【推荐1】Some places in the world are dry, and it hardly rains at all. In other places, it can rain for months without stopping. Too little rain,     1    

One of the driest places on Earth is the Atacama Desert. Some places in this desert haven’t had any rain for hundreds of years.     2     This makes Atacama a good place to look at the stars. Some people think that parts of this desert don’t look like Earth at all.     3     They think that the land is a lot like the land on Mars. In the parts of desert that are very dry, there is no life at all.

One of the wettest places on Earth is in the East Khasi Hills in India.     4     People go for a long time without seeing the sun. Then, after all the rain, there is a drought (干旱). During the rainy season it is very hard for people to go outside. The rain can come down in such thick sheets (床单), you can’t even see the drops. All this rain falling for so long causes problems for the people who live in the East Khasi Hills. It’s hard to grow anything. Besides, the rain brings insects and diseases. However, the rain has created beautiful waterfalls (瀑布),     5    

The climate is very important to every living thing. Living things have to learn how to survive (生存) in the climate they live in.

【推荐2】As the saying goes, “A smile is the best medicine.” Nothing can treat a sick heart than a warm smile.

World Smile Day is just the day that people around you would make you laugh. It is celebrated on the first Friday of October every year. This year, it is on October 7. The holiday was set up by an American artist called Harvey Ball. Ball created his famous yellow smiling face symbol in 1963. People loved it and more and more businesses began to use it. Ball became worried that the symbol was losing its original (原始的) meaning. To remind (提醒) people to spread the “real” smile, he had the idea for World Smile Day.

The meaning of the day is, “Do something kind. Help one person smile.” This can be as simple as smiling at everyone you meet. You can also cook a meal for your parents to make them smile. Let’s take these simple steps to make people around you smile!

Have you ever watched a show about the wild? A shark eats a seal! Lions run down a gazelle (羚羊). Is all nature like that? All about eating and blood? Or is that just what keeps our eyes glued to the TV screen?     1    

When a lion kills a gazelle, it wants to eat as much as it can and maybe share the rest with its family. There are some living things that will take small pieces of another living thing’s body.

Parasitism（寄生）is when one living thing gets its energy from another living thing, it does not 8 give anything back,     2    

Now let’s get a little nicer. Sometimes a living thing will live of the body of another living thing without hurting it. They do not steal anything. They do not bite.

Commensalism（共生）is when two living things live together and one gets good things out of it while the other is not hurt by it.     3     Those are barnacles（藤壶）. They attach （附着）themselves to the whale, so nothing will try to eat them and they can eat things that float by.

Now let’s get really nice.     4     Yes! Actually, there are many.

Mutualism（互利共生）is when two living things work together and both get good things out of it. Bees and flowers are the most common example. Without flowers, bees could not make honey. Without bees, flowers could not make new seeds.     5     There are lots of animals that get along. Birds will live on the backs of zebras and eat the ticks that are drinking the zebra’s blood. The bird gets food. The zebra gets its ticks taken away. In some of these cases, one animal could not live without the other.

【推荐1】The Spring Festival is a Chinese festival. There are different names for each year. We all call it the year of monkey, the year of sheep...and this year is the year of pig.

Before(在……之前)the day of the festival, people are busy shopping and cleaning. On the eve, there is a big family dinner. After dinner, all the family stay up late(守夜) to welcome the New Year. In the middle of the night, people have some dumplings and watch TV. On the first day of the New Year, people wear new clothes to visit their relatives(亲戚) and say “Happy New Year” to each other. Children can get red packets(红包) from their parents or grandparents.

【推荐2】Do you know mukbang? It is about the eating shows in front of the camera on the Internet. In the shows, mukbangers eat food and sometimes talk to people who watch their videos.

The eating shows started in South Korea in around 2010 and then became popular all over the world. Why did mukbang start in this country? Actually, South Korea has the culture of eating together, but eating on one’s own is quite common in the country. Watching mukbang can be a way to have someone to eat with. People can connect with others even though they are at home alone.

However, mukbang has its bad sides. The way mukbangers eat food in some shows isn’t healthy. These bad eating habits can bring serious health problems. Worse still, some mukbangers prepare a lot of food but throw away much food without others knowing during the show or after the show. These mukbangers waste a lot of food.

Now, many people criticize such shows. Food waste is a serious problem around the world, and lots of people still don’t have enough food to eat. Our country does a lot of things to solve the problem and asks short-video platforms, such as TikTok and Kuaishou, to take action.