Here is the 6-day weather report in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province.

Katie Steller has her own salon (美发院). She often wheels her red chair and scissors around the city to give free haircuts.

Edward was her first lucky customer. He looked to be in his 60s. He was balding and missing a few teeth. While she was cutting his greying hair, he told her about moving closer to his adult children.

Till now, Steller has offered about 30 such haircuts. These people are all living a hard time, and she is aware of the power of her cleanup job.

“It’s more than a haircut,” she says. “I want it to be a gateway, to show value and respect, but also to get to know people. I want to build relationships. ”

Steller knows that a haircut can change a life. As a teen, she had a very serious disease and her hair thinned terribly. Her mother took Steller for her first professional haircut.

“To sit down and have somebody look at me and talk to me like a person and not just an illness, it helped me feel cared about and less alone,” she says.

After that, Steller knew she wanted to have her own salon so she could help people feel the way she’d felt that day. In 2019, she began her Red Chair Project.

She says, “I can’t fix their problems with free haircuts, but maybe I can help them feel less alone for a moment.”

Early this year she started the Steller Kindness Project, in which people who do acts of kindness (volunteering for snowstorm relief, helping neighbors in need) are invited for a free haircut at Steller’s salon. In exchange, they tell their stories, which Steller shares on her website. Her hope is that by reading about kind acts, others will spread their own.

So far Steller has had people reach out from around the country.

All about Electric Cars

Electric vehicles(电动车辆) have been around for more than a hundred years. But they have really been liked by a large number of people over the last ten years. More than three million all-electric cars trucks and vans are now on the road worldwide.

Most cars run on gasoline(汽油). Burning gasoline and other fossil fuels(矿物燃料) produces greenhouse gases. Electric vehicles don’t burn gasoline. Instead, strong batteries run their electric engines. So, electric vehicles don’t directly produce greenhouse gases.

Electric vehicles are better for the environment. But they are not perfect. Their batteries often use electricity(电) that was made by burning fossil fuels. But an electric vehicle uses less energy than a vehicle that runs on gasoline. Plus, some of the electricity comes from “greener” sources, such as solar and wind power. And some may soon come from a new source — cow poop(牛粪)! An electric car company has worked together with a large dairy farm. They plan to make electricity using a greenhouse gas from cow poop.

One of the problems for electric vehicles is their limited range. This is how far they can travel before their batteries need another charge(充电). But now their range is improving. Some new electric vehicles can travel almost three times as far as older ones did. Another problem is finding a place to recharge the batteries. But the number of charging stations is going up as well. China now has thousands more charging stations than it did ten years ago. In Sweden, engineers have even designed a road that will charge electric vehicles as they drive along.

As usual, Amber was hurrying to catch the yellow school bus. Luckily the traffic lights turned green as she was to cross the road, so she made it. When the bus passed a golden arch（拱形门）, it reminded her of a hamburger. She hadn’t had breakfast that morning because the fruit salad on the blue dish didn’t look delicious at all. However, Amber remembered that she was still on a diet. So now she was really in a black mood.

You may have noticed that several colours were used in the above story so as to help describe Amber’s morning. In fact, colours influence your life more than you can ever imagine. Take language for example: You may describe a sick person as being “a bit green”. To describe a depressed（沮丧的） person, you say that the person is “feeling blue”. In short, colours do add interest to daily conversations.

Besides, colours can be used in many parts of your daily life. Have you ever thought about why many school buses and taxis are painted yellow, and stop signs red? Since yellow is the most eye-catching colour, it can catch people’s attention, especially in heavy traffic. As for red, it is the colour which usually shows warning. As a result, some traffic signs use this colour. For the same reason, hot- water taps are usually marked red.

The colours of a dining environment possibly decide how much you eat. Most fast-food restaurants are often decorated in bright colours such as red, yellow, orange, and white for the purpose of increasing people’s appetites（胃口）. This is because bright colours are natural colours found in many foods, and, therefore, able to raise people’s spirits. Blue, in comparison（对比）with bright colours, is said to lower people’s appetites because few foods are blue in nature. For those who are on a diet, blue dishes and bowls might help!

“Morning, Amber! What happened? You look a bit green,” said Violet, Amber’s best friend.

“Nothing… just feeling … blue,” said Amber.

“Hey! Come to my place tonight. Do you know what I just bought? A phone! It’s red-hot.”

Amber was tickled pink to have the chance to play with the phone and said, “Sounds great!”

A man had a garden. He planted a rose and watered it every day.

Before the rose blossomed (盛开), he     44     (notice) many thorns (刺) around the bud (花蕾) and he thought, “    45     can any beautiful flower come from a plant with so many sharp thorns?”

Because of this idea, he lost     46     (interesting) in this kind of plant. Then he gave up     47     (water) the rose. And just before it was ready to blossom, it died.

Good qualities are just like roses. There is     48     rose in every spirit. The good qualities planted in us at birth, grow among the thorns-our weaknesses. Many of us look at     49     (we) and we only see our weaknesses. We lose heart, thinking that nothing     50     (well) can possibly come from us. We give up watering the roses in us, and slowly they die. We never realize the gift of being     51     (able) to find out our good qualities.

Someone may not see the rose in himself, so we need to help him to discover the rose.     52     love, we can accept a person into our life. even though we know his true weaknesses. At the same time, we should encourage him to face his weaknesses     53     (brave) and correct them. Then he will blossom many times.