【推荐1】While international travel is not an option due to the pandemic, Chinese tourists are still traveling within the country. Some people have an option for a more rural experience, though historic and natural wonders are still the priorities.

According to a recent report released by Chinese-owned Trip. com Group, one of the world's largest online travel agencies, rural tourism trips in China had increased year-on-year by more than 300 percent by March 2021.

Zhou Mingqi, founder and general manager of Shanghai Tour Guide Enterprise Management Consulting, said that Chinese people are tired of the hustle and bustle（喧嚣忙碌）of big cities and want to have unique experiences.

"There is a need to experience a different kind of life, like idyllic(田园诗般的）scenery or countryside life, to change a lifestyle on the weekend, " Zhou told CNN.

Wang Shang works for a Beijing-based company that helps organize countryside tours. She said that in one of the hotels she worked for, visitors can experience growing their own food, practice farming and learn about the region's traditional crafts and customs, CNN reported. Deng Yu, a 26-year-old tourist, likes the lifestyle very much. Working in big cities for several years, Deng told CGTN that rural trips help her not only "enjoy the landscape" but also "relieve stress by escaping the bustling city life and getting closer to nature."

Wang believes that experiencing a healthy lifestyle is another reason why city-dwellers travel to rural areas. Most of the visitors from cities are used to buying food in the supermarket. Sometimes they would worry about the food safety. But in rural areas, they can easily get healthy, fresh produce. Wang said that visitors from big cities come to buy flour, noodles, meat, eggs, honey and liquor, among other items.

The trend has also been pushed by Chinese internet influencers such as Li Ziqi, whose beautifully-shot videos of simple life in rural China have gained tens of millions of viewers.

To keep this boom going and attract more visitors, some rural areas are increasing their appeal.

"Nowadays· the rural areas in many places have indeed undergone major changes. Especially after renovating for tourism, it will become much more beautiful than in the past." Zhou told CNN.

【推荐2】Starting this year, Scholastic Aptitude Test(SAT)scores will be about more than just how many correct answers a person has on the test.The College Board in charge of the SAT recently published a new policy.It will include something called an "adversity score", based on 31 different factors and ranging from I to 100.A score of 50 is an "average level of disadvantage", said The New York Times.A higher score means a student has faced more adversity.It will cover 150 colleges later this year and be available to all US colleges in 2020.

What kind of adversity do students face? African-American students, for example, are more likely to attend underfunded(资金不足的) schools, and their families usually can’t afford extra SAT lessons.Higher SAT scores have been found to have a close tie with students from richer families and those with better-educated parents, reported The New York Times.As a result, the SAT has long been criticized for its unfairness.

The new adversity score tries to deal with that reality.If a student came from a poor neighborhood or attended a high school without enough funding, this information will be given to college administrators.While one student's SAT score may be lower than her rich classmates, college administrators may assume that she did her best in a bad situation.

This sounds good, but the College Board has received a lot of criticism for this new development.Parents are worried.They’re concerned that their children's hard work would be "completely neglected“(忽视)just because they happened to come from a rich family.

Writing in Time, Andre J.Washington and Daniel Hemel call the adversity score a half-hearted effort＂.They say the score fails to directly deal with racial inequality(种族不平等).They also say that the problems experienced by African-Americans are deeper than just low scores and school funding.For example, they point out that African-American students are less likely to have supportive relationships with teachers, so they are less likely to have satisfying recommendation letters.

At least they're trying, says Richard D Kahlenberg, a senior fellow aThe Century Foundation.”An imperfect adversity score is better than failing to consider the difficulty so many students get through”, he said."The adversity score is simple and direct.”

【推荐3】From teenage to adulthood, you go through a basket of changes—graduation, jobs and relationships that come and go. But as you grow older, does your personality change?

People tend to think of personality as fixed. But that is not how it works. “Personality is a developmental phenomenon instead of something that you’re stuck with and can’t get over,” said Brent Roberts, a psychologist at the University of Illinois.

Roberts and other researchers have surveyed the personalities of participants regularly over many years, showing that our personality is actually stable within each decade of life. You don’t notice it on a 1-to-5-yeartime range, but in the long term, it becomes pronounced(显著的).

In 1960, psychologists surveyed over 440,000 high school students who answered questions about everything from how they reacted to emotional situations to how efficiently they got work done. Fifty years later, researchers tracked down 1,952 of these students and gave them the same survey. The results found that in their 60s, participants scored much higher than they did as teenagers on questions measuring calmness, self-confidence, leadership and social sensitivity(敏感度).

Over again, studies have found similar results. Personality tends to get “better” over time. Psychologists name it “the maturity principle(成熟定律)”. People become more extroverted(外向), emotionally stable, agreeable and gentle as they grow older. In general, “the maturity principle” applies to most people.

So what causes the change? Evidence suggests it’s not dramatic life events, such as marriage, the birth of a child or loss of a loved one. Instead, changing expectations placed on us—as we adjust to university, the work force, starting a family—slowly wear us in, almost like a pair of shoes, Roberts said. “Over time, you are asked to do things differently and thus learn how to behave in these situations.” So we adapt.