【推荐2】After Alexander Pushkin was shot in a duel (决斗) in 1837, crowds of mourners formed in Saint Petersburg. When the wagon carrying the much loved poet’s body reached Pskov province, where he was to be buried, admirers tried to pull the vehicle themselves.

Today’s celebrity funerals tend to involve the public largely digitally rather than in person. But people are passionate all the same. In the past few months, grief has coursed around the Internet for Milan Kundera, and most recently, Michael Gambon. If you stop to think about it, such expressions of strong feelings for writers and actors are odd, even irrational.

Unlike other kinds of grief, this one is not rooted in personal intimacy (亲密关系). If you ever interacted with a cherished author, it was probably during a book tour when she signed your copy of her novel. Maybe you once locked eyes with a musician during a live concert and he smiled at you, but actually he did not even know you.

Objectively, sorrow makes sense when a star dies young or violently. Had she not died at 27, who knows what music Amy Winehouse would have added to her already impressive collections of work? The death of a long-lived and fulfilled artist, however, is far from the saddest item in an average day’s headlines. And while most ordinary people sink into oblivion, these celebrities live on in their output. Why, then, are these losses felt so widely and keenly?

One interpretation is that departed celebrities are merely the messengers. Part of your past —the years in which the musician was the soundtrack, the writer your ally (盟友) — can seem to fade away with them. The grief can be seen as a form of gratitude for the harmony and joy they supplied.

More importantly, the passing of an artist is an occasion for exchanges of ideas. In an atomized age, in which the default (默认) tone is critical, a beloved figure’s death is a chance to share positive feelings and memories with fellow admirers. These sad occasions are the parting gifts of these artists.

【推荐2】From various competition gears (用具) that accompanied athletes from Team China winning medals to the huge traffic and exposure brought by Chinese 18-year-old skier star Gu Ailing who wore Anta items in her room on social media, Chinese domestic sports brands have emerged (显露) on one of the world’s largest sporting stages, and Anta has turned out to be the clear winner.

Anta has been the sportswear partner of the Chinese Olympic Committee since 2009. As the official sportswear provider of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games, Anta used its smart technology to equip 12 event teams of Team China in events including short track speed skating, skeleton and curling. Some of Anta’s Olympic licensed products have also become targets of Chinese social media users to snap up, especially the hats and shoulder bags in the shape of Bing Dwen Dwen, with the strong recommendation from foreign athletes, which sold out quickly on Anta’s online flagship store.

The Chinese sports equipment maker also owns brands such as Fila, Salomon and Descente. According to a ranking by sports new media sportsmoney, Fila and Descente held the first two positions in terms of the number of individual or team medal winners wearing the brand’s clothes when competing and receiving the awards as of February 18.

Phenix, a long established technical Alpine skiwear brand that has been acquired by China Dongxiang Group, enjoyed an outstanding performance as the sponsor of Team Norway uniforms, which won its 16^th gold medal of the Beijing Games on Sunday, a record for a single country at a Winter Olympics.

The Winter Olympic Games has promoted many home-grown brands like Anta, Li Ning and Peak to global star brands and they emerge more strongly in competing with foreign sports competitors, industry analysts told the Global Times. With advanced technology and a promising future after the Beijing Winter Olympics, domestic sports brands are set to see huge growth opportunities on global markets with stronger brand awareness, they said.

【推荐1】There was a time when parents raised their children without relying on expert advice. In those days aunts and grandmothers were available to help. But during most of this century families have been increasingly separated from their extended families. Because child rearing seems to be a risky experiment, many parents have turned to experts. Unfortunately, that expert advice has been interpreted in the context of social trends and changed into child rearing fashions that later have been cast aside along with the reputations of some unreal experts whose names have been associated with those child rearing eras.

Early in this century, John Broadus Watson warned parents against spoiling their children with unnecessary displays of affection and recommended placing regular habits on them in order to instill self-discipline. The ideas of Sigmund Freud led the next era toward reasoning with children to help them become insightful individuals, capable of enjoying leisure as well as work. After World War Ⅱ, permissiveness (宽容) with children was inferred from the writings of Dr. Benjamin Spock, who enjoined parents to trust their intuitions (直觉) as they tried to meet their children’s needs.

Now we can choose from a variety of experts. On the “conservative” side are those who encourage firmness and “tough love” with children. On the “liberal” side are those who minimize confrontation (冲突) and stress negotiating with children.

