【推荐3】The comedy genre has drawn laughs from audiences since the early 1900s and the birth of moving pictures. Comedy films lighten moods and allow audiences to escape from reality and lose themselves in humor. The format of the comedy genre is either comedian-led or a humorous description. A variety of subgenres exists within the comedy genre, all of which make people laugh, but each includes different characteristics slightly changing the overall tone of the film.

Slapstick’s (打闹剧) origins are firmly rooted in the silent movies of the early 20th century. This type of comedy relies heavily on overplayed visual action and uses harmless violence to raise laughter. Timing and polished performance skills are vital to effective slapstick. The name slapstick comes from the wooden sticks that clowns slapped together to draw laughter. Laure l and Hardy, Abbot and Costello and Harold Lloyd are famous actors of slapstick comedy.

The mid-1930s saw the coming of screwball comedies (怪诞剧). This subgenre typically features satirical (讽刺的) views of society combined with crazy, energetic action accurately timed. Screwball comedies make fun of society and use satirical ways to explore romantic conflicts whereby the usually upper class male suffers disorder and chaos in his life at the hands of a socially mismatched female. The film involves a happy settlement of differences between the male and female characters. Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn play their screwball comedy roles to perfection in Bringing Up Baby.

Romantic comedy (RomCom) remains ever popular at the box office. The American Film Institute describes romantic comedies as “a genre in which the development of romance leads to funny situations”. Romantic comedy tells of the problematic, joyful relationships between a man and a woman in love, and shows the audience in the most pleasant and humorous way that love can defeat all. There’s Something About Mary and Meet the Parents are the best examples of the RomCom.

Black comedy takes a dark subject such as death or war and presents it in a humorous way. Black comedies tell satirical stories about issues that usually make people feel uncomfortable. MASH and Kind Hearts and Coronets belong to dark humor.

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【推荐2】In China, tea has become an important part of everyday life for thousands of years. As the tea-processing methods and tea culture have evolved over the years, tea sets have also changed to meet the practical and cultural needs.

During the Tang Dynasty(618~907AD), tea leaves were traded across the country and Asia. For the convenience of transportation and storage, tea leaves were pressed into bricks. To prepare tea, drinkers had to cut them into small pieces and boil them in heat-resistant teapots.

By the Song Dynasty(960-1279), drinkers started to turn the hard bricks into powders (粉末) that could be whipped (搅打) in a cup with boiled water. This whipped tea is most commonly associated with Japanese tea ceremonies today.

By the 1500s, tea bricks gave way to the form of rolled leaves. This innovation led to the invention and use of teapots as we know them today. These teapots originally came from the Yi Xing region of China and were soon copied throughout the world. Then Japanese teapot-makers moved the handle from the side to the top of the teapots.

Tea finally reached Europe in the 1600s, along with the necessary tea sets made in Japan and China. As English teapot-makers began to adapt the tea sets to their country men’s tastes, they eventually added a handle to the tea bowl because of the English habit of drinking hot black tea, which was consumed at higher temperatures. The size of teacups also grew to accommodate milk and sugar in their tea.

By the early 1900s, innovations in tea drinking became an American affair. The most revolutionary one was the tea bag, which was accidentally commercialized by Thomas Sullivan. He had been sending customers tea wrapped in silk bags. Rather than take the leaves out of the bags, as Sullivan intended, the customers put the bags into their teapots instead. Not only did the tea bags push the teapot back to the sidelines of tea service, they were also too large for teacups and led to the modern practice of drinking tea from mugs.

【推荐1】Global Sea Mineral Resources (GSR) is one of several companies that hope to begin mining the seabed on an industrial scale in the coming years, perhaps as early as 2024. Some think of the seabed as a sustainable source of the metals needed to produce batteries for electric vehicles or smartphones. Meanwhile, scientists are trying to figure out just how much ecological damage deep-sea mining would do.

The short answer is a lot, according to some European scientists who’ve been monitoring GSR’s efforts and reported initial results recently at a virtual meeting. But it is too soon to tell how much of the damage would be permanent or whether it should be considered excessive (过度的).

Each mining operation like GSR’s in the eastern Pacific would remove the “biologically active” surface layer from about 200 to 300 square kilometers (77 to 166 square miles) of seafloor each year, said Matthias Haeckel, a marine biochemist at GEOMAR Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany.“If mining takes place, it should be done without loss of biodiversity and ecosystem functions,“ said Ann Vanreusel, a marine biologist at Ghent University in Belgium.

That’s a hard standard to define, however, let alone enforce (实施)，because so little is known about deep-sea ecology. On two expeditions to the Pacific region targeted by GSR and other companies, the researchers identified thousands of species-70 to 90 percent of which were new to science.

“That in itself is a great example to show that, ’Hey, we do not have a good understanding of how this ecosystem operates’, ”says Diva Amon, a marine biologist and National Geographic explorer. In a review published this month in Marine Policy, Amon and her colleagues argued that at least a decade should be spent filling the gaps in scientific understanding before commercial deep-sea mining could begin.

【推荐3】Spring Festival is a special occasion for children also because they receive red envelopes (hongbao) from elders on the occasion. While in the past, children used to rejoice after receiving hongbao from elders in person, nowadays they mostly receive them online thanks to the coming of mobile payment apps such as Alipay and WeChat, which urged the central bank to create a new legal tender (法定货币) for online transactions (交易).

That’s how the digital renminbi came into being. The digital currency has increased the types of negotiable instruments issued by the central bank and diversified the payment tools. Yet the promotion and application of the digital renminbi faces some challenges, especially because it is yet to be recognized nationwide.

First, thanks to Alipay and WeChat, they account for almost 95 percent of the mobile payment market. Based on these payment apps, a complete consumer application ecosystem has been established covering activities such as shopping, traveling, giving red envelopes, making payments, and investing funds. In the short term, however, the “digital renminbi wallet” can hardly shake the existing payment and transaction ecosystem.

Second, payments made through the digital renminbi are not channeled through bank accounts. Instead, they are deposited directly into “digital accounts” and transactions can be completed through an electronic device, which may cause users to worry about the security of their deposits, particularly because if a user loses his or her cell phone, he/she could lose a lot of money.

Third, the digital renminbi may be a substitute for cash, but the public is not attracted to it because it has no appreciation value. While people can earn interest on bank deposits, no interest is offered on digital renminbi deposits.

In fact, the original design of the digital renminbi was for retail —to make transactions more convenient for consumers and merchants. The central bank, too, has said all the research and development is to ensure the digital currency replaces cash, which shows its aim is to use it for retail, especially to make life more convenient for the public with the help of the Internet and mobile apps.