A TV program has become popular in China recently. It has made people all over China become interested in writing Chinese characters.

The increasing use of computers and smart phones has left most young people hardly able to write by hand. Many of them are even unable to remember 10,000 characters used in daily life without electronic help.

CCTV started the Chinese character Dictation competition (中国汉字听写大会) to improve the population’s handwriting skills, contestants (参与者、竞争者) on the shows were school pupils. But it was found that 70% of adults in the audience were unable to remember how to write the word “chan chu”.

Because computers allow people to type characters simply by entering “pinyin” they don’t need to remember how to write them. “The keyboard age has had a big influence on the handwriting of Chinese characters.” Guan Zhenwen, who designed and directed the show said. He added that he hoped to encourage people keep it alive as the art form.

Hao Mingjian, an editor of a magazine, putting his heart into Chinese characters, said “Learning Chinese characters goes on throughout your life. If you stop using them for a long time, it is very likely that you will forget them”.

Do you have weight (体重) problems? One of the biggest reasons is that you sit around too much, so the best way to lose weight is to move your body. Here is some advice for you.

◆Turn off the TV. It’s the first thing you need to do. (A) Go outside to play some sports with your family at least once a week. You can do many things more interesting than sitting in front of the TV, such as playing tennis and climbing the hills.

◆Walk more. Look for all kinds of chances to walk more. When you get a mail, take a walk around the house. (B) Take the dog for a walk each day or walk for 10 minutes before getting ready for work.

◆Do some housework. Watering the flowers, cleaning the windows, washing clothes and so on are good for your health.

These kinds of activities (活动) may not be vigorous (剧烈的) exercise, but they can keep you moving.

Everyone knows London is an important city in England. London was bigger than the other cities in the world years ago, but now many cities are much bigger than it. London has a population of over 8 million. And it is an old city. Many tourists come from all over the world to visit its famous buildings and see the famous clock, Big Ben.

Like many big cities, London has problems with traffic and pollution. Over one million people use the London subway every day, but there are still too many cars in the street. The air isn’t clean enough, but it is cleaner than it was 100 years ago.

There are several big beautiful parks in the centre of the city. But for the children, their favourite place is in Hamleys, a big and amazing toy shop in the world. They can buy good toys there.

【推荐3】The sun is always shining. But it can only shine on one side of the earth at one time. When the sun is shining on one side of the earth, it is night on the other side. At night, you can see the stars. The stars are in the sky all day. But the light from the sun is so bright that you can’t see them in the daytime. When night comes, the stars are bright enough to be seen. The stars look very small. But some of them are even bigger than the sun. They look small because they are so far away from us. Big things look much smaller when they are far away. The sun is closer to the earth than other stars, so it looks bigger.