【推荐1】Liu Fang, who works as a media worker in Beijing, goes to a store specializing in selling near-expired (将要过期的) food in Sanlitun and returns with a bag of snacks or drinks every week.

“The price tags on these goods have caught my eye. They are often sold at 10 percent to 30 percent of the market price,” Liu said. “More importantly, most of them are from big brands. Why wouldn’t I love them?”

Liu is among the increasing number of Chinese people who enjoy purchasing near-expired food at much cheaper prices. According to the latest report by iiMedia Research, the near-expired food industry had a market size of over 30 billion yuan in 2020. Young consumers aged between 26 and 35 accounted for 47.8 percent.

Unlike the traditional thinking that buying such goods is embarrassing, more and more young people regard it as a kind of sustainable consumption that can help reduce food waste.

“I don’t care much about the date as long as I can eat it before its expiry. It meets my demand while saving resources and protecting the environment, which is a good thing,” Wu Lin, a 19-year-old college student and a fan of near-expired food, told Xinhua.

Indeed, food waste is a great challenge for China and other countries. According to a 2020 report from the National People’s Congress, about 18 billion kilograms of food is wasted every year in China’s urban catering industry (餐饮业).

“As more Chinese people choose to buy near-expired food, the food waste will be reduced,” said Liu.

According to CGTN, China had the tradition of saving food over the decades leading to the 1990s.

As people’s lives improved greatly, many began to make or order more food than could be consumed, CGTN reported. But the trend of buying near-expired food may suggest that the Chinese virtue of frugality (节约) is staging a comeback.

“I’ve been very frugal all my life. Living through a serious famine (1959-61) (饥荒), I’m used to saving every grain and every penny,” Zhang Xin, a retired woman born in the 1950s, told CGTN. “I’m happy to see more young people, who used to spend extravagantly(奢侈地), joining our ranks."

【推荐2】Americans with small families own a small car or a large one. If both parents are working, they usually have two cars. When the family is large, one of the cars is sold and they will buy a van (住房汽车).

A small car can hold four persons and a large car can hold six persons but it is very crowded. A van hold seven persons easily, so a family with three children could ask their grandparents to go on a holiday travel. They could all travel together.

Mr. Hagen and his wife had a third child last year. This made them sell their second car and buy a van. In the van, the sixth and seventh seat are used to put other things, for a family of five must carry many suitcases when they travel. When they arrive at their grandparents’ home, the suitcases are removed from the two seats which can then carry the grandparents.

Americans call vans motor homes. A motor home is always used for holidays. When a family are traveling to the mountains or to the seaside, they can live in their motor home for a few days or weeks. All the members of a big family can enjoy a happier life when they are traveling together. That is why motor homes have become very popular. In America there are many parks for motor homes.

【推荐1】There are four novels for you.

This book takes you through waves of emotion as you start to understand the main character, a 9-year-old boy Bruno. The story taking place during the Holocaust (大屠杀), we witness the horror from the boy’s viewpoint. You will be shocked by some of the surprising aspects of the book as the boy makes friends with a Jewish boy named Shmuel in the concentration camp (集中营). They meet up on their side of the fence each day.

The story is about a young girl named Liesel who has to live with foster parents (养父母) during World War II. On the way to her new home, her brother dies, setting the sad tone for the story. There is hope, however, when Liesel discovers her love for reading and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing attacks with a Jewish man hidden in her basement.

This is probably the most touching book that makes you cry, as it records the experiences of teens who are dying of cancer and living their last days in love. The real tragedy is the love between the main characters, who know that they’re certain to die.

It’s one of the saddest stories of abuse (虐待) in recent decades. A Child Called “It” is based on the true story of Dave Pelzer, a boy from California who suffered at the hands of his cruel mother. The tears will come from both sadness and the inspiration tied to Dave’s fight for survival in an environment where he is considered useless.

【推荐2】In the past decade, the use of social media has grown in a way that no one could have guessed. It has turned some teenagers into celebrities (名人) and turned the famous into the infamous, overnight.

