important eye contact and body language are,” said Wu. “It also gave me more freedom to convey more information with my body language instead of just with words.”

Another difference that caught Wu’s attention was the evaluation criteria (评价标准). According to him, in every speaking competition he had participated in in China, things like pronunciation, fluency and quality of language are always important. But to his surprise, in the IPSC accents and grammatical mistakes are not considered in the evaluation process. It is the story itself that matters most.

“Audiences are eager to hear powerful stories, no matter where they are from. That’s because the emotions expressed in them are shared by all human beings although there are the cultural differences.” said Wu. “Diversity, respect, tolerance and understanding — these are what the IPSC really wants to stress and spread.”

【推荐3】Hawaii lawmakers are considering legislation (立法) that would require visitors to pay for a year-long license or pass to visit state parks. Josh Green is the state’s governor. He said, “We get between 9 and 10 million visitors a year, but we only have 1.4 million people living here.” He added, “Those 10 million travellers should be helping us sustain our environment.” Lawmakers still debating how much they would charge.

The governor campaigned in 2022 on the idea of having all tourists pay a $50 fee to enter the state. Legislators think this would violate US constitutional protections for free travel. They instead think visitors should pay to enter parks and trails. Either policy would be a first of its kind for any US state. Hawaii’s leaders are following the example of other popular tourist areas with similar fees or taxes. They include Venice, Italy, and Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands.

Hawaii State Representative Sean Quinlan is the leader of the House Tourism Committee. He said changes in the activities of travellers are part of Hawaii’s push. He said golf rounds per visitor per day have dropped 30 percent over the past 10 years while hiking has increased50 percent. People are also seeking out isolated places they have seen on social media. The state does not have the money to oversee and protect all these places, he said.

Most state parks and trails are currently free. Some of the most popular ones already charge, like Diamond Head State Monument. That trail leads hikers from the floor of a 300,000-year-old volcano up to the top. It gets 1 million visitors each year and costs $5for each traveller.

A bill currently before the legislature would require visitors over the age of 15to buy a yearly pass to visit forests, parks, trails or “other natural area on state land”. People who live in Hawaii would not need to pay.