【推荐3】Catalonia, a region in northeastern Spain, is known for its architecture, sea-side markets and white champagne. It has its own language and even a regional flag. But the most dramatic display of Catalonian culture comes from the tradition of building castells, or human pyramids. First documented in 1801 as a cultural activity, castell building was declared an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2010.

In Catalonia, most towns have a castell building group with hundreds of members. Anyone is allowed to join, and families often participate together. An official organization keeps a record of the points awarded at each competition and then ranks the groups. Points are given based on the difficulty of the pyramid’s structure and height. For a long time, seven levels was the tallest that had been achieved, but lately pyramids have been built as high as ten.

Basic pyramids contain five main levels. The first level is called the pinya, followed by the folre, the manilles, the tronk, and the pom de dalt. The tronk is the vertical structure in the center of the pyramid that holds the most weight. The strongest men make up the tronk, followed by strong but light women. A small child known as the enxaneta climbs to the pom de dalt. The enxaneta is usually between 7 and 10 years old and must be light and fearless.

“As the enxaneta begins to climb, silence falls over the crowd and the air is charged with both excitement and fear, because no one knows where the pyramid is going to end,” said Giori Worsley, who began studying human pyramid building 11 years ago.

Originally attracted by the structures themselves, Giori Worsley later realized that building higher human pyramids was not the most important thing. The most important thing was the close connection within the Catalonian society that encouraged people to support each other.

“I see it as a poetic reflection of the society,” he said. “All the participants at the base hold to each other so tightly that it’s almost like they have become one, while the stronger men hold the weight of the youngsters and women on their shoulders.”

Chinese culinary arts has a long history, famous all over the world. Chinese cuisine has developed and matured over the centuries, forming a rich cultural content. It is characterized by fine selection of ingredients, precise processing, particular care to the amount of fire, and substantial nourishment.

The diversity of geography, climate, costumes and products have led to the evolution of what are called the “Four Flavors” and “Eight Cuisines” but as catering is a living art sub-classifications continue to increase. Cuisine in China is a harmonious integration of color, redolence, taste, shape and the fineness of the instruments. For the cooking process, chefs pick choice and various ingredients and seasonings while employing unparalleled complicated skills handed down from their fathers, ever aspiring to their ideal of perfection for all the senses. Among the many cooking methods they use are boiling, stewing, braising, frying, steaming, crisping, baking, and simmering and so on. When they finish their masterpieces they are arranged on a variety of plates and dishes so that they are a real pleasure to view, to smell and ultimately to savor.

Beijing cuisine combines the best features of different regional styles. Shangdong cuisine leads the Northern dishes. Shangdong cooks are good at cooking seafood. Sichuan cooks specialize in chilies and hot peppers and Sichuan dish is famous for aromatic and spicy sauces. Guangdong cooking makes use of many ingredients. They look for fresh, tender, crisp textures. Huai Yang cuisine stresses the natural flavors. Dishes are strong but not greasy, and light but delicate. Tan cuisine is both sweet and salty. There is a saying that “southerners have a sweet tooth, and northerners crave salt”, but Tan dishes manage to satisfy both. Because China’s local dishes have their own typical characteristics, Chinese food can be divided into eight regional cuisines, the distinction of which is now widely accepted.

【推荐1】It is a small step for a plant, and a giant leap for plant kind. A sprouting (发芽) cotton seed on China’s Chang’e-4 lunar lander is the first plant ever to grow in another world, indicating a new era for life in space.

Seeds, including cotton, arabidopsis (拟南芥), oilseed rape (油菜) and potato were carried to the Moon as a part of biological experiment, along with fruit fly eggs and some yeasts (酵母).

Pictures sent back by the probe show the cotton seeds sprouting on January 7, 2019, a few days after Chang’e-4 landed on the far side of the Moon.

The organisms (生物) are in a sealed can, protected from the extreme temperatures and radiation on the surface. “Understanding how to grow plants in space will help lay the foundation for human settlement on the Moon,” a scientist leading the experiment told the South China Morning Post.

