【推荐1】The tourist trade is booming. With all this coming and going, you’d expect greater understanding to develop between the nations of the world. Not a bit of it! Superb systems of communication by air, sea and land make it possible for us to visit each other’s countries at a moderate cost. What was once the “grand tour’’, reserved for only the very rich, is now within everybody’s grasp. The package tour and chartered flights are not to be sneered at. Modern travelers enjoy a level of comfort which the lords and ladies on grand tours in the old days couldn’t have dreamed of. But what’s the sense of this mass exchange of populations if the nations of the world remain basically ignorant of each other?

Many tourist organizations are directly responsible for this state of affairs. They deliberately set out to protect their clients from too much contact with the local population. The modern tourist leads a cosseted, sheltered life. He lives at international hotels where he eats his international food and sips his international drink while he gazes at the natives from a distance. Conducted tours to places of interest are carefully censored. The tourist is allowed to see                    only what the organizers want him to see and no more. A strict schedule makes it impossible for the tourist to wander off on his own; and anyway, language is always a barrier, so he is only too happy to be protected in this way.

The sad thing about this situation is that it leads to the persistence of national stereotypes. We don’t see the people of other nations as they really are, but as we have been brought up to believe they are. You can test this for yourself. Take five nationalities, say, French, German, English, American and Italian. Now in your mind, match them with these five adjectives: musical, amorous, cold, pedantic, native. Far from providing us with any insight into the national characteristics of the peoples just mentioned, these adjectives actually act as barriers. So when you set out on your travels, the only characteristics you notice are those which confirm your preconceptions. You come away with the highly unoriginal and inaccurate impression that, say, “Anglo-Saxons are hypocrites’’ of that “Latin peoples shout a lot’’. You only have to make a few foreign friends to understand how absurd and harmful national stereotypes are. But how can you make foreign friends when the tourist trade does its best to prevent you?

Carried to an extreme, stereotypes can be positively dangerous. Wild generalizations stir up racial hatred and blind us to the basic fact—how trite it sounds! That all people are human. We are all similar to each other and at the same time all unique.

Chopsticks is a traditional Japanese children’s hand game which can also be called Finger Chess or Magic Fingers.

Start the game. You need at least two people to play the game. Both players put their hands on the table with one finger out of each hand, as shown in the picture. You will take turns to play.

Add the fingers. Add the number of fingers by tapping（拍）. For example, when you start the game, use one finger to tap your opponent’s（对手的） finger for once. Then your opponent has to add one finger to the hand that you tap. After that, it’s his or her turn to tap.

Transfer（转移） the fingers. To prevent losing the game too soon, you can use “Transfer”. “Transfer” means you use this turn to touch your own hands together, and divide all the fingers you get now into two hands. The total number of fingers should keep the same. For example, you put out three fingers of your left hand and one finger of your right hand. Once you use “Transfer”, you may have two fingers out of each hand.

Win the game. When someone once puts out five fingers in one hand, then the hand is considered “dead”. The player with two “dead” hands is out.

Though there are many rules and different names, the purpose of the game remains the same, that is to train your mind with basic math.

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History is important to study because it is essential for all of us in understanding ourselves and the world around us. And in my opinion, studying history benefits beyond history itself, because it helps develop and improve our skills through studying history.

We can improve our reading skills by reading texts from different periods. Language has changed and developed over time and so has the way people write and express themselves. We can also improve our writing skills through learning not to just repeat what someone else said, but to analyze information from multiple sources and come up with our own conclusions. It’s two birds with one stone—better writing and critical thinking!

There are so many sources of information out in the world. Finding a decisive truth for many topics just doesn’t exist. What was a victory for one group was a great loss for another—we get to create our own opinions of these events.

History gives us the opportunity to learn from others’ past mistakes. It helps us understand many reasons why people may behave the way they do. As a result, it helps us become smarter as decision-makers.

In the study of history we will need to conduct research. This gives us the opportunity to look at two kinds of sources—primary (written at the time) and secondary sources (written about a time period, after the fact). This practice can teach us how to decipher between reliable and unreliable sources.

There are numbers and data to be learned from history. In terms of patterns: patterns in population, disappearances during times of war, and even in environmental factors. These patterns that are found help clarify why things happened as they did.

It’s incredibly important to learn to question the quality of the information and “history” we are learning. Keep these two questions in mind as we read through information: How do I know what I’m reading are facts and accurate information? Could they be the writer’s opinions?

Have you ever been wondering what makes public speaking scary for some people but not for others, and how we can overcome that fear? Here’s one way to make you fearless at the stage: become invisible. Or at least trick your mind into thinking you are.

In a lab in Sweden, researchers convinced people they were invisible by having them wear virtual reality headsets. Another headset was put in front of them, looking down at nothing. When a participant looked down at her body through her headset, she saw the empty view from the other headset, and it looked as though her body had disappeared. Then a researcher would use paint brushes to tickle the volunteer’s body and the same spot in the empty space. For seven out of ten participants mismatch between what they were seeing (a paintbrush touching nothing) and what they were feeling (a paintbrush touching their bodies). That was enough to create the illusion that their bodies were invisible.

To see how being invisible made people feel, the scientists had their subjects stand like in front of an audience, as if to give to a speech. Being the center of attention makes almost everyone anxious. But not only did the invisible people say that they feel less nervous in front of the crowd, they also had lower heart rates than their visible people.

Going to Sweden for an invisible body isn’t the most efficient way to calm down. But the experiment helps show what probably makes public speaking scary, says Graham Bodie, who studies communication at Louisiana State University. “Usually when we talk in public, we speak about things that we care a lot about, that have something to do with who we are, and we’re afraid the audience won’t like what they see,” Bodies says. The invisibility illusion helps because if no one can see you, no one can judge you.

But research says your audience isn’t judging you as unkindly as you think. Bodie found that in this study, speakers report being scared while giving a speech, but audiences often say they don’t seem nervous at all. So even though your body may not be invisible, your stage fright probably is.

【推荐3】Two days after eight e-sports (电子竞技) games were officially announced to be included in the 19th Asian Games, China’s Edward Gaming (EDG) team won its first League of Legends World championship title on November 7th, immediately drawing cheers from people around the country. The topic “EDG wins” had been viewed more than 2.63 billion times as of press on Sina Weibo.

With the popularity of digital technology, new forms of cultural exchanges have been appearing, of which e-sports are the most popular. Unlike texts and videos, e-sports go beyond the barriers (障碍) of language and are understandable around the world. E-sports mostly attract those in their early 20s, as shown by the carnival (狂欢) of college students. That in turn makes them a good bridge of communication between young Chinese people and their counterparts (对应的人) around the world.

More importantly, the e-sports industry is going on in spreading Chinese culture, as the large audiences mean huge commercial potential. In 2020 alone, the sales of the e-sports industry was over 278.69 billion yuan, which in turn created over 10 million jobs. According to a media report, nearly 95 percent of graduates from e sports majors at the Communication University of China in Nanjing, succeeded in finding a job after graduation this year, with 62 percent of then devoted to the e-sports industry.

The inclusion of e-sports in major sporting events has been a much-discussed topic in recent years. With more Chinese gaming clubs and teams appearing, the industry is expected to further prosper (繁荣) and continue spreading Chinese culture to the world.