Now parenthood has almost become professionalized so that many parents seek “the best way” to raise their children. Child rearing no longer is something that can be done by tradition, or common sense. There is a “right way” to put a child to bed, to leave a child with a sitter, to get a child started in school, and to have a friend over. Because being a parent is a career, like any career the harder we work at it the more we gain. The result is the general feeling that we cannot do enough for our children. Certainly we should raise our children better than we were raised.

【推荐2】Does Chinese philosophy influence your parenting? It is the question I am most often asked. Chinese philosophy contains many lessons that are useful, accessible and timely when applied to the challenges of parenting. Confucianism and Daoism suggest ways to guide your children toward meaning and fulfilment rather than wealth and fame.

Parenting is tough, especially because there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. Different kids need different things. How do we stay focused on what matters most? How do we navigate difficult times with our kids and support them when they struggle? All of us want our children to be successful, partly because we love them and want them to be happy. But it is easy to mistake “success” with certain kinds of academic or athletic achievements.

Of course, one can define success in this way. But ancient Chinese philosophers believed that real success is not measured by fame, money or power. A successful life is one in which a person flourishes: they are happy, fulfilled, and they find meaning in what they do and who they are. This type of fulfilment comes from loving and being loved by others within the context of meaningful, lasting relationships; giving generously of what you have to others; caring for and having a genuine love of nature; and shouldering your responsibility.

Most of us know that having an Ivy League degree and a high-paying job is not going to make our children happy and fulfilled in life. Yet we worry about how they will find things they love to do and that they are good at. Philosophers from the two most influential ancient Chinese traditions — Confucianism and Daoism — talk more about human flourishing, virtue, happiness and fulfilment than about “success”.

Chinese philosophers argued that we genuinely flourish — are happiest and most fulfilled — when we develop these virtues. This can never be measured in terms such as earning power, entering famous schools or getting jobs. Instead, it is measured in how we treat people — how one loves and is loved by one’s family and friends — and in what one does to make the world a kinder, gentler, more humane and beautiful place. They encourage us to help our children learn more about the world around them.

The Confucians and Daoists were a little like yin and yang: Confucians have a lot of active, hands-on ways to help children grow, such as participating in traditions, while the Daoists recommend simpler activities, such as exploring the beauty of nature. Their diverse views on living a good life are precisely what makes Chinese philosophy such a great resource for parents.

Parenting is messy. It is not simple or straightforward but complex and difficult. There are no magic solutions that make things easy or smooth. Most of us will need to piece together different approaches in order to find something that works well and feels right in different situations, for different children, and at different times in a child’s life.

【推荐3】ChatGPT, the new artificial-intelligence technology created by Open AI, has many worrying about the future of education. The two largest public school districts, New York and Los Angeles, have banned the chatbot from their devices and networks, concerned that students may use it to cheat on assignments. Though ChatGPT’s capabilities are limited, it will likely continue to disrupt education as the technology advances.

But educators needn’t fear this change. Such technologies are transformative, but they threaten only the information-centric type of education that is failing to help students succeed. What young people need today is educational models that help them take ownership of their studies. They need instruction that equips them with real-life skills and prepares them for an economy in which rote, mechanical tasks will be increasingly performed by machines. AI may be a useful invention that hastens much-needed educational reform.

Practicing skills to enhance one’s facility with reasoning, analysis and argumentation — rather than memorizing basic information — should be central to learning. These are skills young people will need in future careers and, most important, that AI can’t replicate. Our experience with AI is perhaps best understood when compared with previous disruptions in education. When printed books, for example, began to emerge in the mid-1400s with the advent of the movable type, one can imagine university professors feared that students wouldn’t need to come to class because they could simply buy the book.

Yet in practice, printing had the opposite effect: The number of universities exploded along with the total number of books. The new technology disrupted the mechanical aspect of education, but in doing so it allowed educators to refocus on higher-level skills — the strategic elements rather than the tactical. The same followed the introduction of calculators and spreadsheets, which freed up time that would have been spent memorizing rote algorithms for mathematical problems.

This change didn’t make the underlying skills unnecessary; it merely transformed what could be done with them. The effect of such technology as ChatGPT will likely be similar. The AI will serve as an information-gathering and mechanical-organizing tool, but it won’t eliminate the fundamental need for critical thinking. These skills will persist and only increase in value. Therefore, schools must remember that the value created by education isn’t a head full of facts but a person with the skill to use these facts with the tools available to magnify his effect in the world. AI is best seen as another of these tools, which, when used strategically, can unleash student learning and performance in ways not yet seen.