【推荐1】Do you know which gift becomes the most popular one to be sent by Chinese? Of course, Chinese knot (结)! With the Chinese cultural development all around the world, when Chinese people go abroad for business or study, they may choose a Chinese knot as a gift to their foreign friends, which makes it widely spread in the world.

The Chinese knot is a beautiful handmade art work that began as a traditional art in Tang and Song Dynasties, and became popular in Ming and Qing Dynasties.

It is named according to its different shapes, usages and origins (起源). The Treasure Knot, for example, is with the appearance of “Yuanbao”. The Torx Knot looks like “meihua” which is a kind of beautiful flower. The Kingdee Knot is in a shape of a golden butterfly, and there is a knot called the Wukong Knot which comes from the Incantation of the Golden Hoop (紧箍咒) of Monkey King.

The Chinese knot has been served as wishes now. The materials can be cotton, nylon and so on, and many of them are red, which stands for good luck in China. Therefore, the knots are usually sent as gifts in some important Chinese traditional festivals or on someone’s big day to carry people’s best wishes to their family or friends.

【推荐2】In China, a host usually serves a visiting guest a cup of tea first when he enters his house. It is a traditional custom in China. But do you know how to serve a cup of tea to a visiting guest? Well, in different places, the ways of serving tea are different.

In Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, a clay cup is usually used to brew (冲泡) Longjing, Biluochun, Maojian or just green tea, Chrysanthemum (菊花) tea is sometimes used in the hot summer season to reduce the hot from outside.

Serving a cup of tea is a very popular custom in the North China cities. In the colder north-eastern provinces, the hosts would provide warm black tea with sugar for their guests.

In some coastal provinces such as Guangdong Province and Fujian Province, a pot of Oolong tea or Pu’er tea is the usual treat.

Serving tea to guests is a common practice in China. However, different tea is used in different places. In Inner Mongolia (内蒙古), a guest is usually treated with milky tea. In the Jingpo family, you would be given baked tea (tea in water and baked in an oven to be made hot).

【推荐3】China’s Four Great Novels started in the 14th to 18th centuries during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, happening at the same time as the European Renaissance (文艺复兴).

【推荐1】People use their mouths for many things. In the English language, there are many expressions using the word “mouth”. But some of them are not so nice.

Sometimes, people say something to a friend or a family member. Later they regret because it hurts that person’s feelings. Or they tell the person something they didn’t mean to tell. The speaker might say: “I really put my foot in my mouth this time.”

Sometimes when one person is speaking, he says the same thing that his friend is going to say. When this happens, the friend might say: “You took the words right out of my mouth!” Sometimes a person has a bad or sad experience with another person. He might say that experience “left a bad taste in my mouth.” Or the person possibly has a very frightening(可怕的）experience, like having an angry dog running after him. He might say: “I had my heart in my mouth.”

Some people have lots of money because they were born into a very rich family. You might say the person “was born with a silver spoon (银勺) in his mouth”. He is the opposite of a person living from “hand to mouth”. This person is very poor and only has enough money for the most important things in life, like food.

【推荐2】As a teenager, do you feel helpless when having problems with your parents? Chen Zanzao, a 17-year-old boy from Shenzhen, has created a charity community （慈善团体） called Dear Theodosia to offer professional help to families facing similar problems. It now has 2,000 regular participants （参与者）.

Chen’s idea was inspired by the three-child policy （政策）. “My friend Sina and I thought it would bring problems like parental favoritism （父母偏心）,” Chen said. “Most families still don’t know any methods to deal with this.”

They started to research both scientific parenting styles and people’s needs. They read a lot of studies on the topic and surveyed more than 1,000 people. They found that the healthiest family relationships are when parents take an active part in their children’s lives.

They then founded the community to spread the idea. “We hold lectures and discussions as well as go on radio and TV programs to spread useful information,” Chen said.

Chen and his friend Sina would do one-on-one conversations with people who felt self-conscious （难为情的） about sharing their stories. “It’s understandable that at first, they need time to trust us since we are young,” Chen said. “But listening is the key, and slowly they will realize that we are professional.”

“We met many parents saying, ‘I never thought raising a child would be this difficult’, so I think it’s really important that parents think through whether they could take the responsibility （责任） before they rush into anything,” Chen added.

【推荐3】As we all know, bikes are mainly made of steel (钢铁). But can you imagine that they can be made of bamboo? Do you want to know how a bamboo bike is produced? Do you want to make your own bike with bamboo? You can do it at the Bamboo Bike Studio (工作室) in New York. People there can teach you how to make your own bamboo bike.

The studio is also helping build factories in Ghana, which is a country in western Africa. The factories will make cheap bamboo bikes.

Bamboo is as good as steel for building a good bike. Marty Odlin works at the studio. He says a bamboo bike is the wonderful everyday bike.

In Ghana, bikes are very popular. Few people have money to buy a car. And people like to use bikes to carry most of the country’s food and other goods.

The people of Ghana are also too poor and they can’t build factories to make traditional steel bikes. But making bamboo bikes is cheap. Odlin is planning to show the Ghanaian workers how to quickly make bamboo bikes now. He hopes that more and more Ghanaian people can have bamboo bikes.

【推荐2】Dolphins are not fish. They are mammals(哺乳动物). They live in groups and speak to each other in their own language. But they are quite different from almost all land animals. Their brain is as big as men’s and they live a long life---at least 20 or 30 years.

Like some animals, dolphins use sounds to help them find their way around. They also use these sounds to talk to each other and help them find food. They do not use their ears to receive sounds, but use the jaw —the lower part of the mouth.

It is strange that dolphins are friendly to men, and for thousands of years, there are many stories about dolphins and men. In the 19^th century, in a dangerous part of the sea near New Zealand, there was a dolphin. The seamen liked him very much and gave him a very good name, Jack. From 1871 to 1903, Jack met all the ships and boats in the area and showed them the way. In 1903 a passenger on a boat with the name of The Penguin shot(拍照) a long time in the area. Jack guided the boat The Penguin until the passenger finished.

Today, some people still kill dolphins, but many countries in the world now protect them. Dolphins are humans’ friends. Let’s all be nice to them.

【推荐3】Chinese Culture Centers Abroad

We offer (提供) Chinese language lessons and activities of Chinese culture.

【推荐3】I was telling my boy Sonny the story of the hare and the tortoise. At the end I said, "Son, remember: be slow and steady (镇定的), and that will win the race. Don't you think there's something to learn from the tortoise?"

Sonny opened his eyes wide, "Do you mean next time when I'm entering for the 60-metre race I should wish that Billy, Tony and Sandy would all fall asleep halfway?"

I was shocked, "But the tortoise didn't wish that the hare would fall asleep!"

"He must have wished that,"Sonny said," Otherwise how could he be so foolish as to race with the hare? He knew very well the hare ran a hundred times faster than he himself did."

"He didn't have such a wish," I insisted. "He won the race by perseverance, by pushing on steadily."

Sonny thought for a while. "That's a lie," he said. "He won it because he was lucky. If the hare hadn't happened to fall asleep, the tortoise would never have won the race. He could be as steady as you like, or a hundred times steadier, but he'd never have won the race. That's for sure."