【推荐1】The wallet is heading for extinction. As a day-to-day essential, it will die off with the generation who read print newspapers. The kind of shopping—where you hand over notes and count out change in return-- now happens only in the most minor of our retail encounters, like buying a bar of chocolate or a pint of milk from a corner shop. At the shops where you spend any real money, that money is increasingly abstracted. And this is more and more true, the higher up the scale you go. At the most cutting-edge retail stores--Victoria Beckham on Dover Street, for instance--you don’t go and stand at any kind of cash register when you decide to pay. The staff are equipped with IPads to take your payment while you relax on the sofa.

Which is nothing more or less than excellent service, if you have the money. But across society, the abstraction of the idea of cash makes me uneasy. Maybe I'm just old-fashion. But earning money isn't quick or easy for most of us. Isn't it a bit weird that spending it should happen in half a blink of an eye? Doesn't a wallet-that time-honoured Friday-night feeling of pleasing, promising fatness-represent something that matters?

But I'll leave the economics to the experts. What bothers me about the death of the wallet is the change it represents in our physical environment. Everything about the look and feel of a wallet-the way the fastenings and materials wear and tear and loosen with age, the plastic and paper and gold and silver, and handwritten phone numbers and printed cinema tickets-is the very opposite of what our world is becoming. The opposite of a wallet is a smartphone or an iPad. The rounded edges, cool glass, smooth and unknowable as a pebble. Instead of digging through pieces of paper and peering into corners, we move our fingers left and right. No more counting out coins. Show your wallet, if you still have one. It may not be here much longer.

【推荐2】Ask someone what they have done to help the environment recently and they will almost certainly mention recycling. Recycling in the home is very important of course. However, being forced to recycle often means we already have more material than we need. We are dealing with the results of that over-consumption in the greenest way possible, but it would be far better if we did not bring so much material home in the first place.

The total amount of packaging increased by 12% between 1999 and 2005. It now makes up a third of a typical household’s waste in the UK. In many supermarkets nowadays food items are packaged twice with plastic and cardboard.

Too much packaging is doing serious damage to the environment. The UK, for example, is running out of it for carrying this unnecessary waste. If such packaging is burnt, it gives off greenhouse gases which go on to cause the greenhouse effect. Recycling helps, but the process itself uses energy. The solution is not to produce such items in the first place. Food waste is a serious problem, too. Too many supermarkets encourage customers to buy more than they need. However, a few of them are coming round to the idea that this cannot continue, encouraging customers to reuse their plastic bags, for example.

But this is not just about supermarkets. It is about all of us. We have learned to associate packaging with quality. We have learned to think that something unpackaged is of poor quality. This is especially true of food. But it also applies to a wide range of consumer products, which often have far more packaging than necessary.

There are signs of hope. As more of us recycle, we are beginning to realize just how much unnecessary material we are collecting. We need to face the wastefulness of our consumer culture, but we have a mountain to climb.

【推荐3】Qiao is a sixth grader at Yuhui Primary School.He is only 12 years old but has been smoking for three years.Liu,15，is a Junior 2 student at Chicheng No.2 Middle School.He began smoking four years ago.“Smoking is part of my life，” Liu said.Qiao and Liu are not those boys' real names.But their problem，smoking，is a very real problem.In many countries，smoking is becoming a bigger problem for young people.Most smokers start in their teens (years of a person's age from 13 to 19) or earlier.

A study of 8,000 Beijing students last May told us that smoking is a problem for many Chinese kids.More than 21% of middle school students and 6% of primary school pupils said they smoked.

“If young people start smoking early，they will probably get addicted to nicotine.And it will be very hard to give up later on，” said a professor.

Every year，about four million people die because of smoking.And if people keep smoking，that number will go up to about 10 million a year by 2030，the World Health Organization (WHO) says.So we have to learn and tell others about the dangers of smoking.

【推荐1】A 63-year-old Chinese grandpa’s traditional carpentry skills are delighting tens of millions of viewers online as he creates woodwork without glue, screws or nails.

The Chinese master carpenter, Wang Dewen, known as “Grandpa Amu” on YouTube, has been honored as the modern day Lu Ban, a famous Chinese structural engineer during the Zhou Dynasty, thanks to his vast carpentry knowledge. One of his videos, which shows him making a fantastic wooden arch bridge, went viral on the platform, gaining more than 42 million views.

