【推荐1】A smiling panda and a walking Chinese lantern will be the mascots (吉祥物) of the 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics in Beijing.

The mascots were known to the public on Sept.17, 2019 at a ceremony in Beijing. Beijing Mayor Chen Jining described them as lovely, unique, and awesome. He said they shows Chinese people’s longing for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics in a visually attractive way and extends Chinese people’s hospitality to friends throughout the world.

The panda, named Bing Dwen Dwen, is the Olympic mascot. Colourful circles around its face symbolize skating tracks and 5G technology, according to the website of the Beijing organizing committee. “Bing, the Chinese word for “ice”, shows purity and strength, while Dwen Dwen means sincerity, liveliness, and health”, the website said. The choice of the iconic animal, considered the national treasure, is not a surprise to people in China. While many applaud Bing Dwen Dwen for its cuteness on social media, some are not favorably impressed by-the lack of creativity in choosing a panda. The giant panda was one of the five mascots of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, and it was also the symbol for the Asian Games in Beijing in 1990.

“Today is an important step on a milestone in Beijing’s journey to make history as the first ever, in Olympic history, to host both summer and winter editions of the Olympic Games,” International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach said at the ceremony.

Based on a traditional red lantern, Paralympic mascot Shuey Rhon Rhon creates a cheerful atmosphere of the Chinese Lunar New Year, which will fall around the time of the Winter Games, the organizing committee said. It is sporting (穿戴) a yellow scarf, a circle of yellow doves around its head, and a traditional Chinese paper-cut. “Shuey” means snow in Chinese and “Rhon Rhon” means “inclusiveness” and “harmonization”, implying that the world civilizations communicate with each other and live in harmony, the committee said.

The two mascots were selected from more than 5800 submission from 35 countries.

【推荐3】On Saturday my Catalan friend invited me to come along to a Calotada. Being from the UK, I had no idea what this would need, but he promised me it was a fun Catalan(卡塔兰)tradition, and so I agreed to go. I wasn’t disappointed!

First, we took a train out to a small town near Tarragona, about an hour away from Barcelona centre. I was already amazed by how different everything looked from the city as the train rushed through small towns, all sitting on the coastline.

When we arrived, we were greeted by the sight of a small wind instrument band and about a dozen people dancing in a circle. While my friend later told me that it is a traditional Catalan dance called La Sardana, at the time I was totally confused at what I was seeing! It seemed so strange but yet so lovely that they were doing this dance completely for themselves.

Once we had been fully entertained by the dancers, we finally went inside for the Calotada and it was soon revealed to me what it actually was. We sat down at the table and a huge plate of leeks(大葱)was placed in front of us. It was explained to us that you have to peel the leeks with your fingers, dip them in a (delicious!) sauce and eat them. This sounds easier than it was.

My friend had been right in the end, it had been an extremely fun day and it felt great to get involved in a local tradition of a place I am temporarily calling home. It really inspired me to learn more about the Catalan culture, although hopefully next time it will be something less messy!

【推荐1】I was sitting at my desk when another graduate student in my lab approached me. “Can you help?” he asked. His experiment wasn’t working and he desperately needed help. I was then a fifth year PhD student, and I took pride in being the senior member of the lab, whom everyone looked up to. But that also meant I was the one everyone turned to for help - which ate away hours, days, and sometimes weeks that I could have spent on my own research.

There were many reasons I had a hard time saying no to such pleas(恳求). I was new to the United States for graduate school. I found it difficult to make new friends and discover activities I enjoyed. So I spent a huge chunk of my time in the lab, with my lab-mates serving as my primary source of social connection. I feared that if I brushed them off, I’d lose their favor.

But the extra responsibilities came at a cost. I had to work extra hours to catch up with my own work, and I often made sacrifices to my personal life.

It wasn’t until my wife gave birth to our first child that I realized how thin I had stretched myself, and how misguided my priorities were. While she lay in a hospital bed in the early stages of labor, I sat nearby hunched(伏首前倾的)over my laptop finishing up a work report hours later, after hearing my daughter’s first cry and watching her tiny fingers grab tightly onto mine, it dawned on me: I should have been fully present during my daughter’s birth. I was clearly spending too much time working if my job had intruded(侵入)into one of the most precious moments of my life.

From then on, I decided to spend more time with my family by paring down my work tasks and carefully considering each request for help. I still enjoyed collaborating with others, but I prioritized mutually beneficial tasks or those my manager asked me to take on, rather than accepting everything that came my way.

I noticed many benefits: no longer working overtime, more family time, and improved work performance. I was also pleased to discover that “Sorry, I’d love to help but I have a deadline coming up” is an acceptable response to a request for assistance.

It’s hard to say “no” to those you work with. But I’ve learned that sometimes that’s the best course of action to avoid an excessive workload and lead a freer and happier life.

【推荐2】Since I was born and brought up in a rural town, I have a great interest in nature. Taking the chance of studying abroad in my second year at college, I decided to go to Canada just because I wanted to see the beautiful phenomena there. So after I finished the study program, I went to Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories.

I clearly remember the sixth night in Yellowknife. Suddenly my host mother came to my room around 8 p.m. and told me to change clothes and go outside quickly carrying her camera.

The northern lights were flickering in the sky! I was shocked and just stood there with my mouth open. I forgot to take pictures of the mysterious lights.

Since that night, whenever it was sunny, I went outside at night and looked at the sky. It was so cold that I lost all feeling in my hands and feet.

As I took pictures of the northern lights, I came to find a characteristic movement of the lights. They first appear in the north part of the sky and then they gradually come down to the south part of the sky. After that, suddenly, they come in the middle of the north and south only for a while, which is the time when the best northern lights can be seen. Since it is only a few seconds for the northern lights to come down to the middle to the sky, it is very hard to get good pictures.

The stronger the sun acts, the better and stronger the northern lights flicker in the sky. That’s because they come about from the collisions between atmospheric gases and solar wind. Much more solar wind comes to the earth when the sun is active, which leads to best northern lights. And the colors of the northern lights depend on the height of the collisions and the kinds of gases.