【推荐1】Hurlen-Patano unzipped her jacket, pulled out her phone, and made a call, “Bring help!”

That morning, Ken Scott bumped into his friend Rebecca Hurlen-Patano in Silver Mountain Resort. They noticed that the 6200-foot Wardner Peak, home to the challenging expert-level route, was now open. It had been closed all season over concerns about an avalanche, sudden fall of a mass of snow.

“Let’s go for it!” Hurlen-Patano proposed.

Almost immediately they took off from that peak, the snow beneath gave way. In a millisecond, “Avalanche!” she yelled to Scott.

Hurlen-Patano had ended up partially buried and managed to pull herself out. She looked uphill to where she’d last seen Scott and shouted his name. No response. Then she made the call.

Word spread quickly, and soon professional rescuers and skiers were heading to the avalanche site with tools. Like a commander, Hurlen-Patano stayed calm and pointed out possible places. Rescuers formed a line along the slope, and positioned their ten-foot poles down into the deep snow, hoping to hit and locate the buried skier.

Under the weight of the snow, Scott was totally immobile, and he couldn’t expand his chest enough to take a full breath. He knew death was just a matter of time, but this was not the way he wanted to die.

He fought to stay optimistic by focusing on breathing. But a group of his close friends who had lost their lives in an avalanche emerged in his mind. Then a feeling of warmth struck him and he knew it was a sign of hypothermia (体温过低). “I’m going to join them.”

The key 30-minute survival time had come and gone.

He felt a slight pressure. He anxiously prayed to feel it again. A minute passed, then two. Nothing. The only flash of hope disappeared. He felt himself fading away. Suddenly, the pressure on his body seemed to be changing. He started shouting, hoping anyone standing above would hear. Five minutes later, he breathed in fresh air deeply and saw the sky above, again.

I am sitting in an empty football field after my last high school football game has finished a few hours ago. I’m the quarterback (前卫) on my team. But in fact that’s not true now. I was the quarterback, and that’s a good way to end a high school football career at a high point.

I’ve been sitting here by myself shivering in the cold and thinking back over the game and other games I’ve played in my life. I’m looking at the goal and thinking how it always seemed to reach out and pull me with a secret, magical force.

I was 8 when I first started playing football. My dad loved football and would practice with me at home- passing, catching, running. He tried to teach me everything he knew about the game. “Just remember: don’t ever give up.” “Stay in the game. Don’t lose your concentration.” “Go out there-and give 110 percent every time.” Well, that was a long time ago but I still hear his words ringing in my ears. I had a lot on my mind before the game today. I don’t like things to be an end, I guess, and this was the last game, and it was the league championship. I was talking to myself and reminding myself about what to do and not to do. I didn’t sleep at all last night. But when the game started my mind became empty. Everything dropped away from me. I just lived in this game, this moment. I didn’t hear the crowd; I didn’t feel the cold or the pain; I never felt tired. I just kept my eyes on the ball, and inside a soft white light showing me the way to the goal, which was a beautiful feeling.

It’s all over now and it’s really getting cold here. It’s starting to snow. The sun’s almost gone and I can hardly see the goal. Now it’s dark and I’m sitting here all alone. Well, I guess it’s time to say goodbye and move on.

【推荐2】My first shopping in a general store was in Miss Bee’s when I spent the summer with my grandmother in New York.

“Go get them yourself” Miss Bee said, ignoring the shopping list held up before her nose. “I’m not your servant, so just get yourself a basket from that pile over there and start filing.”

It took me three wall-to-wall searches before I found the first item on my list―a pork can be placed between boxes of cereal and bread. Next up was toilet paper, found under the daily newspaper, and Band-Ads, found next to the face cream. The store was a puzzle, but it held some surprises too. I found a new Superman comic behind the peanut butter.

I visited Miss Bee a couple of times a week that summer. Some times she short-charged me. Other times she overcharged or sold me an old newspaper instead of a current one. Going to the store was more like going into battle. I left my Grandma’s house armed with my list—memorized to the letter—and marched into Miss Bee’s like General Patton (巴顿将军) marching into North Africa.

