【推荐1】People of San Francisco and visitors now have a place to learn and study the largely forgotten history of Chinese workers who helped build the US’ first transcontinental (横贯大陆的) railroad.

The Chinese Railroad Workers History Center, near the southern entrance of San Francisco’s Chinatown, is expected to serve as a “gathering place” for people to learn about Chinese Americans’ heritage (遗产) in the US, according to the founder, Florence Fang, a Chinese community leader in the Bay Area. “The center’s purpose is to remember the Chinese railroad workers’ contribution to this country. The goal is to give voice to the voiceless, and the spirit is to remember the past and inspire the future,” said Fang.

The building of the Transcontinental Railroad, originally known as the Pacific Railroad, was completed on May 10, 1869．It was considered one of the most remarkable engineering achievements of the 19th century. The railroad greatly changed the nation as it not only expanded the American economy but also increased national confidence.

The Chinese workers made up more than 80 percent of the railroad workforce. “What is important to remember is the sweat and the tears and sometimes the lives of the Chinese workers who built the most treacherous, difficult part of the Transcontinental Railroad,” said California Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis, “Now it will go down in history along with so many other unbelievably important contributions of Chinese Americans.”

Kounalaki s and other elected officials in the state and the city joined community leaders on Wednesday at the center to commemorate the 154th anniversary of the completion of the railroad and pay tribute (致敬) to the Chinese workers.

“This center joins several other institutions in San Francisco, like the Chinese Historical Society and the Chinese Culture Center, to attract visitors and to teach Chinese American history and culture,” said Peskin, president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

“It comes at a critical time for us. It comes as Chinatown and the home of San Francisco have experienced three very difficult years, Chinatown in particular, not only with the economic harm, but with the rise of Asian hate,” he said. “The center will help teach future generations and make San Francisco proud,” said Peskin. “It will help promote the economy of Chinatown.”

【推荐2】In 1999, journalist Nicholas D. Kristof reported a surprising encounter on a tiny African island. Here, Kristof met a number of elderly men who told him that they were descendants of Chinese sailors many centuries ago. Their ancestors had traded with local Africans, who had given them giraffes to take back to China.     1    

Six centuries ago, a large number of Chinese ships crossed the sea, then travelled west to East Africa.     2     These seven great expeditions brought a vast web of trading links under Chinese government control.

    3     Most of the trading involved spices (香料), wood, and medicines. Zheng He brought them back to the capital. Although these goods were mainly presented to the emperor for his consumption and disposal, foreign ambassadors who came to China were permitted to trade with locals in the capital for handsome profits, which also allowed ordinary Chinese to benefit from international trade.

    4     In the regions they visited, Zheng He and his fleet (船队) remained a long-lasting theme in popular Southeast Asia folk tales. Two surviving records of the expeditions provide detailed accounts of unique Chinese navigation technologies of the time, leaving Chinese rich maritime legacy (遗产) to later generations.

However, the Chinese expedition never sought to establish colonial rule over these oceans by military force.     5     China’s maritime dominance disappeared suddenly in the 1430s because of domestic changes, and the overseas expeditions were eventually ended by the court. All this happened only decades prior to the occurrence of the great age of European discovery and exploration.

The Nobel Prize is the brainchild of Alfred Nobel, a Swedish chemist who was best known in his lifetime for the invention of dynamite (炸药). Upon his death in 1896, a reading of his will revealed rules that over 90% of his estate should be used to establish prizes in five categories: physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace.

Many wonder why Nobel established the prizes, and it has often been assumed that he sought to make compensation for creating dynamite. Nobel did catch a glimpse of a French obituary (讣告) for himself when his brother died and a French newspaper thought he had died. Among other colorful terms, the newspapers called Alfred Nobel a “merchant of death.” Therefore, the restitution to reward the positive aspects of the world remains the popular theory on the establishment of the Nobel Prize.

Alfred Nobel died in 1896, and the first prize was awarded in 1901. Nobel stipulated exactly how the prizes should be determined, and what bodies should be responsible for selecting and awarding them.

According to Nobel’s will, the Swedish Academy of Science was to award a yearly prize in physics and chemistry. The Caroline Institute at Stockholm would award the prize for medicine. The Academy of Stockholm would determine the award for literature. Five members selected by the Norwegian government select the recipient of the annual Peace Prize. The Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo, Norway, while the others are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden. Each award was to be given without regard to nationality and was meant to represent the best and brightest contributors to each field.

【推荐1】It’s not always easy for wealthy people to decide who (or what) to leave their money to when they die and quite a few of them make some very unusual choices.

