Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, has an ancient rivalry with Chongqing, a city to its south-east. Residents of Chongqing accuse their Chengdu cousins of being pompous(自大的).    1    . Both cities share a love of spice-laden Sichuan cuisine, which in recent decades has conquered Chinese palates(味觉). But they are at war over which has the best Sichuan hotpot—a type of DIY-cooking that involves boiling vegetables and slices of meat in a communal broth with chillies and numbing peppercorns.

    2    It describes how it developed from a method used to make cheap offcuts of meat taste delicious. But Chengdu is playing catch-up. In January the city sold a plot of land on condition that the developer build a hotpot museum on part of it. Such presumptuous behaviour will test the famous fiery tempers of Chongqing-ites. Chengdu may be the capital of Sichuan cuisine’s eponymous province, but Chongqing was part of Sichuan for long periods of history until 1997. It is now the capital of its own province-sized region, which is also called Chongqing.

The two cities are among many in China with their own styles of hotpot. The stories behind these dishes reveal how different regions like to see themselves. Chongqing’s is said to highlight the ingenuity(心灵手巧) of the proletariat(工人阶级). Other places describe their hotpots as the sophisticated food of emperors. Some say theirs have military origins: warriors on the march boiling scraps in their helmets. Hotpot contents are equally diverse. To keep warm in winter, Beijingers boil fatty lamb in a berry broth.     3    

    4    Some older Sichuanese disown it altogether. They complain that it is causing an escalation of chilli-use in other dishes that drowns out subtle flavours. Chua Lam, a celebrity food critic based in Hong Kong, caused a stir in December when he wished hotpot would disappear from the face of the Earth. He dismissed it as “the most uncultured form of cooking”, requiring no real culinary knowledge.

【推荐3】Food experts say washing could spread the germs on your turkey in the kitchen sink or nearby food. But it's been a challenge trying to convince cooks to stop rinsing （冲洗）off raw poultry. Germs that can make people sick are common in the guts of healthy poultry and are legally allowed to be on raw turkey and chicken. The assumption is that nobody eats their poultry raw, and that thorough cooking will kill the bacteria.

The do — not — wash raw poultry advice from the USDA is relatively new and perhaps hasn't caught on because it goes against the common belief that washing makes things clean, said Chapman. Benjamin Chapman, a study author and food safety expert at North Carolina State University, said the instinct to wash raw poultry goes back at least decades when people relied more on visual clues to spot problems with poultry. Meanwhile, washing hands and surfaces are also important.

But food preparation is a complicated act, and germs from poultry can be spread even if it's not washed, especially when birds are removed from packaging.

The USDA-funded study stresses that point. Researchers sprayed raw chicken with a harmless strain of E. coli （大肠杆菌）and watched volunteer cooks at test kitchens. Among those who washed their raw chicken, about a quarter ended up spreading the bacteria to their lettuce. But even some of those who did not rinse the chicken got germs on the lettuce. And there are other opportunities for germs to survive on turkeys: melting and cooking.

To ensure a bird is thoroughly cooked, they say to use a thermometer to check that the deepest and thickest parts of it have reached 165 degrees. Even after the meal is cooked, you aren't out of the danger zone. To keep turkeys and other leftovers safe, experts say they should be refrigerated after two hours.

【推荐3】''Our most beautiful part is our bridge because we can make wind energy by this bridge and our main transportation is used by this bridge. '' The future city competition puts young teens in charge of building a city that can respond to a challenge. This year's challenge is resilience (重建能力) after a natural disaster like an earthquake. The models must be built with recycled materials for less than 100 dollars.

But behind this is some serious engineering. Each group has to present its city's resilience features to the audience and judges. ''The sea walls are made with concrete and steel to reduce the tidal waves impact on the shoreline. '' And it's about more than just infrastructure(基础设施). Judges want to know that you've thought about your citizens, too. ''If someone wants to design a building that's 50 floors, we make an agreement like maybe 20 of them have to be low-income housing. '' Engineering Outreach Group Discover (EOGD) has run the competition for nearly three decades. Director of programs Thea Sahr says it is an effective teaching tool. She tells of one boy who asked his teacher when they would get back to the real learning. ''You know the kind we were just sitting there reading the books and telling you the answers, '' and she said ''well what do you know about storm water that you didn't know last week. What do you know about scale? And you're having a really good time while you're doing it. '' He says this is learning. '' I want to do more of this. ''

The winners take home 7,500 dollars for their school’s science program, and get a trip to a science focused summer camp. This year's winners from Warwick Middle School in Pennsylvania say they also learned real-world skills like dealing with failure. ''The hardest part was trying not to get frustrated when something didn't work. And I think our team members really contributed to that. Communication is key. '' Listen, when you're building a city, engineering is just part of it.