【推荐1】In China, tangren (糖人) are a kind of popular food and drawing. People of all ages like to eat them, because they look beautiful and taste delicious.

Zhou Yi can make tangren very well. One of his excellent works is about a flying apsara (feitian in Chinese), with an animal flying under her. The animal is half fish and half bird, from the book—Mountains and Seas (《山海经》). He spends four months finishing it. “I don’t think tangren are just for eating. They can also show the long history of China in a new way,” Zhou says.

Early in 2017, his team (团队) got three gold awards (金奖) in Cake International, a cake show in the UK. And one of his art works was the “best in show”. “I did a good job in China, but I also wanted to learn some things from others around the world.” Zhou and his team went back to Cake International in 2019, they got four gold awards then.

“I am really interested in making tangren and I’ll keep working on it. Also, I want to make more people know about Chinese history and culture,” he says.

Velvet flowers, also called ronghua in Chinese, used to be an endangered folk craft（濒危的民间工艺）. But now it keeps alive with more young people getting interested in it.     1     Murong faced challenges in learning this handicraft. “I started to learn about it five or six years ago from some ancient Chinese costurme historical dramas,” she said.     2     Finally, she watched a TV program showing how to make velvet flowers in detail（细节）.

    3     Velvet flowers are made of silk and copper wires（铜钱）. “However, it was difficult to buy these materials with fewer suppliers（供应商）at that time,” Murong said. Another key step is to choose copper wires in the proper size and type. “The hardness（硬度）really does matter,” she said.     4    

Murong has made many beautiful artworks.     5     Her video showing the making process of it got very popular online. The video has received over 2.4 million views on Bilibili.

As a lover of traditional culture, Murong said, “I’ll learn more about different handicrafts and introduce them to young people on social media.”

【推荐1】Are you bored at weekends? The left-behind (留守的) children will say “yes”. A study (研究) shows that 90% of left-behind children in China spend a long time on short videos (视频) and games at weekends. Their parents work in other cities. They feel unhappy at home and they are not so popular (受欢迎的) in the class.

Some schools set up (设立) weekend clubs to help left-behind children. In those clubs, children can take part in many activities (活动), such as dancing, cooking, playing football and so on. The children can join different clubs according to (依据) their interests (兴趣). Students’ parents think they can help their children to get on well with others. “My child makes lots of friends after joining the sports club. He likes to talk with his classmates,” says Li Ming’s father. “I learn how to make a cake in cooking club. After that, we can eat cakes together. I am good at cooking now. I want to be a cook in the future.” Zhang Hong says.

In the weekend clubs, students can learn more about themselves. They can also learn how to get on well with others and work in a team. What’s more (另外), they can learn some skills for life. It’s useful for schools to set up the weekend clubs.

【推荐2】Scientists have discovered a new planet that is similar to the earth. The planet, called Kepler-186f, is slightly (no more than 10%)larger than ours and probably has seasons like the earth does. But while this news is exciting, there is a lot that we still don’t know about Kepler-186f.

NASA-the organization that found the new planet-is always looking for planets with similar conditions to the earth’s. Space scientists Thomas Barclay says that we should think of Kepler-186f as an “Earth Twin”. Like our planet, it is made of rock. It is also likely to have water on its surface, which is unusual, but in many ways Kepler-186f is different from the earth.

The earth takes 365 days to go around the sun while Kepler-186f only takes 130 days to go around its star. The earth is brighter, too. At midday on Kepler-186f, the sky would look the same as during our sunset. And scientists don’t yet know about the temperature on the new planet. There is a good chance that Kepler-186f is much hotter than the earth.

Unfortunately, humans will not be traveling to Kepler-186f any time soon. It is 500 light-years away, so the journey would take a lot more than 500 years. NASA is still looking for other liveable planets which are closer and easier to understand.