【推荐1】A lovely surprise has magical power. That’s probably why many people, especially the young, love blind boxes, or mystery (神秘的) boxes. Now a young man in Anhui Province has put a fresh thing into the magic box—healthy vegetables.

A common day for Zheng Tao, 34, is spent with vegetables. Each of his “mystery veg boxes” has seven to eight kinds of seasonal vegetables. Zheng offers two types of veg boxes: 2 kilos (36.8 yuan) and 4 kilos (72.8 yuan). All vegetables are planted in the open air without chemicals. “The number of each kind of vegetables is just enough for one or two meals to avoid waste,” said Zheng, who left his job in the city to become a new farmer in his hometown.

The idea of the mystery veg box came by accident. In July, 2021, Zheng’s parents produced more vegetables than the family needed. Then he shared some pictures of the vegetables online and asked if anyone wanted them. After a couple of minutes, he got four to five orders. Two weeks later, Zheng started his veg box business.

His vegetables got very popular. At the peak (高峰期), Zheng sold more than 200 blind boxes daily. That was more than 600 kg of vegetables. To offer vegetables to more customers, the new farmer rented some land in July, 2022 and began working with local villagers.

In the future, Zheng wants to build a place where customers can plant, pick, and even process vegetables by themselves. “Many office workers are tired of the stressful life in cities. Here, they can have a break by enjoying the beauty and fun of nature,” Zheng said.

【推荐2】Simonetta, Lucy and Mike all belonged to the same club. Their club wanted to raise money to buy some sports equipment so they decided to help by doing jobs for their neighbours. They can earn $10 per person each time.

One day, the three were cleaning up old Mr. Jones’ house. He lived on the same street as they did. He had often helped them before by paying them for doing things like cutting the grass, painting the fence and tidying up.

As the three children were just finishing tidying the house, Mike noticed some colourful marbles and cards in a tea chest.

“Hey! Look at these!” he said. “They are worth some money.”

“Wow,” said Lucy. “I’d love to have those. Let’s take them! Old Mr. Jones wouldn’t know anyway. He probably forgot about them long ago!”

“Yeah,” replied Mike. “That’s right, he wouldn’t remember he had them and he’d never notice they were gone.” Mike put some cards into his pocket.

“That’s stealing,” said Simonetta firmly. “Leave them there. It isn’t honest of us to take them and it will break the trust of Mr. Jones for us as well.”

“Oh I guess you’re right, Simonetta. We can earn money to buy things we want.” said Mike. He put the cards back.

Just then Mr. Jones came into the house. He had a tray of cookies and three glasses of soft drinks.

“You youngsters have done a great job.” he said.

“Here’s your pay to help your club. By the way, see those colourful marbles and cards in the tea chest? I haven’t got any grandchildren so I would really like to give them to you.”

Simonetta, Lucy and Mike looked at one another and smiled.