Fou Ts’ong, a Chinese-born pianist known for his sensitive way of performing Chopin, Debussy and Mozart, died at a hospital in London. He was 86.

Born in Shanghai on March 10, 1934, Fou had already started to show an interest in music at just four years old. Three years later he began studying piano with Mario Paci, a well-known Italian pianist. In 1948, Mr. Fou moved with his family to Yunnan because of the war. It was only after returning to Shanghai several years later that he began to devote himself to the piano.

Mr. Fou made his first stage appearance in 1952 and the officials in Beijing noticed the concert, they chose him to compete and tour in Eastern Europe. Soon Mr. Fou moved to Poland, where he studied at the Warsaw Conservatory. To prepare for the fifth Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1955, he practised so hard that he hurt his fingers and was nearly cut from the first round of competition. Finally, he took third place and won a special prize for his performance of Chopin’s mazurkas (马祖卡舞曲). Three years later, Mr. Fou left for London. After the deaths of his parents in 1966, Mr. Fou stayed abroad and became a well-known concert pianist in the world.

In 1981, the book, Fu Lei’s Family Letters, written by Mr. Fou’s father, mainly to Mr. Fou, was published and soon became a best seller in China.

“My father had a saying that ‘First you must be a person, then an artist, and then a musician, and only then can you be a pianist,’” Mr. Fou once recalled in an interview. “Even now, I believe in this order—that it should be this way and that I am this way.”

As time went by, Mr. Fou still played the piano for a long time every day even when his fingers grew weak. It was a love that he mentioned in interviews, with pieces of wisdom from his father.

Title: Fou Ts’ong—a World-famous Pianist

2 . One morning, as Mary was skipping slowly along the path, she heard the sound of music. She was very curious and went to find out.

A boy was sitting under a tree. He was playing music. He had blue eyes and red cheeks. A squirrel and two rabbits were watching him and listening to the music. When he saw Mary, he said, “I’m Dickon. I know who your are. You are Miss Mary.”

He took out a package.

“Here are the garden tools. I bought some packets of seeds too.”

“If you like,” Dickon said, “I can plant them for you. Where’s your garden?”

“Can you keep a secret?” she said.

“I keep secrets all the time,” Dickon laughed.

“I stolen a garden,” Mary said quickly. “Nobody wants it. Perhaps everything is dead in it already. I don’t know.”

She began to cry.

“Where is it?” asked Dickon.

“Come with me,” she said.

She took him along the path to the wall with ivy on it. Then she unlocked the door, and they went in together.

“Here it is,” she said. “It’s a secret garden.”

Dickon’s blue eyes opened wide in surprise as he looked at the garden.

“It’s very pretty,” he whispered. “It’s like being in a dream. In the spring there are going to be lots of birds’ nests here.”

“Are the roses alive or dead?” Mary asked him.

He went up to an old tree and pointed at the branch. “It was dry and grey, but there was a small green bit growing on it.”

“This bit’s alive,” he explained. “But there’s a lot of old wood that is dead. We must cut it off. There are going to be lots of roses here this summer.”

They went from bush to bush and from tree to tree. He was very strong and clever with his knife. He knew how to cut off the dry and dead wood.

“There’s a lot of work to do here.” he said.

“Can you come again and help me?” Mary asked him. “Please, Dickon!”

“Yes, every day if you like,” he answered.

4 . The winners of the 2023 Hugo Awards (雨果奖) were made public on Oct. 21st, 2023. Chinese writer Hai Ya took home an award for his book “The Space-Time Painter” and he became the third Chinese writer to win a Hugo award after Liu Cixin in 2015 and Hao Jingfang in 2016.

When creating the novel, Hai Ya drew his idea from a famous painting, A Panorama of Rivers and Mountains (《千里江山图》). It was painted by Wang Ximeng from the Song Dynasty (宋朝). According to Wang’s life, Hai created a painter named Zhao Ximeng who drew pictures for the emperor 1,000 years ago. After going through many hard times, Zhao’s mind leaves his body and enters a space where a modern policeman is trying to solve a crime about an ancient painting.

Hai Ya’s story with science fiction (科幻小说) began in his childhood. “When I was a child, the bookstore in my hometown helped create a beautiful garden in my mind that belonged to me only. In it, science fiction offered the most beautiful ‘flowers’,” Hai Ya told Beijing Youth Daily. He added that science fiction opened a new world for him as a kid.

___★___ These two styles seem totally opposite: One looks back at the past, and the other faces the future. However, in Hai Ya’s works, they find a perfect balance (平衡).

“If we can only imagine the future and things in space like rockets, our imagination will be controlled,” Hai Ya said in another interview. “I don’t think history is something completely in the past. It is moving, and we can make predictions about the future by looking back at history. History is also part of our future,” he added.

7 .

That night, July 11, 2022, Nick Bostic was driving down the streets of Lafayette, Indiana, when he found a two-story house was on fire.

