3 . In the film Forrest Gump (《阿甘正传》), there’s a famous saying: “Life is like a box of chocolate; you never know what you’re gonna get.” It’s the same with blind boxes (盲盒).

Each of these small, sealed (密封的) boxes has one of many toy figures in a series (系列的) inside. The buyer doesn’t know which figure they’ve got until they open the box. The start of blind boxes can be dated back to lucky bags sold in Japan from the late 1860s. In recent years it becomes big business in China.

During the Double 11 shopping festival, POP MART, a leading blind box company in China, sold 55,000 LABUBU dolls on Tmall in just 9 seconds according to a Tmall report.

One reason for their popularity is the lovely look of the figures inside the boxes. They’re like small cartoon characters. They can be put anywhere in your home to make your home more beautiful and lovely. But another, perhaps more important reason people like them is the fun of being surprised. “The most interesting thing about blind boxes is the gap between what you expect and what you get.” said Wen Xi, a blind box collector from Beijing. The excitement of getting the exact thing you want is like winning the lottery.

The boxes are certainly enjoyable to some. However, others worry that children might spend too much money on these toys. “The blind box economy makes use of gambling psychology (赌博心理),” said Liu Chunsheng, “young people want to look for the excitement brought by higher risks, which leads to impulse buying (即兴购买).” Last year, over 200,0 Chinese customers spent more than 20, 000 yuan collecting blind boxes. Most of them were Generation Z (those born after 1995), according to a report by Tmall.

4 . Have you ever heard of “a ball of energy”? People often use it to describe very active children. But today we tell about an invention called the socket, that is a real soccer ball of energy. Julia Silverman explains that in fact the soccket is a portable generator (便携式发电机).

Julia Silverman and Jessica Matthews developed the soccket as part of a group project for an engineering class at Harvard University. There are mechanisms (装置) in a soccket. When you kick, hit or throw it, energy is then kept in it by these mechanisms instead of disappearing into the environment. Then the user can put something directly into the ball, like a lamp, or a mobile phone charger so that they can get energy from it. For every fifteen minutes of the game play, the soccket can provide enough electricity (电) for an LED lamp for three hours, and the ball can store (储藏) up to 24 hours’ electricity.

The International Energy Association reported last year that nearly one and a half billion people in the world had no electricity to use, and most of them live in sub-Saharan. Africa and in India and other countries in Asia. Julia Silverman and Jessica Matthews both had experiences in developing countries before they began the project. They knew that power shortage are a serious problem in these areas. There’s an energy crisis in the world. One out of every five people in the world don’t have any electricity. And besides that, there are a lot of health problems because what people use instead of the electricity are harmful choices like kerosene (煤油) lamps, which produce a lot of smoke.

Julia Silverman says the soccket ball is one small solution (解决方法) to a big problem. Jessica Matthews and Julia Silverman hope their soccket ball will shine more light on the problem of power shortages. It offers people a chance to put their energy into the world’s most popular sport and get some energy in return.

5 . In a room full of people, you can still feel lonely. Loneliness is a state(状态) of mind usually caused by feelings of being misunderstood, or having no friends or persons to talk to during a difficult time. There are many things that make one feel lonely, like going to a new school where he doesn’t know anyone. There are a lot of reasons for people to feel lonely, but there are also many ways to stop the feeling of loneliness.

Ask yourself why you are feeling lonely. This is the first thing you should do when you feel lonely. Write down your feelings and thoughts. Take time to find out if you always feel lonely or you feel lonely just because something happened in your life recently.

If your loneliness is internal(固有的), find a psychologist that you can talk to about your feelings. Communicate with others who share the same interest with you by joining a club or surfing the Internet and getting into chat rooms. Go to different. This will provide you with opportunities to meet new people and make new friends. Give a hand to those who are in trouble. I think this is the beat way to stop your lonely feelings. By doing so, you’ll know loneliness isn’t the terrible thing.

6 . People use money to buy food, books and hundreds of other things they need. When they work, they usually get paid in money.

Money has had an interesting story from the days of shell money till today. Most of the money used today is made of metal or paper. But a time long ago, people used to use all kinds of things as money. One of the first kinds of money was shells.