All summer long she found ways to trip me up. No sooner had I learned how to pronounce bicarbonate of soda (小苏打) and memorized its location on the shelf than Miss Bee rearranged the shelves and made me hunt for it all over again. By summer’s end, however, the shopping trip that had once taken me an hour was done in 15 minutes.

The morning I was to return to Brooklyn, I stopped into tell her that she was mean (刻薄的). To my amazement she laughed and said. “Well, I don’t care! Each of us is put on this earth for a reason. I believe my job is to teach every child I meet ten life lessons to help them. Think what you will, but when you get older you’ll be glad our paths crossed!”

I thought the idea was absurd until one day my daughter came to me with homework troubles.

“It’s too hard,” she said. “Could you finish my math problems for me?”

“If I do it for you, how will you ever learn to do it yourself?” I said.

Suddenly, I was back at that general store where I had learned the hard way totally up (结算) my bill along with the cashier. As my daughter went back to her homework, I wondered: Had Miss Bee really taught me something all those years ago? I took out some scrap paper and started writing.

【推荐3】Fisayo Longe started her fashion label Kai Collective to celebrate all female forms—not just the western idea of beauty. “I feel my clothes transform you into a woman who is more confident,” says Longe.

Born in London and raised in Lagos, Nigeria, before returning to the UK when she was 15, Longe’s original outlet for her love of fashion was her blog Mirror Me. Having a passion for travel, Longe would pick up fabrics from the countries she visited and make clothes for herself, which she posted on social media. As her creations started to become a hit, the seed for her own brand was planted.

“I wanted something I could put 100% of my creativity into, something that belonged to me and women like me,” explains the business owner, who recalls going into a high street store and the jeans not fitting her body very well.

Longe says, “I’ve always wanted to build that kind of community of women because, having grown up in Nigeria, I feel some women are made to feel they have to dim (使暗淡)their light—we don’t realize our power. Things are all centred around men and marriage. I want to build a community that focuses on ourselves and our confidence.”

With no formal fashion training, Longe set up Kai Collective four years ago with money borrowed from her mum. Longe is the first to admit she was rather “naive” when she started, giving an example of heading to Turkey with her mother to find a company to produce her designs. “That’s not the way to find producers,” she says. “It’s much better to go to trade shows.”

But whatever she’s doing, it’s obviously working, with the brand featured in an Elle magazine cover shoot with the model Adwoa Aboah, as well as in Beyonce’s black-owned businesses list.

【推荐3】Zhang Lin, 25, is from a village in the mountainous province of Yunnan, southwest China. She escaped from her first marriage, which she was forced into by her parents. Later on, she got married once again, this time for love. However, she had to leave this marriage too because her second husband could not accept her son from her first marriage. The only thing Zhang has never given up on is the attitude of being independent.

“I want to provide a good life for people I love,” Zhang said. “Women must be financially (经济上) independent. I will buy a car and an apartment by myself. I won’t depend on any-one. ”Standing tall — at under 1.6 meters, Zhang makes her living as a truck driver. She usually starts driving at night from Wenzhou in Zhejiang Province, and drives for 8.5 hours all the way to Quanzhou, about 500 km to the south. Before she got the job, people doubted whether such a tiny woman could drive such a big truck. However, this job for Zhang is her best option to shake off poverty.

“It’s quite unusual. She is an inspiring young woman. She’s not going to take no for an answer,” Oscar-winning director Malcolm Clarke said. As a filmmaker, he wants to find people who are engaging, charming, interesting and entertaining. “Many Chinese women are quite reticent to talk about themselves. But she was not shy; she was very active; very open about her difficulties...She is really special and quite typical of many Chinese women who are very driven (发愤图强的),” Clarke said.

For Clarke, Zhang stands for many of those rural (农村的) Chinese who leave behind their hometowns and look for a better life. The documentary (纪录片) also explores several more persons who hold different views on what is a “good life”.