Flames (火焰) were climbing up the front porch. Without pausing for a moment to think about the danger, Bostic stopped his car and ran from the back door into the burning building, which belongs to the Barrett family.

Bostic had just started climbing the stairs when he looked up and saw four faces appear from a room at the top of the stairs and look down at him, their eyes wide. “Your house is on fire, you need to go!” Bostic yelled.

Bostic hurried the four girls into the fresh air. “Anybody else in there?” Bostic asked.

“Kaylani is in there! We can’t find her!” Seionna, the eldest of the girls, screamed referring to her six-year-old sister. Without hesitating, Bostic ran back inside.

By now, the whole side of the house was in flames. Bostic went upstairs. He searched every bedroom. No kid. The smoke was thick now. He lifted his T-shirt, trying to cover his mouth and nose when he heard the sound of crying, from the dark smoke below.

Bostic felt about in the blackness and heat, moving downstairs toward the sound. Then suddenly Kaylani was in front of him. Bostic quickly lifted the girl into his arms. Where is the front door?! Bostic remembered seeing a window on the side of the house where the fire hadn’t reached.

Bostic climbed back up, made it to the room and broke the glass, Kaylani still in his arms.

Bostic and Kaylani looked down at the open grassy space. The girl said, “________” He was thinking the exact same thing.

But they had little choice. The flames were inching ever closer. Holding Kaylani tightly in one arm, Bostic ran forward and threw himself out of the window. He managed to land on the other shoulder. Kaylani was almost unhurt.

Days passed. Bostic woke up from first-degree burns to his leg and arm, He felt like he’d just done what anyone would have done in that situation. But outside the hospital, the story of Nick Bostic was already spreading. He was a hero—the pizza man who had run into a burning building not once, but twice.

8 .

If you are looking to get a better understanding of the world around you, chemistry is the perfect subject to study. It’s a study of matter (物质), its properties — ways in which it behaves in special conditions, and how it interacts with everything around it. At the heart of all the discoveries, such as medicine, cooking, and several other areas, is one important table that organizes elements based on their atomic number and chemical properties: the periodic table.

Although the first periodic table was published in 1869, it was a work in progress for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

Since ancient times, people have been interested in elements such as gold, tin, iron and copper (which are written as Au, Sn, Fe and Cu in the table) in their natural forms. They were dug up from the ground and used to make jewelry, guns, coins, and many other things. Over time, people became more curious about these metals and how they were made up. In ancient Greece, Aristotle and other philosophers said things were made from the elements of earth, water, fire and air. For years, this idea was accepted. Then people began to consider this idea again during the Age of Enlightenment.

In 1661, Irish scientist Robert Boyle described an element as something that “cannot be broken down into a simpler matter by a chemical reaction”. Over a century later, Antone-Laurent de Lavoisier, Father of Chemistry, would publish the first modern textbook on chemistry. In it, he listed some matter which he believed should be divided as elements into two groups: metals and non-metals. Although his work wasn’t completely correct, it represented a big step forward at that time.

Over the next century, scientists started to divide the elements into different groups depending on their properties and atomic weights. However, it is Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev who is usually believed as the first person to make a periodic table. Although other scientists had handed in tables, they were finally refused by the scientific community because they were short of details. Mendeleev put all of the elements in a proper order according to their atomic mass. He was even smart enough to leave empty spaces for elements which hadn’t been discovered at the time. Although Mendeleev’s periodic table wasn’t perfect, it set the way or order which is similar to the one used today.

9 .

Martin Albert Haase developed a deep interest in Chinese culture as a child. The Canadian enjoyed practising tai chi with his mother. He also showed an interest in TCM (中医). After graduating from high school, he entered the Oshio College of Acupuncture & Herbology in Victoria. His teacher then was from Hunan.

“He taught us many interesting things about Hunan, like the great herbalist doctor Zhang Zhongjing. He also told me that if I wanted to really understand Chinese medicine, I must go to China, so I came to Hunan,” said Haase.

Haase came to study at the Hunan University of Chinese Medicine (HUCM) in Changsha in 2007. Zhong Huan, a professor at HUCM, said that he really liked the Canadian student. “He speaks up in class and often expresses creative ideas,” Zhong said, adding that Haase always asked plenty of questions and attended academic conferences.

After spending more than 15 years in Changsha, Haase speaks good Chinese. He has a deep understanding of TCM, which he calls a treasure of Chinese civilizaion (文明). Haase also likes to practise kung fu and tai chi, which he studies under Zou Zequn, a famous tai chi master in Hunan. Haase practises kung fu and tai chi in a park near his home every morning to keep in shape.

Haase often talks about TCM with his friends. He said that many friends who used to be dubious (怀疑的) about TCM have now changed their attitude towards it. He said that if he decides to return to Victoria, he plans to open a clinic to spread the knowledge of TCM and Chinese culture. He also hopes to introduce kung fu and tai chi to more people to help them build their bodies.