Grandpa Amu follows an ancient Chinese technique, which means no nails or glue are involved in the entire process of building the arch bridge. Grandpa Amu has also made several wooden toys for his grandson using the same technique. He created a folding stool (凳子) that looked like the China pavilion from the 2010 Shanghai Expo. “A block of wood transforms into a stool. Genius,” a YouTube user named Rey commented under the video.

Li Ziqi, who lives in a picturesque village of southwest China’s Sichuan Province, has made a name for herself by making various Chinese dishes on YouTube since 2016. In her videos, she gracefully works as a farmer, impressing viewers with her understanding of food, nature and Chinese culture while showcasing the charm of Chinese culture in every detail of daily life. Her traditional food preparation craft and Chinese rural lifestyle have attracted 11.1 million subscribers on YouTube. Just like Li Ziqi, Grandpa Amu is also trying to spread unique Chinese techniques to the world.

Grandpa Amu’s son and daughter-in-law now work full time on his videos, hoping that the channel’s popularity would help local villagers better sell their farm produce.“ We came up with the idea of making the videos because we wanted to bring our rural culture to others and let people learn about these ancient Chinese techniques,” said Huang Chunmei, Grandpa Amu’s daughter-in-law, in an interview with South China Morning Post. Which is one of Song Dan’s work at the airport as a Customs Officer?

【推荐2】The Chinese art of paper cutting has a long history. The earliest paper cutting was found in China in the Northern Dynasties. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization ( UNESCO ) has recognized the art, called Jianzhi, on its Intangible (非物质的) Cultural Heritage (遗产) list. Voyo Woo, who is a Chinese student studying in the US, hopes to introduce the traditional Chinese art to Americans in her spare time.

Ms. Woo loves paper cutting. And she works hard to celebrate the ancient art form. On a recent Saturday, Ms. Woo held a paper cutting show at a shopping center near Washington. She demonstrated the art to the crowds for hours at the shopping center.

Ms. Woo began to study the art of Jianzhi as a 14-year-old girl in her hometown in southeastern China. She said all the students at school had to learn the art. However, she developed a special love for it, so her teacher gave her extra training after class. Later, she won second prize in a national painting and calligraphy competition.

After Ms. Woo came to the US, she became involved in an event to support and expand the understanding of Chinese paper cutting. She has been invited to demonstrate the art at a wide collection of events. She has also shown her skill at famous museums in Washington. Ms. Woo says paper cutting represents Chinese cultural values, history and stories of people’s lives. She uses the art as a tool to present Chinese culture to people who know little about it.

Ms. Woo placed examples of her art around her as she demonstrated paper cutting at the shopping center. Some shoppers, like Ann Russ, took part in a workshop. Ms. Russ was struck (打动) by the finely detailed nature of the work. “ I like to know about the Chinese art, specifically because it is very delicate (精致的). And I like the focus that it requires because it takes me out of everything. And we have to concentrate on something very closely. It is almost relaxing to put that much effort into it. ” Ms. Russ says.

【推荐3】The Lantern Festival falls on the 15th of the first month of the lunar calendar (阴历). This day is always the first full moon in the new year. Ancient people also called it Shangyuan Festival.     

Celebrations and traditions on this day began from the Han Dynasty (朝代) and became popular in the Tang Dynasty. Watching the red lanterns is one of the main traditions. Lanterns of different shapes and sizes are usually put on trees, or along river banks on show. It is said that sky lanterns were first used by Zhuge Kongming to ask for help when he was in trouble.

Today, when the lanterns slowly rise into the air, people make wishes. Another tradition is guessing lantern riddles. The riddles are usually short, wise,and sometimes humorous. The answer to a riddle can be a Chinese character (汉字), a famous person’s name, or a place name. The most important thing is to eat sweet dumplings with different tastes. In northern China, they are called yuanxiao while in southern part they’re named tangyuan. Because making sweet dumplings is like a game or an activity, they are usually done happily by a group of friends or family members. In old times, the Lantern Festival was also romantic (浪漫的).Watching lanterns gave young people a chance to meet each other. A line from Xin Qiji, a poet during the Song Dynasty, shows this: Hundreds and thousands of times I searched for her in the crowd. Suddenly I turned, and there she stood, in the dim(昏暗的) light.