【推荐1】Children’s Games in Ancient China

Unlike the children nowadays, the children during ancient times didn’t have smartphones or computers to entertain themselves.     1    . Let’s take a look.  

Kicking stone balls

During the Qing Dynasty, kicking a stone ball around was a popular sport in the northern part of China, and it was often played in the winter to keep warm. Stones were carved into small balls and kicked along with feet.

Flying kites

Kites have quite a long history. The earliest kites were made of wood, instead of paper. Nowadays, the three most famous kites are the Beijing kite, Tianjin kite and Weifang kite.     2    . For example, the swallow-shaped kite is a well-known Beijing style.  

Playing hide-and-seek

Hide-and-seek is a traditional game for children, popular around the nation. Even nowadays, many children like playing it. There are two ways to play. One way is covering a child’s eyes while other kids run around to tease him.     3    .  

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The closest thing to watching a film or television for entertainment during ancient times was going to see a shadow play. Folk artists manipulate puppets behind the screen, narrating stories and accompanied by music.

Setting off firecrackers

Firecrackers have a history of more than 2, 000 years. It is said that there was a beast named “Nian” in ancient China.     5    . After gunpowder was invented, it gradually replaced the bamboo joint cracker. Crackers are still set off during the Spring Festival to symbolize auspiciousness (吉祥).

【推荐3】Chinese New Year, also called Lunar New Year or the Chinese Spring Festival, holds the most significant position among all Chinese festivals and holidays.     1    , there are many things you can do to join the festivities(庆祝活动）and to pay respects to Chinese traditions.

    2    . If you have traditional Chinese clothing, this is the perfect time to wear it.

Outfits can be purchased in Chinatown, including beautiful silk clothing. Connected with joy, happiness, good luck, wealth and good fortune, red clothes will ensure that you're fully participating in the spirit of the celebrations.

Clean your home. This tradition is founded in the belief that cleaning the house at this time of the year will “sweep away the bad luck” that has accumulated(积聚）inside over the past year.     3    

Give gifts of money in red envelopes. Adults give lucky envelopes of money to children during this holiday.    4    .

Watch a parade on television or online.     5    . In China, the national China Central Television broadcaster (CCTV) attracts hundreds of millions of viewers with its annual Spring Festival Gala(春节联欢晚会).

【推荐1】Almost everyone has heard the expression, "the calm before the storm". It is usually used to describe a peaceful period just before a very stressful situation or a tense argument.

British sailors coined the phrase in the late 1600s. They noted that before certain storms the seas would seem to become static(平静的) and the winds would drop. But why is it often so calm before a storm?

According to the US website How Stuff Works, a calm period occurs because many storms, tornadoes and hurricanes draw in all the warm and wet air from the surrounding area. As the air rises into the storm clouds, it cools and acts as “fuel for the storm, like petrol in a car”. Once the storm has taken all the energy it can from the air, it is pushed out from the top of the storm clouds and falls back down to ground level. As the air goes down, it becomes warm and dry. Warm and dry air is stable, so once it covers an area, it causes a calm period before the storm.

This same process also causes the “eye of the storm” in hurricanes and tornadoes. In these conditions, the calm occurs in the center of the storm because of the strong circling winds.

The Weather Network has a tip for working out how far away a storm is, First count how many seconds there are between a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder, roughly three seconds equal one kilometer. So, for example, if you count nine seconds, the storm is about three kilometers away. A good judge is that if your count is below 30 seconds, you should seek shelter straight away.

However, due to the complexity of storm system, not all storms are proceeded (领先) by calm. Given the right conditions, some storms announce themselves with heavy rain and icy winds. So, your best bet is to keep yourself updated with weather reports for any predictions regarding a coming storm in your area. That’s the most reliable and sensible way to predict the next display of nature’s temper.

【推荐3】Cars could be able to "talk" to each other to warn about dangers on the roads using 5G technology in future, according to researchers.

Researchers at Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU) believe 5G may enable driverless cars to send each other messages about dangers such as ice or deep holes.

And they believe the high-speed, low -delay (低延迟的) nature of 5G will improve driverless cars to the point where they will be safer than the cars being driven today. They predict the number of road traffic accidents which cause more than 1. 3 million deaths and up to 50 million people injured worldwide every year will drop greatly as a result.

Dr Dimitrios, a member of the research group, said, “To have a better idea of what the future will look like, think of having cars that not only use sensors (感应器) to find what's around them, but also can talk to each other about safety information nearby.”

“I'm sure anyone who has had a bad experience on frozen roads would have benefited from knowing about the dangerous conditions ahead of time so they could have changed their speed or, if possible, even avoided that route (路线) altogether.”

With the help of 5G, an early warning system in vehicles will come into use within the next few years. Cars that are close enough to the danger area will pass warning messages to other cars around them using communication technologies, but also to cars further away using 5G, fast and reliably. Then those cars will send the same information to cars near them and 80 on, forming a joined-up.

5G is an exciting mobile technology, which will give a great boost to smart cities and autonomous (全自动的) vehicles among many other things.