If you have your own Acme Rocket Launcher, you can create and send up rockets that show off your personality and creativity.

All you need is your Acme Rocket Launcher and a few simple household materials:

★a 500ml plastic cola bottle

★scissors

★colored markers

★poster board

★glue

What to do:

Step 1 Clean the cola bottle completely and allow it to dry.

Step 2 Use markers to draw three small triangles(三角形) and one large triangle on the poster board. Cut out the triangles.

Step 3 Roll(卷起) the large triangle so that two of its sides touch and it forms a rocket’s nose cone. Glue the sides of the cone so that it holds its shape.

Step 4 Glue the nose cone to the bottom of the bottle to make the top of the rocket.

Step 5 Glue the smaller triangles to the other end of the cola bottle, around its opening. The triangles will be the tail fins.

Follow the launching instructions included with your Acme Rocket Launcher and have a blast!

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Since the outbreak of novel coronavirus pneumonia (NCP新冠肺炎), many people have been living in fear. This is normal, as the disease is infectious (传染性的) and dangerous. However, some people turn pale at the mention of “people from Wuhan or Hubei province”, the center of the outbreak.   

Ding Baixing, a doctor at Huashan Hospital in Shanghai, has seen this himself. He treated a suspected (疑似的) patient surnamed Chen who traveled from Wuhan to Shanghai. Chen appeared desperate (绝望的) and avoided other patients, as he worried that they would be afraid of him.

Chen is not alone. Chen Xue, an editor working in Beijing, went to Chongli in Hebei for a ski trip on Jan 23. Though her temperature was fine and she hasn’t been to her hometown Hubei province since October last year, the hotel she was in told her that it wouldn’t receive Hubei guests from the next day.

However, the real enemy is the virus – not the patients or people from Wuhan or Hubei province. Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong echoed this idea in a speech at the Chinese New Year dinner. “Even though the virus started in Wuhan, it doesn’t respect nationality or race (种族). It does not check your passport before it goes into your body. Anybody can be infected,” he said.

It is not the patients’ fault that they have been infected. There is no reason to blame them. If patients didn’t go to the hospital for fear of discrimination(歧视), the virus could spread to more people. “Protecting them is just as important as protecting ourselves,” Ding said.

The year 2019 marked the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Over the past 70 years, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), China has experienced historic changes and made great achievements.

The nation has experienced great economic (经济的) growth in the past seven decades.

In 1978, China’s GDP was the 11th highest in the world. In 2010, China overtook Japan to become the second-largest economy in the world after the US. The country is still in that position now.

With China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, the country has become a major power for world economic growth. Since 2002, it has helped the world economy grow by nearly 30% on average (平均). Today China is the world’s largest exporter (出口国) and the second-largest importer (进口国), according to China Daily.

In fighting poverty (贫穷) in recent decades, China has made historic achievements and become a major contributor to the improvement of people’s lives around the world. To reduce (减少) poverty, the Chinese government has done a lot of work. It built roads, created jobs, and gave people better education and medical services. The country has promised to eradicate (根除) extreme (极端) poverty by 2020, and to date, more than 800 million Chinese have been lifted out of poverty, China Daily noted.

As for education, many Chinese are going abroad to study and do research. Over 600,000 Chinese went abroad to study in 2018, according to China Daily. China has also set up 536 Confucius Institutes (孔子学院) in more than 150 countries. Many foreign students are learning Chinese language and culture there.

If you live in Shanghai, you might have taken a “lesson” in sorting (分类) garbage, as the city introduced new garbage-sorting regulations (规章) on July 1, 2019.

As China’s first city to carry out strict regulations on garbage sorting and recycling, Shanghai requires its residents (居民) to sort garbage into four categories (类别), namely recyclable, harmful, dry and wet waste. If people fail to sort their garbage properly, they can be fined up to 200 yuan.

Since the regulation took effect, the amount of total daily waste in Shanghai has been reduced (减少) by an average (平均) of 15,500 tons, dropping 26% from the end of 2018, while the average daily weight of recyclables hits 4,500 tons, five times higher than the end of 2018, according to the Shanghai Landscaping and City Appearance Administrative Bureau.

The city also rebuilt 21,000 waste-sorting stations and more than 40,000 waste bins have been updated (更新). The city’s waste collection and transportation system (运输系统) is complete, according to the bureau.

“Proper waste sorting protects the environment and saves natural resources,” said Deng Jianping, director of the bureau. “Led by the central government, Shanghai is making efforts to develop long-term solutions to garbage management.”

However, there have also been some problems. Some people complained that it is difficult to deal with wet garbage, as they are asked to remove wet garbage from its bag when dumping (倾倒). According to the sorting rules, the wet garbage must go in the wet waste bin and the bag must go in the dry waste bin.

This separation is necessary, as it makes sure that the wet garbage will decompose (分解) properly and become useful organic (有机的) waste.

Plastic bags can affect this process. Some people in Shanghai are instead using paper bags that can biodegrade(生物降解)or plastic containers that can be washed and reused.