WeChat is a Chinese social media mobile application (应用软件) developed by Tencent. People began to use it in 2011.

It lets us chat, send pictures, make free phone and video calls and look at friends’ photos.

WeChat Pay has become an institution (机构) in China, and it plays a key role in turning China into a largely cashless society. And it’s changing Chinese traditions, too. One example is hongbao.

In the past, people would send friends and families hongbao on Chinese New Year, birthdays or wedding, but now billions of digital red packets are sent and received by people through WeChat instead.

The app is such a must-have, though it is mainly just popular in one country. It is one of the world’s most popular social media applications, with 963 million users.

Now WeChat has offered WeChat Pay functionality (功能) in some other countries around the world. Such functionality is aimed at Chinese users while they travel overseas.

Many technology companies are developing driverless cars. It means a car can drive by itself without people’s help. How do driverless cars work?     26     Sensors on the wheels can detect other cars and people on the road. They also work when parking,     27     Second,     28     They can take pictures of the surroundings and search how to get to your destination quickly. All you have to do is to type in the address! Finally, a central computer system takes in all the information and processes this to work out when to speed up, brake and go.     29    　

Is this technology still far away from us?     30     Maybe one or two years later, people can buy driverless cars on the market!

Now the robots can help people do many things, such as babysitting (照看) kids, watering flowers and sweeping the floor. In the future, there     36     (be) many different types of robots. Here’s a kind of robots used in hotels in Japan.

    37     you prefer your vacations with a robot, you might try a hotel in Japan this summer. There are only 10 human     38     (work) in the hotel, but that doesn’t mean you won’t get good or fast service. Robots will be ready to help you with everything from reception (接待) to     39     (clean) and carrying your bags.

Developed at Osaka University, the robots look like young     40     (Japan) women. They can speak several languages and move their eyes     41     (communicate) with you.     42     the hotel, rooms will start at $60 a night. Robots don’t     43     (general) ask to be paid, and that will help reduce the     44     (hotel) cost. It is a “smart hotel” in the world.

“We will make     45     (powerful) and comfortable hotel in the world,” Hideo Sawada says. “In the future, we’d like to have more than 90% of hotel service operated by robots.”