How’s it going? I’m in Beijing now, at Beijing International School. I’m in Class 2 with fifteen other students. They’re from different countries.

I’m living with a Chinese family. They are very friendly. They like to eat dumplings, noodles and rice. Now I’m very interested in cooking. Yesterday they taught me to make noodles with tomato soup, their favourite food. Now, let me tell you how to make them.

First, cut up some green onions and two tomatoes. Turn on the gas cooker and heat about three teaspoons of oil in a pan. Put in the green onions, then the tomatoes, mix well with the oil and cook for about five minutes. Next pour two bowls of water into the pan and cook for about eight minutes. Then crack two eggs into a bowl and pour it slowly into the pan. After one or two minutes, add one teaspoon of salt. Now the soup is OK. Finally, pour the soup over the noodles. It’s very delicious! Do you want to have a try?

Write to me soon.

Love,

Paul

【推荐3】Can you cook? This teenager (青少年) can—and his mum is very happy with him.

Tom is like any other teenager. He goes to school and does his homework. At weekends he meets his friends and enjoys doing sports.

But between 5:30 pm and 6:30 pm from Monday to Friday, Tom does something different. He cooks dinner for all the family: mum, dad, younger brother Joe and older sister Emma.

“I think it’s important for teenagers to learn how to cook. Math and English are important, of course, but they need other skills to help them in today’s world. First I taught Tom how to cook easy meals like pizza, eggs and chips. Then he started using recipes (食谱) in my cookery books. Yesterday he made vegetable soup. It was very good!” Tom’s mum says.

“I love cooking and I think I am good at it. It’s fun to cook.” Tom says.

In the past, Tom didn’t help out (分担) at home and his mum wasn’t very happy with him. Today things are different and she is very happy.

【推荐2】Hello, my name is Jack. I am a middle school student. I have three good friends. They are Tom, Jim and John. We like different foods. I like healthy food. I like vegetables, fruit and chicken. I like milk, too. I don’t like ice-cream (l) or hamburgers. But Tom likes hamburgers and ice-cream very much. He has hamburgers for dinner every day. He doesn’t like vegetables. Jim likes fruit very much. He often eats apples, bananas and strawberries. But he doesn’t like carrots or tomatoes. (2) John likes tomatoes and salad. But he doesn’t like milk.

John has a birthday dinner tomorrow. (3) He asks Tom, Jim and me to help him think about the food. Tom wants to buy some salad and ice-cream. Jim wants to buy some fruit and chicken. And I want to buy some vegetables and milk. (4) They are healthy food. I think we will have a good day tomorrow.

Did you know that tea, the most popular drink in the world (after water), was invented by accident? Many people believe that tea was first drunk about 5,000 years ago. It is said that a Chinese ruler called Shen Nong was the first to discover tea as a drink. One day Shen None was boiling drinking water over an open fire. Some leaves from a tea plant fell into the water and remained there for some time. It produced a nice smell so he tasted the brown water. It was quite delicious, and so, one of the world’s favorite drinks was invented.

A few thousand years later, Lu Yu, “the saint of tea”, mentioned Shen Nong in his book Cha Jing . The book describes how tea plants were grown and used to make tea. It also discusses where the finest tea leaves were produced and what kinds of water were used.

It is believed that tea was brought to Korea and Japan during the 6th and 7th centuries. In England, tea didn’t appear until around 1660, but in less than 100 years, it had become the national drink. The tea trade from China to Western countries took place in the 19th century. This helped to spread the popularity of tea and the tea plant to more places around the world. Even though many people now know about tea culture. The Chinese are without doubt the ones who best understand the nature of tea.