Qiao is a sixth-grader at Yuhui Primary School. He is only 12 years old but has been smoking for three years.

Liu, 15, is a Junior 2 student at Chicheng No.2 High School. He began smoking four years ago. “Smoking is part of my life,” Liu said.

Qiao and Liu are not those boys’ real names. But their problem, smoking, is a very real problem. In many countries, smoking is becoming a bigger problem for young people. Most smokers start in their teens (years of a person’s age from 13 to 19) or earlier. A study of 8000 Beijing students last May told us that smoking is a problem for many Chinese kids. More than 21% of high school students and 6% of primary school pupils said they smoked.

“If young people start smoking early, they will probably get addicted (上瘾) to nicotine (尼古丁). And it will be very hard to give up later on.”

Every year, about four million people die because of smoking. And if people keep smoking, the number will go up to about 10 million a year by 2030, the World Health Organization (WHO, 世界卫生组织) says. So we have to learn and tell others about the dangers of smoking.

Paper was not made in southern Europe until the year 1100. Though Scandinavia (斯堪的纳维亚) now makes a great deal of the world’s paper, it had not begun to make it until 1500. It was a German named Schaefief who found out that one could make paper from wood. After that, forest countries, such as Canada, Sweden, Norway, Finland and the United States, became important in paper-making. Today in Finland, for example, no industry is bigger than the forest industry. And the paper industry is the most important part of it.

Modern paper-making machines are very big, and they make paper very fast. The biggest machines can make a piece of paper (750 meters long and 6 meters wide) in one minute.

When we think of paper, we think of newspapers, books, letters, envelopes and writing papers. But there are many other uses. Each year, more and more things are made of paper. We have had paper cups, plates and dishes for a long time. But now we hear that chairs, tables and even beds can be made of paper. The newest thing made of paper in the world may be a paper house. It is not a small house for children to play in, but a real, big house for people to live in. It is not expensive. You can put up a paper house by yourself in a few hours, and you can use it for about 5 years.

There is a long history behind the first T-shirts and today’s colorful outerwear (外套).

Many stories talk about the first T-shirts and the reason why people wear them. One says the first T-shirts had something to do with war.

In World War I

Some American soldiers found that European soldiers’ undershirts (汗衫) were cooler and more comfortable. They started to wear the same kind. Because the design of the undershirts was simple and looked like the letter T, Americans called the clothes T-shirts.

By World War Ⅱ

Many soldiers started to wear T-shirts as underwear.

In the 1930s

Many American students started wearing white T-shirts for playing sports.

In 1951

Marion Brando, a very famous American actor, wore a tight-fitting (紧身的) T-shirt in a film. After this, many American men started to dress like him.

In the 1970s

T-shirts became the favorite kind of clothing for young people in many countries. At that time, they were a sign of being cool and different from others.

In the 1980s

T-shirts started to be hot in China.

Now many young people show their own ideas on their T-shirts: special pictures, funny words...T-shirts are more like artwork than just simple summer wear.