The six organisms are intended to form a mini-ecosystem, with the plants making oxygen and food to sustain the fruit flies. Yeasts could process the flies’ waste and dead plants to provide another food source.

In a future human settlement, potatoes could provide food, rapeseed could be a source of oil and cotton could be used for clothing. A study in 2014 reported that plants could sprout and grow in lunar soil for 50 days without any additional nutrients (营养物). Over longer periods, human waste could help support plants’ nutritional needs.

These lunar green shoots aren’t the first plants in space. Astronauts on the International Space Station have grown crops including peas, radishes and cucumbers. They got their first bites of space-grown romaine lettuce in 2015.

The China National Space Administration eventually hopes to put humans on the Moon. “We are studying the program of sending astronauts to the Moon, but it’s still in very early stages,” a deputy director told the South China Morning Post. “We haven’t got the approval yet.”

【推荐2】Carleen Hutchins finished building her first stringed instrument (弦乐器) in 1949, when she was 38. She is remembered as an excellent luthier. A luthier is a person who makes stringed instruments, such as violins and guitars.

Hutchins was a primary school science teacher. She took up the viola (中提琴) at 36. But she wasn’t satisfied with the viola she bought. Since she was a skilled woodworker, she decided to build one herself.

For more than 50 years, she carved (雕刻) stringed instruments. Hutchins worked from her home — often in her kitchen. She used a scientific method to carve them. Over the years, she made around 500 instruments. Her method is still used. It helps luthiers carve high-quality stringed instruments.

Hutchins also created a family of eight violins known as the violin octet. They change in size and tone (音调). “It’s how the instrument is carved that makes it a violin,” Joe McNalley says. He is the founder of the Hutchins Consort, a group that plays the octet.

The four instruments in the string family are violin, viola, cello, and bass. They cannot play the lowest or highest notes of the piano. They play the notes in between. Hutchins created a family of eight violins that play all the notes a piano plays.

D. Quincy Whitney has written a book about Hutchins. “For centuries, musicians had talked about creating a family of violins that had a total string sound as wide as a piano,” she said.

Hutchins was an artist and a scientist. A big part of her dream was to create top-quality instruments that were affordable. “Her story is about how one person can not only make a difference,” says Whitney, “but can change a whole world.”

【推荐3】Thailand’s “loneliest tree”, a tree growing on a rocky island only a few meters in diameter, is being seriously threatened by tourists desperate to get a selfie (自拍) with it.

The small patch of land located just off the country’s eastern coast in Trat Province has been called “Koh Khai Hua Roh” because it looks similar to the island featured in drawings of funny scenes involving a man and a woman trapped on an island in the popular Khai Hua Roh comic. The uninhabited island is quite a sight to behold, as it is home to a lonely tree that struggle to live despite being surrounded by salt water. Unfortunately, the tree’s popularity might just be the death of it.

On Tuesday, the Koh Mak Tambon Administrative Organization led a team of Thai reporters to Koh Khai Hua Roh in order to observe the country’s loneliest tree. They knew that photos of the lonely tree shared on social media had been attracting an increasing number of tourists to the island, but they had no idea how much damage that could produce.

According to The Nation, several small branches of the tree were found broken off, the tree’s exposed roots appeared to have been stepped heavily on to the point where the outer cover has peeled off (剥落), and the trunk appears to be tilting (倾斜) more than it did a few years back.

Koh Khai Hua Roh island is so tiny that it can only accommodate up to five people at a time, but local authorities admit that selfie-addicted tourists sometimes crowd there in much greater numbers, with some even climbing the poor tree.

The Koh Mak Tambon Administrative Organization plans to kickstart an educational campaign to hopefully teach people to conserve iconic landmarks like Thailand’s loneliest tree. It also plans to take more drastic actions, like restricting the number of tourists allowed to visit the island and making the island only accessible in certain seasons.