The Spring Festival is the biggest festival for Chinese people all around the world. On the Eve of the Spring Festival, people gather together and have a big meal. Their favourite dish on this day is dumplings.

Days before the Spring Festival, families will clean their houses. People think cleaning sweeps away(清扫掉) bad luck. It makes the house ready for good luck.

The color red is everything during the Spring Festival. People think red is a happy color and will bring them a bright future. People wear red, too. They decorate their homes with pieces of red paper. Kids get a lot of “hong bao”. They think it brings good luck.

The Spring Festival is the time to make everybody happy. So don’t say any bad words or do any bad things. It will bring unhappiness to other people. Also, don’t borrow or lend money on these days. If you have borrowed money, return it before the Spring Festival.

Halloween is an autumn holiday that Americans celebrate every year. It means “holy (神圣的) evening”, and it comes every October 31, the evening before All Saints’ Day. However, it’s not really a church holiday, it’s a holiday for children.

Every autumn, when the vegetables are ready to eat, children pick large orange pumpkins. Then they cut faces in the pumpkins and put candles inside. It looks like there is a person looking out of the pumpkin!

Some children put on strange masks (面具) and frightening clothes on Halloween. Some children paint their faces to look like monsters (怪物). They carry boxes for UNICEF (联合国儿童基金会). They ask for money to help poor children all around the world. Of course, every time they help UNICEF, they usually receive a treat (款待) for themselves, too.

4 . People are often killed while they are crossing the road. Most of these people are old people and children. Old people are often killed because they usually can’t see or hear very well. Children are killed because they are not careful. They forget to look and listen before they cross the road.

A moving car, truck or bus cannot stop quickly. If a car is going very fast, it will travel a few metres before it stops. People don’t always understand this. The faster a car is travelling, the longer it takes to stop. It is very hard for a person to know how fast a car is travelling.

The only safe way to cross the road is to look right and then left. It’s not safe to run on the road. We must walk across the roads quickly.

We live in the computer age. People like scientists, teachers, writers and students use computers to do all kinds of work. But 30 years ago, computers couldn’t do many things. They were very big and expensive then. Today computers are smaller and cheaper. Because they can do a lot of work, many people like to use them. Some people have them at home. Computers have become very important because they can work faster than people. Writers now use computers to write. Teachers use them to help teach. Students use them to study and children use them to play games. Computers can also remember what you put into them. Computers are very useful and helpful. They are our good friends. Do you want to have a computer?

Fire can help people in many ways. But it can also be very harmful. Fire can make water hot and house warm, give light and cook food. But fire can burn things, too. It can make trees, houses, animals and other things catch fire. If some people can’t run away from fire, it can kill them. Sometimes a big fire can burn forests and destroy many tall buildings. Today people know how to make a fire with matches（火柴）. Children sometimes like to play with them. But matches can be very dangerous. The match can burn a piece of paper and then it can burn a house. A small fire can become a big fire. Fire kills many people every year. So you must be careful with fire.

7 . The fourth Thursday of November is Thanksgiving Day（感恩节）. It is a holiday in the USA. Usually family members and friends get together for a dinner. People sometimes drive their cars a long way for a family reunion. Many people also take Friday off to make a long weekend holiday as most Americans do not work on Saturdays and Sundays. Thanksgiving Day began in 1621. When the first English settlers（定居者）reached the New World, they did not have enough food. But the American Indians helped the white men and taught them how to farm. In the autumn after the English settlers came to America, they had a good harvest. They were so pleased. They decided to invite their Indian friends to dinner to thank them and God for their help. To most Americans today, Thanksgiving Day is even more important than Christmas or New Year’s Eve.

9 . Someone says, “Time is money.” But I think time is even more important than money. Why? Because when money is spent, we can get it back. However, when time is gone, it’ll never return. That is why we mustn’t waste time.

It goes without saying that time is usually limited. Even a second is very important. We should make full use of our time to do something useful.

But it is a pity that there are a lot of people who don’t know the importance of time. They spend their limited time smoking, drinking and playing cards. They do not know that wasting time means wasting part of their own life.

In a word, we should save time. We shouldn’t leave today’s work for tomorrow.

Remember: We have no time to lose.

Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, is famous for its biking culture. Its people have biked to work since the 1880s. And recently, it has shown again that it is one of the world’s great biking cities.

For the first time, there are more bikes than cars in the heart of the city, reported The Guardian. It has found 13,100 more bikes than cars in the city center over the past year. In the last 20 years, the number of bikes used has risen by 68 percent.

This is mainly because of the huge efforts(努力) that the local government has made to create a bike city. Since 2005, a large amount of money has been spent on biking, and the city now has several new bridges only for biking and walking.

Bikes are also becoming more and more popular in China. An increasing number of people are cycling instead of driving to school, to their workplace or to tourist attractions. Public bike rental(出租) services have also been introduced in many cities, including Beijing, Hangzhou and Changchun.

The introduction of Mobike, a new public bike rental system—which started in Shanghai in April and came to Beijing on Sept 1—brought the use of bike to a whole new level. After Scanning(扫描) the QR code(二维码) on the bike, you can ride the Mobike’s orange bikes to your destination. It is far more convenient than the old bike rental system. New payment methods such as Alipay and Wechat are also supported by the service.

Despite this, it’s still not easy to ride bikes in Chinese cities. Because cars usually take up bicycle lanes(车道), bikers often have to ride next to cars. However Copenhagen is much friendlier to bikes. Lanes are built to encourage cycling. Traffic lights are timed for bicycle speeds.

For example, Cycle Snake, a high orange bike lane, allows fast bikers to go in both directions. In the mid-afternoon during the summer, bikes can see the daylight between two nearby buildings. It make riding a bike more enjoyable.