【推荐1】The Spring Festival is celebrated not only in China but also in other parts of the world. The traditional holiday is the most important to Chinese both at home and abroad.

The United Kingdom

Celebrations for the Spring Festival in the UK started in 1980, with the first evening party held in 2002. Every New Year, people get together and have a lot of activities. They sing songs, dance to music, share photos with friends or enjoy films in a cinema.

The United States

The Spring Festival has become a key time for Chinese living or working in the US. They join in a large evening party to welcome the traditional New Year. It is a good chance for people to build a circle of friends and feel that they are not alone because they share the same culture and values.

Australia

The Chinese New Year will be welcomed with three weeks of celebrations across Australia. Many people come to Sydney’s Chinatown or Lite Bourke Street in Melbourne. They enjoy fireworks (烟花), lion dances and dragon boat races. The celebrations are also a bridge towards better understanding between Chinese and non-Chinese.

Singapore

The family dinner on New Year’s Eve is an important tradition for Chinese whether they were born in Singapore or moved there from China. They place traditional food on a table as an act of remembering their past. Then the whole family enjoy the dinner together. They usually hold it at home because having it in a restaurant takes away the meaning of the tradition.

【推荐2】The shadow play (皮影戏) of Sichuan province has a long history and was popular among people. But like many other traditional arts, it’s in danger of disappearing as modern entertainment has come into people’s life. Some local artists are working hard to make sure that this won’t happen.

Wang Shadow Play has 300 years of history. Wang Biao, 7th generation (一代人), said, “Wang Shadow Play was performed at the Golden Hall in Vienna in the 1980s and won a gold at an international competition.”

But the traditional art didn’t become popular with the rise of television and Radio. One day, when Wang Biao was buying a shadow play gift at a store in Beijing, he found an old photo of his grandfather performing at the Golden Hall. He said, “The shop owner called my grandfather the pride of us Chinese. He said Sichuan people are great. I decided to revive (重振) the art, or I’d feel sorry for my ancestor.”

Wang also said, “We went to the Central Park even if there was just one kid watching us play. As long as people paid 6 yuan for kids and 12 yuan for adults, we put on a 4-hour show.”

▲ In 2022, a stage was set up for him in his hometown. And he said his team had decided to make their show into something that is liked by people now. “Then my grandpa will be proud of what I have done,” said Wang Biao proudly.

【推荐3】Traditional Chinese festivals are now getting more and more important and popular. Here’re China’s seven important traditional festivals.

【推荐1】You are watching a film in which two men are having a fight. They hit one another hard. At the start they only fight with their fists. But soon they begin hitting one another over the heads with chairs. And so it goes on until one of the men crashes through a window and falls thirty feet to the ground below. He is dead!

Of course he isn’t really dead. With any luck he isn’t even hurt. Why? Because the men who fall out of high windows or jump from fast moving trains, who crash cars or even catch fire, are professionals. They do this for a living. These men are called stuntmen. That is to say, they perform tricks.

There are two sides to their work. They actually do most of the things you see on the screen. For example, they fall from a high building. However, they do not fall on to hard ground but on to empty cardboard boxes covered with a mattress (床垫). Again, when they hit one another with chairs, the chairs are made of soft wood and when they crash through windows, the glass is made of sugar! Although their work depends on trick of this kind, it also requires a high degree of skill and training. Often a stuntman’s success depends on careful timing. For example, when he is “blown up” in a battle scene, he has to jump out of the way of the explosion just at the right moment.

Naturally stuntmen are well paid for their work, but they lead dangerous lives. They often get badly injured, and sometimes killed. A Norwegian stuntman, for example, skied over the edge of a cliff (悬崖) a thousand feet high. His parachute (降落伞) failed to open, and he was killed. In spite of all the risks, this is no longer a profession for men only. Men no longer dress up as women when actresses have to perform some dangerous action. For nowadays there are stuntwomen, too!

【推荐2】We all know the dangers of fires. It’s good and necessary for a family to learn how to prepare for a fire. Here are some suggestions.

Put a smoke alarm in the house. Smoke from a fire causes the alarm to go off. The alarm makes a loud sound. The sound tells everyone to leave the house at once.

Make escape (逃生) plans. We should know all the ways out of the house. If there is a fire, everyone follows the plan to get out. Part of the plan is to check all the windows to make sure they can be opened easily.

Put fire extinguishers (灭火器) in the house. Everyone in the family should know how to use them.

Practice for a fire. We do fire practice because we teach children about fire safety. Everyone in the family should know the flowing fire rules.

●Don’t open a hot door! The fire can grow more quickly if you open the door.

●Stay close to the floor to keep away from the smoke! Smoke can be more dangerous than fire. The best air is near the floor because smoke rises.

●What will you do if your clothes start to burn? First, stop! Don’t run! The fire burns faster because of more air. Fall to the floor. Then roll (打滚) ! Turning over and over will make the fire go out. Put a blanket (毯子) , don’t forget to call 119 for help.

【推荐3】In Lulea, a city in northern Sweden, people are asked to say “hello” to each other more often. The new campaign (活动) is called Säg hej! , meaning “say hello”. It is a simple way to connect people, but a very big step for the city.

The sun only shines around three hours a day in the winter months in Lulea. People usually like to stay warm at home alone. They always feel lonely. While most people believe that loneliness is the commonest among the elderly who usually live alone, the opposite is true. It is actually rising in young people and it has a bad influence (影响) on their mental and physical health. A study about Lulea found that 45% of 16 to 29-year-olds were experiencing problems because of loneliness.

Asa Koski, who works for the city, came up with the idea of the Säg hej! campaign. “The city is developing fast and more people are coming. We don’t just want Lulea to grow to be a big city. We also want it to be a safe, friendly and happy place where there’s culture, relaxing activities, and sports,” Koski said. “Greeting people makes them feel like they belong. Research shows that it is good for people’s health and makes people want to help each other. If you say hi to your neighbors, you are more likely to help them,” Koski said.

The activity is now being encouraged on buses and in schools. There are even workshops on how to greet one another. Many people agree that saying hello should be encouraged and believe that the more international (国际的) the city becomes, the friendlier people will become. “It’s really good that people say hello to each other,” 61-year-old Pontus Wikstrom, said. “It means that people who meet without knowing each other become a little bit happier.”

【推荐3】

Dragon Boat Festival, also called Duanwu Festival, has a long history of over 2000 years. It is a very important lunar (农历的) festival in China, together with the Spring Festival Qingming Festival and Mid-autumn Festival.

The date of the festival is said to be the date when Qu Yuan passed away —the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. Usually the date varies from year to year, for example it is June 3rd in 2022, June 22nd in 2023 and June 10th in 2024.

Although Dragon Boat Festival happens on different day each year, the way people celebrate (庆祝) it is the same. They eat zongzi, hold (举行) dragon boat racing, drink realgar wine (雄黄酒), wear sachets (香囊), and so on. Among all of them, people like dragon boat racing best. It’s often held in South China, where there are lots of rivers and lakes.

People like this festival very much.