Due to her vast wealth, New York hotelier Leona Heimsley was able to leave $12 m to her dog, Trouble. The money for the dog’s welfare was left in the hands of Leona’s brother, Alvin Rosenthal. He also inherited money from his sister, but amazingly he received $2m less than the dog! Leona isn’t an exception. According to the Mail Online newspaper, there are roughly 1.5 million people in the UK along who plan to leave money to their pets. However, there are other extremely rich people who have very different ideas about who they should leave their money to.

Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, is rumoured to be worth over $54b and he’s decided to leave the vast majority of this fortune to charitable causes. Of course, like most other parents, he could have chosen to leave his money to his children, but he hasn’t. When talking about his children’s inheritance he said, “It will be a minuscule portion of my wealth. It will mean they have to find their own way. They will be given an unbelievable education and that will be paid for. And certainly anything related to health issues we will take care of. But in terms of their income, they will have to pick a job they like and go to work.

Anita Roddick (1942-2007), founder of The Body Shop, also decided that she didn’t need to leave her money to her two daughters because they would be fine without it. She felt there were too many people in the world who had nothing and who needed this money far more than they did. She once told reporters that she was enjoying her money because whenever she wanted to, she could give away millions of pounds to human rights and environmental groups. Her fortune was said to be somewhere in the region of $50m. Some people thought she should have left at least some of that money to her children — she needn’t have given it all away. But that’s just what she did. ”I told my kids they would not inherit one penny,“ she said, and to their great credit Anita’s daughters supported their mother’s decision. Many people would have reacted very differently.

【推荐3】Consider a person very important to you. He or she keeps on talking to the extent of boring you and makes you feel like escaping from that place. To prevent the annoyance or boredom showing in your face, you may use gestures, gazes and smiles to pretend that you are listening! We call them a non-verbal way of communication or the “body language”!

There are gestures, gazes and smiles to show how far we are interested in the conversation.

Gestures may be of different types. Notice a person playing a dice game. When there is a positive sign of victory on his side, he gets more excited and rubs his palms fast. Then he throws the dice. Similarly a sales person knows when his customer is responsive. Hand-to-cheek gesture or hand-to-chin gesture from the person shows his disinterest and the salesman realizes that the customer is not interested in his presentation. Slapping one’s own forehead indicates the person’s forgetfulness.

Gazes go a long way in communicating with each other. When a person’s gaze meets yours for more than two thirds of the time, it can mean one of two things: first, he or she finds you very interesting or appealing, in which case the gaze will be associated with dilated pupils (瞳孔); secondly, he or she is hostile (怀有敌意的) towards you and may be issuing a non-verbal challenge, in which case the pupils will become smaller.

Smile your way into someone’s heart. There are 50 or so different types of human smiles. By analyzing the movements of facial muscles involved in smiling, researchers can tell when a smile is true. Look for the crinkle in the skin at the middle, outside corner of the eyes and if it is not there, the smile is probably fake. Real smiles are smiles that change rapidly from a small facial movement to a broad open expression.

Learn the body language and succeed in winning over others!

【推荐2】Seaweed farming, which has a long history in Asia, is spreading around the globe. Over the past 30 years, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization, world production of seaweed has boomed more than six times to over 35 million tonnes, with emerging markets in the Americas, Europe and Africa. The most recent numbers, from 2019, show that North America produces some 23,000 tonnes of wet seaweed per year.

Cascadia, which was founded in 2019, claims to be the largest cultivator in North America, with a harvest of 200 wet tonnes so far this year. Farms, small and large, are popping up fast. Many see this expansion as a good news story. The Global Seaweed Coalition (GSC)—a research and industry group—says humanity could, and should, be harvesting 15 times more seaweed by 2050. Coalition member Vincent Doumeizel is a senior adviser on oceans to a United Nations program working toward corporate sustainability. He talks about a “seaweed revolution” to feed the growing global population—a transformation as dramatic as the ancient shift to land-based agriculture. “In the ocean, we are still hunter-gatherers,” he says.

The Global Seaweed Coalition estimates that seaweed (high in protein and other nutrients) could add 10 percent to the world’s food supply using just 0.03 percent of the ocean surface. One recent study concluded that substituting 10 percent of human food with seaweed by 2050 could spare 110 million hectares of land for purposes other than agriculture. That’s about two percent of all farmland today.

Advocates like Doumeizel cast seaweed as the solution to many social and environmental problems: The industry requires no fresh water, pesticides or fertilizers; it doesn’t take up any land; it can overlap (重叠) with other uses of the ocean like offshore wind farms; it can help to decrease poverty in the developing world; and some companies, including Cascadia, are collaborating with local communities.

Seaweed creates a rich habitat for sea life, soaks up carbon dioxide, counter-acts acid and absorbs run-off nutrients, although evidence quantifying how farms, specifically, help with such things remains scarce.