A key feature of social media, however, is its volatility. Trends come and go, disappearing almost as quickly as they appeared. So, what were the key social media trends of 2019?

Short video apps such as TikTok and its Chinese equivalent Douyin, took the world by storm. The Telegraph reported that TikTok was ranked 8th on Apple’s App Store in April. And Douyin had more than 300 million domestic monthly active users in June, CNBC said.

Why are these short videos — which are rarely longer than a few minutes — so popular? Jiang Yige, Singapore — based analyst at Feng He Fund Management, has a theory. Short videos are “just right to fill in the little gaps in our busy schedules”, he told CNBC.

These videos — apart from being very convenient — are important to teenagers because they allow them to express themselves, according to Teen Vogue.

The sense of community that users of short video apps get is another appealing feature. Liza Koshy, a user of the US app Musically who has over 2 million followers, said that she was thrilled when anyone said that her video had “inspired” him. “It’s really cool...because I think as short video creators that’s what we all expect.” she added.

Live streaming is another feature of our social media life that now seems as natural as sunrise. It’s a pretty neat idea: You can watch anyone, anywhere, live.

However, the boom in social media may be having side effects too. Fake news is one serious problem it arguably causes. Material shared on these platforms is often not checked for accuracy. The most basic content can be false and can sway users one way or another. We use social media all the time; that doesn’t mean that we understand the influence it is having on us. We should be mindful of both the time we spend on it and its impact on our minds.

【推荐3】In China，many people are leaving the countryside to find jobs in the cities，because the countryside is much poorer than the city，and often there isn’t   much work there. Services such as hospital and transport are usually much better in the city than in the countryside. They hope that their lives will improve when they move to the city.

But in the big cities of Europe like London or Paris，people are moving out of the city. These rich families want to live a quieter life. They are tired of the noise and the dirt of the city，and they are tired of the crowded streets，crowded trains and buses. They don’t want to live in the cities any more. They want a house with a garden in the countryside, and breathe the fresh air there. So they move out of the cities. Some don’t go very far，just to the towns near the cities. Other people move to the real countryside with sheep，cows   and green fields. There，they start new lives and try to make new friends.

Not all those who move from the city to the countryside are happy. After two or three years，many people who have done this feel that it was a big mistake. They don’t make so much money and there isn’t much work to do. People in the countryside are very different and aren’t always very friendly. As a result，quite a lot of people who have moved to the countryside move back to the city. “It’s wonderful to see crowds in the streets and cinema lights,” they say.

【推荐2】Kong Zi, also called Confucius (551－479 B．C.), and Socrates (469－399 B．C.) lived only a hundred years apart. During their lifetimes there was no contact between China and Greece, but it is interesting to look at how the world that each of these great philosophers came from shaped their ideas, and how these ideas in turn, shaped their societies.

Neither philosopher lived in times of peace, though there were more wars in Greece than in China. The Chinese states were very large and feudal, while the Greek city­states were small and urban. The urban environment in which Socrates lived allowed him to be more radical (激进的) than Confucius. Unlike Confucius, Socrates was not asked by rulers how to govern effectively. Thus, Socrates was able to be more idealistic, focusing on issues like freedom, and knowledge for its own sake. Confucius, on the other hand, advised those in government service, and many of his students went on to government service.

Confucius suggested the Golden Rule as a principle for the conduct of life. “Do not do to others what you would not want others to do to you.” He assumed that all men were equal at birth, though some had more potential (潜能) than others, and that it was knowledge that set men apart. Socrates focused on the individual, and thought that the greatest purpose of man was to seek wisdom. He believed that some had more potential to develop their reason than others did. Like Confucius, he believed that the superior class should rule the inferior (下层的) classes.

For Socrates, the family was of no importance, and the community of little concern. For Confucius, however, the family was the centre of society, with family relations considered much more important than political relations.

Both men are respected much more today than they were in their lifetimes.