Have you ever dreamed about sending a letter to yourself or your friends in the future? While express mail (快递) is a fast way to send your letters, there is another type of mail appearing in China as a new business—future mail.

“The letter should be sent next Mother’s Day and not a day earlier!” Lin Xiaofan, a college student in Shanghai, tells one of the companies offering the service.

Lin Xiafan wrote the letter to her mother nearly a year earlier to express her love to her mother for next Mother’s Day.

“Offering this service makes people slow down and lets them understand the meaning of ‘time’ in another way,” said Zheng Zhimin, manager of a “future mail” company. Zheng thinks “future mail” letters help remind us of care, friendship and love.

While “future mail” is becoming more and more popular, some people are wondering what will happen if the postal address changes or if the company goes broken before the letters arrive. Zheng said customers are glad to sign a contract (签订合同) to make sure that they can be compensated if their letters are lost or damaged.

Most of the customers are college students and young white-collar (白领) workers. Psychologists (心理学家) said that young Chinese might have a new way to express their feelings through this service. Most people put their hopes and wishes in the letter so that they can experience the connection (联系) between the past and the present when they receive the letter.

Do you know what astronauts eat in space? Is it the same as what we eat every day? Is it more delicious or less delicious than what we eat every day? Is it difficult for astronauts to eat in space? To get all the answers, we need to have a better understanding on food for astronauts.

On Shenzhou XII, there are more than 120 kinds of food for the astronauts. The food is in small size which is easier for astronauts to eat. There are many different kinds of food. Scientists make a research on astronauts’ taste before they are sent into space. With the research, Chinese scientists can know astronauts’ taste and make menus for them. This makes the food for astronauts both delicious and nutritious (营养丰富的). Here is one example of their menus.

A Lifelong Journey, a popular TV series (电视剧), became a hit. It showed the changes in over half a century and has become the most-watched TV series on CCTV in the past five years.

The TV series is adapted (改编) from a novel with the same name which is written by famous Chinese writer Liang Xiaosheng. The novel first came out in December 2017, and won the 10th Mao Dun Literature Prize two years later.

Starting in the late 1960s, the story of the TV series follows the ups and downs of two brothers and a sister. They come from a working-class family in northeastern China. It shows a group of Chinese people with different jobs to describe the huge influence (影响) brought by China’s social changes.

A Lifelong Journey went popular partly because it wakes people’s memory of the past. The story of a small family mirrors the lives of millions of such small families in China. What’s more, its success results from the actors’ great performances. Without them, the warm atmosphere (氛围) and strong feelings couldn’t be shown.

Blue whales are the biggest animals on earth. They live in the oceans around the world. Most blue whales can live for more than 80 years. But now, sadly, many whales are dying from one thing: plastic (塑料).

Human beings use too much plastic. People are polluting the oceans. When you throw plastic away, it doesn’t just disappear. Over 90 percent of the world’s plastic doesn’t get recycled. A lot of plastic ends up in the ocean.

Most of the whales do not know the danger of plastic. They think it is food. But in fact, plastic is poisonous (有害的). Last year, a whale died with 40 kilograms of plastic in his stomach.

Worse still, whales can easily become entangled (缠住) in plastic in the ocean, such as waste fishing nets and ropes. They can cause injuries. Whales have to spend lots of energy swimming with those heavy loads.

It’s important for us to protect blue whales. Please stop using too much plastic! Maybe one plastic bag or one coffee cup won’t make a big difference. However, when 7.8 billion people all start to use a little less plastic, it will make a huge difference to whales and, one day, to humans as well!