【推荐1】I have never forgotten the firm belief I had in the arrival through the chimney (烟囱) of the little Santa Claus (圣诞老人), the kind, white-bearded old man who at midnight left in my tiny shoe a present I found the next morning.

Midnight! It’s the perfect hour children don’t know. What great efforts I made not to go to sleep before the little old man appeared!

I had both a great desire and great fear of seeing him, but could never stay awake until then, and the next day my first look was for my shoe. He never failed to carefully wrap (包装) every present for me. I would run barefoot to get my treasure. It never was a very expensive present, for we were not rich. It was a cookie, an orange, or very simply a fine red apple. But it felt so precious that I barely dared to eat it. What a great role imagination plays in a child’s life!

I do not at all agree with the idea that the lies about Santa Claus should be stopped. Doubts and truth come all too soon on their own. I very well remember the first year, when I was five or six, I doubted that it was not Santa Claus who put the cookie in my shoe. Since then, it has never tasted as good as the first few years of my life.

I noted that my son believed in him longer; boys are more naïve (天真的) than little girls. Like me, he made great efforts to stay awake until midnight. Like me, he loved the cookie baked in Heaven’s kitchens. And like me, the first year of his doubts was the last year of the visit of the good old man.

【推荐2】William Lindesay has been interested in the Great Wall of China since seeing it in a school atlas(地图册) as a child in England. He can vividly recall seeing in the “Oxford School Atlas” the Great Wall with its battlement symbol. From that moment, he had in his mind that when he grew up he’d go to China and walk along the Great Wall from end to end.

Lindesay’s about 3, 000 km solo run along the Great Wall began in 1987. Running the length of the wall was a brave expedition(探险), venturing(敢于去) into sparsely populated regions where there was little chance of help if the runner had an accident. During another trip, Lindesay and his team ventured deep into the Gobi Desert. The explorers almost died from dehydration(脱水). In total, Lindesay estimated in an interview that he had spent about 1, 600 days of his life on the great Wall in all seasons.

Lindesay and his wife, Wu Qi, whom he got to know and fell in love with during his trips in China, had a farmhouse at the foot of the wall. During his exploration, he noticed some sections of the wall were badly damaged and covered with litter. Modernization and development were making the situation even worse. “Some people say it will take generations to change; I say we don’t have generations of time. It’s got to be much quicker,” he said. Lindesay always carries a garbage bag with him in the wilderness, picking up litter along the way. Lindesay uses a garbage bag as his calling card. The cloth bag bears a set of nine simple guidelines in Chinese, which calls on people to obey while traveling or camping outdoors: “Take your own garbage home”“ Pick up litter left by others”“Don’ t damage plants or flowers, or pick fruit” and lots more.

【推荐3】Easter Island’s large and mysterious stone statues（雕像） have made it world famous. These statues, whose likenesses look like humans with huge stone cylinders(柱状物) balancing on their heads like hats, have tourists coming from all over the world. The tourists come to see these works of ancient art carved by the early inhabitants of the island. They come to see the mystery that has puzzled historians for decades.

Easter Island is located in a remote part of the South Pacific Ocean about 2,300 miles west of Chile. Easter Island covers just 45 square miles and its Polynesian name is Rapa Nui.

On Easter Sunday 1722, a Dutch explorer named Jacob Roggeveen was the first European to see Easter Island. The early Polynesians carved the statues within the holes of the volcano using only stone tools. Then they moved these huge statues to various destinations throughout the island. These 600 statues range in height from 10 to 40 feet. Some of them weigh as much as 50 tons. How could the early Polynesians lift hundreds of heavy statues out of the volcano? How did they move them across the island to their various locations? All of these questions, as well as many others, remain unanswered.

The early islanders probably worshiped(崇拜) these eyeless giants until sometime around 1670. In 1680, a war broke out between two groups of islanders. The victors of the war and ancestors of the present inhabitants, broke down many of the statues. In most cases, they broke the necks of the statues.

Now 15 of the statues on Easter Island have been repaired to their original positions on their stone platforms. Even today, using modern tools and machinery, putting up such large statues and balancing cylinders on top of their heads presents a challenging task.

【推荐1】What does it mean to live a good life? This question has been debated for centuries. In the field of psychology, two main concepts of the good life have been quite popular: A happy life full of pleasure and positive emotions, and a meaningful life full of purpose and sacrifice. But what if these aren’t the only options?

In recent years, a long-neglected version of the good life has been receiving greater attention: the psychologically rich life. It is full of complex mental engagement, a wide range of intense and deep emotions, and diverse, novel, surprising and interesting experiences. Sometimes they are neither pleasant nor meaningful. However, they are rarely boring or monotonous.

After all, both happy and meaningful lives can become monotonous and repetitive. A person with a steady office job, married with children, may be satisfied and find his or her life meaningful and still be bored. Also, the psychologically rich life doesn’t necessarily involve economic richness. For instance, consider Hesse’s character Goldmund, who has no money but pursues the life of a free spirit.

Research has found psychological richness is related to, but partially distinct from, both happy and meaningful lives. Psychological richness is related with openness to experience and experiencing both positive and negative emotions more intensely. But is the psychologically rich life one that people actually want?

In a new study, Oishi and his colleagues asked people in nine countries the degree to which they value a psychologically rich life, a happy life and a meaningful life. They found many people’s self-described ideal lives involve psychological richness. When forced to choose a life, however, the majority chose a happy life and a meaningful life. Even so, a minority of people still favored the psychologically rich life, ranging from 6.7% in Singapore to 16.8% in Germany.

These numbers went up when the desire for a psychologically rich life was measured indirectly. To understand what a person wishes their lives might have been, it is important to explore what people wish they had avoided in their lives. When asked what they regret most and whether undoing this event would have made their lives happier, more meaningful or psychologically richer, about 28% of Americans said undoing the regrettable event would have made their lives psychologically richer.

These findings suggest that while most people strive to be happy and have meaning in their lives, a sizable number of people are content merely living a psychologically rich existence.

As Oishi and his colleagues conclude, “We believe that taking the psychologically rich life seriously will deepen and enrich our understanding of well-being.” At the end of the day, there is no one singularly acceptable path to the good life. You have to find a path that works best for you.

【推荐3】High school students perform better on tests if they are in a classroom with a view of a green space, instead of a windowless room, according to research from the University of Illinois.

“It is the first to show a relationship between studying with a green view and students’ performance,” said William Sullivan, head of the research team. “ It’s a significant finding that if you have a green view outside your window, you’ll do better on tests.” Sullivan hopes the results of their research will lead to some changes. Changes in school design, for example, “would be a much better thing than any of the things we spend money on in education today,” Sullivan said.

The research included 94 students at five high schools. Students were randomly assigned (随机分配) to one of two kinds of classrooms－windowless, or with a window looking out onto green space. Each kind of classroom had a similar size and layout (布局). The students took part in one-on-one experiments in which they did 30 minutes of activities that included a proofreading exercise, a speech and a math exercise. Following the activities, the students were given an attention test.

The findings: Students did better on both study activities and the attention test if they were in a classroom with a green view, Sullivan said.

The researchers suggest their findings can help planners improve students’ happiness and learning. For example, planners can choose sites for new schools that already have trees and other plants, or they can plant many trees on the site; architects can design classroom, dining room and hallway windows so they look onto green spaces.