In China, cloth and knives were used as money. Elephant tusks (牙), monkey tail and salt were used in some parts of the world. Rice was also a kind of money used by the people on some islands. Some animals were used as money, too.

The first copper coins were made in Chins. They were round and had a square hole in the center. Different countries used different metals for their money. Later, some countries began to make coins of gold and silver. But gold and silver were heavy to carry when people needed a lot of coins to buy something expensive. The Chinse were the first to use paper money as well. The first paper money looked more like a note from one person to another than the paper money used today.

7 . “Made in China” is having its moment now—it’s a fashionable one.

The story of Chinese fashion began in 2011 when Feiyue and Huili, both Chinese sports shoe brands（品牌）, suddenly got international attention.Their products were seen all over the world.Chinese sportswear brand Li Ning was at the New York Fashion Week in September, 2018.They showed their new designs—sweaters and jackets with Chinese characters.

Shaun Rein, managing director of China Market Research Group, said that the latest Chinese brands no longer catch customers’ eye by low price.He told CNN, “They are sure that they can go head to head（正面交锋）with foreign brands.”

Maybe it is because China’s young people are now more confident about their own culture.They don’t show immediate interest in western culture any more.

“Today’s young people in China are crazy about Chinese cultural elements（元素）,” Jin Qu, the manager a clothing shopping website, said at a cultural festival in 2018. “They like these elements printed on their clothes, even the brand picture of Laoganma in China, which was once seen as outside of fashion.But now young people are proud of these Chinese symbols.”

In fact, many stars in the West are now interested Chinese cultural elements in fashion. Rihanna, a US singer, for example, wore a Chinese red dress to the 2015 Met Gala in New York.The dress was designed and made by Chinese designer Guo Pei.

“We have to move from make creating,” Chinese-American designer Aric Chen once told The New York Times.“We want to replace the words Made in China with Designed in China.”

8 . Many people travel to different places in the world by air. Usually it takes a long time, perhaps half a day, for passengers to stay in the plane. So airlines (航空公司) offer passengers food. But it is common that they feel bad about food taste. Do you agree?

To solve this problem, airlines try hard to improve their food. They would like to do so because they don’t want to lose customers.

However, according to a scientific research, part of the reason why plane food tastes bad is that at high altitude (海拔) we cannot taste things as well as we do on the ground. Also scientists have found that our noses become very dry even before a plane takes off. As the plane moves up, the change in air pressure makes one third of the feeling of our taste lower. So our tongue becomes senseless. The sad fact however, is that our noses don’t know it.

All of these help explain why food on the plane tastes so bad. They also help explain why airlines choose to offer passengers salty and hot food. Without doing so, the food would be tasteless.

Now there are many studies on this. According to one of them, some volunteers are asked to lie with their feet higher than their heads for weeks. And scientists write down their feelings about food taste.

Though scientists try their best, it is not as easy as they thought. Because they can’t deal with the special environment successfully, such as the change in air pressure, making food taste good is still hard for them.

10 . There are a lot of strange holidays. Some of these holidays are consumer-oriented (以消费者为导向的). One example is International Coffee Day. It is held on September 29. Another is World Pizza Day. It is held on February 9. Some holidays are meant to spread awareness (意识) of something. And one example is World Elephant Day. It is held on August 12. Another holiday is World Cancer Day. It is on February 4.

Some holidays are created just for a laugh. Have you heard of Frog Jumping Day? It is held on May 13. Another funny holiday is I Forgot Day. It is on July 2.

So where did all of these days come from? Christmas is a national holiday. So is Thanksgiving. Creating holidays like these takes some doing (费尽周折). But anyone can create a random (随意的) holiday.

Tom Roy is a radio host. He has created around 80 holidays. These holidays include Wave All Your Fingers at Your Neighbors Day. It also includes Blah Blah Blah Day.

There doesn’t have to be a reason (理由) to create holidays. That’s what Roy explained. He said it’s all just for fun.

“It doesn’t cost anything to celebrate them. That’s the cool thing.”

What holiday would you create?