Now more and more Chinese teenagers find life more difficult without their parents. They don’t know how to do housework, because their parents do almost everything for them at home.

Mary is 14 years old. One day, her parents went on a trip, so she was alone at home. At first, she thought she would be happy because her parents were not in. She could do everything that she liked. But when it was six o’clock in the afternoon, she felt hungry. “Oh, it’s time to have dinner. Where can I get my food?” she said to herself. Later she found some meat and vegetables in the fridge (冰箱), but she didn’t know how to cook them. At last, she could only go to a restaurant to eat.

Many teenagers have the same problem as Mary. So I think they should learn some life skills (技能), like cooking, cleaning up their rooms or dressing themselves. They shouldn’t depend too much on their parents.

Everyone needs a place to relax, right?

Now young students can easily experience as much stress as adults (成年人) do. They face competition, interpersonal relationships and personal problems as adults do. But adults have more social experience and can deal with problems with more self-control. For students, sometimes they have no choice but to rebel (叛逆).

Faced with such a situation, a middle school in Xi’an, northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, recently opened its “mood drain room (情绪发泄室)”, a place for students to lift their spirits.

The room provides students with classes to guide their mental (心理的) health development. It’s also a place for practice where students can express themselves by doing different kinds of activities such as boxing (拳击) or shouting. There are also mental health teachers in the room who help students with questions and also watch their activities for safety reasons.

Designers have considered different personalities of students when designing these activities. No matter it’s a boy or a girl who shows up, they can put on a pair of boxing gloves to hit a sandbag or shout out loud to relax. A drawing wall and a “writer’s and reader’s corner” are for shy students.

“I wish my school had such a room. But I would feel a little bit shy going there to shout out loud by myself. I like the room to have different theme activities every week so that I feel more comfortable going there,” said Xingyuan, a Chinese middle school student.

“What matters is that it should be used in a right way, unlike the place where my son goes to cut classes and box against his classmates. It needs to have professional teachers,” said Li, a parent of a middle school student.

【推荐3】What do you do with your old textbooks? Do you keep them or sell them?

Some people sell their old books. The books are about 1 yuan per kilogram. People usually use them to make recycled paper (再生纸). However, it needs much more money than making normal paper.

In the past five years, people have sold about 2.8 billion textbooks every year. They were about 20 billion yuan. If people could reuse these textbooks for one year, the money could be used to build around 40,000 Hope Schools in poor places.

How to reuse the textbooks in a right way? Zhu Pin is the headmaster of a middle school. He came up with a good idea. He made some rules about reusing some of the textbooks. Teachers take these textbooks to classrooms and give them out to the students before classes. After class, they take the books back to their offices. And when the term is over, the books are kept in the library. The school disinfects (消毒) the books every week. The rules also tell the students how to save resources (资源).

Some people also sell their old books on xianyu, an online supermarket for old things. It now has more than 30 million online sellers. More and more young people don’t mind using old books.

Mystery of mirages

Earlier this month on a Sunday afternoon, a giant “ancient city” appeared on the surface of Hongze Lake in Jiangsu province. But after about half an hour, the “city” was gone.

You might think that some unknown forces were at work, but it’s believed that the “city on the lake” was actually a mirage.

A mirage is a trick that light and air play with bur vision（视觉）. Normally, light travels in a straight line, but it can bend（弯曲）and change direction depending on what it passes through. This bending is called "refraction （折射）”.

If different layers（层）of air are at different temperatures, light will bend at different angles（角度）when passing through them. This can create a false image（影像）of a nearby object.

Take the “city on the lake” as an example. The layer of air near the lake is colder than the higher layers, as the lake absorbs（吸收）most of the heat. The buildings in the mirage were actually on a nearby mountain. But their image showed up above the lake after light refracted in different layers of air.

Mirages happen not only over large bodies of water, but anywhere where the ground can absorb a lot of heat. They are often seen on hot roads and in deserts. The next time you think you see a pool of water on the road on a hot summer day, you will know it's just a mirage—an image of the sky caused by bending light.

【推荐3】Some people succeed, while others may not. This is because some people have certain qualities, which others do not.

 The first thing you must remember is that in order to succeed, you must be optimistic (乐观的). If you do not expect to win, you will not try as hard as those who do expect to win.

You also need to have a clear aim and a reason for doing something because motivation (动力) is a key to achieve success. If you do not have a purpose, then you will not be motivated to work hard and put your performance under the microscope to make sure that every detail is right.

Another quality that helps people succeed is creativity (有创造力) — thinking about things in a different way and wondering how others would do the same thing. Think about some successful people you know. They might be successful with a little creativity, but the most successful people are the most creative ones.

Reading is another to success, as it will help you learn about how other people have achieved success. If you want to learn how to set up a successful business, you should read books about people like Bill Gates and Jerry Yang, who have achieved amazing success in their areas of business.

Practicing is also important if you want to succeed because practice makes perfect. Practice every day at whatever career you are in, and by doing so, you will see yourself, your business and your self-confidence begin to grow. If you feel confident about what you do, this confidence will make other people believe in you as well. Your colleagues (同事) will be happy to work with you, and your boss will give you more responsibility (职责). So you see, confidence is also important to help you be a successful person.

Success is yours for the taking! Cheers!

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Although students are busy with their study, it is important to remember another area of learning life skills, such as washing clothes and growing vegetables. They are useful in our daily life. Here are some opinions about life skill education.

Mrs. Blair Children need to lean most of the life skills at school. As parents, we can help them take part in activities around the house and in the neighbourhood.		Li Ping We have life skill classes at school. They’re quite useful. They help prepare for everyday real-life situations, from washing dishes to preparing a meal. These classes give us knowledge we need to live on our own.
Kevin Having life skill classes at school is important. Besides, there are other ways for us to learn life skills. We can watch videos on the Internet. We can also learn from our parents and take part in the activities with them.		Mary I’m not sure whether it is necessary because I haven’t tried life skill classes yet. In my school, many students pay no attention to learning life skills. They don’t think it will improve their chances of getting into college.

We can try some different outdoor chores during different seasons.

In spring, we could grow some flowers or even trees. It’s exciting to watch our nice plants grow. We will feel proud when we look after them well.

On hot days, we could help wash the car. It always takes us some time to clean the wheels, the windows and other parts of the car, but we can finish the hard job with an ice-cream!

In autumn, the most common outdoor chore is collecting leaves. When the wind comes, they will be here and there. We could organize a fun race with some of our friends to see who will sweep up the biggest mountain of leaves!

Cold in winter? Don’t waste time on computer games. After a heavy snowfall, we should help clean snow in our neighborhood, so that it can be easy for young kids to leave their homes for school.

Doing all of these chores might sound like a lot of work, but it can be fun. We may have a good time with our family and friends. We can also learn something about problem-solving, teamwork and so on. These life skills help us to be independent. Do outdoor chores and have fun!