3 . It keeps what’s inside a mystery until you open it. There are usually toys in mystery boxes; but now, food has been added to the list.

Recently, the trend of “leftover mystery boxes” has become popular in many Chinese cities such as Beijing, Nanjing and Chengdu. Stores pack boxes full of unsold food or food nearing its expiration date at low prices.

“We make the leftover mystery boxes available to buy at the end of the day,” Wu Tian, a staff member at a convenience chain store in Beijing, told China Daily. The food, such as milk, bread and sandwiches, is sold at about half the original price and is usually sold out quickly. Many bakeries have also joined the “mystery box club”.

Due to their low price, leftover mystery boxes “are very promising as a new business mode” and can attract more consumers, Hong Yong, an expert at the Ministry of Commerce, told China Daily. “In addition, they follow the concept of zero-waste and environmental protection.”

In 2021, the total amount of food waste in China reached 160 million tons, with an average of 93 grams per meal per person, China Food Newspaper reported. Since the passage of China’s Anti-Food Waste Law in April 2021, people’s awareness of food waste reduction has increased. Leftover mystery boxes can be an effective way for people to deal with food waste.

However, some people have raised food security concerns. If consumers buy a food mystery box for their breakfast the next morning, even if the food looks fine at the moment, it may have gone bad overnight. Moreover, food made in the store, such as bread, isn’t labeled with the production date in many cases, according to China Consumer News. If a consumer unpacks a mystery box and discovers that the food tastes bad or has already passed the last date, then it will be difficult for them to protect their rights, such as getting money back.

Only by considering both food safety and consumer rights can mystery blind boxes achieve a win-win situation for both buyers and sellers, commented China Youth Daily.

5 . What’s Happening?

Your guide to the best place to go in town.

The Art of the Camera

Beautiful exhibition from some of the best young photographers working today.

Stamford Hall, June 20th-30th

Free

Film Club

Tonight’s movie at the Young People’s Film Club is the last of the series starring the Oscar-winning actor Johnny Depp. It’s the wonderful Pirates of the Caribbean!

Starts 6:30 pm. Tickets £3

Winning Voices

More than 20 bands (乐队) play their best songs in a competition to win a great prize: a place in the national final and the chance to record a CD.

Stretford Student Centre, 6 pm

Tickets £10 and £7.5

Streetlife Dance Group

Come and see the amazing “SDG” at the Atlas Centre. Twenty-four dancers aged between 11 and 18 show off their skills in street dancing for you.

Starts 7 pm. Tickets £15

Young Vic Theatre

The final performance(演出) of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is tonight. This is your last chance to see this wonderful play. Don’t miss it.

Starts 8 pm. Tickets £9, £7 and £5.50

8 . 10 January, a wedding ceremony, India

When Nadim invited me to his sister’s wedding, I knew it would be the opportunity of a lifetime. I was definitely not wrong!

The wedding ceremony took place in a brightly decorated hotel room. There were hundreds of guests, all dressed up in formal, colourful clothes. According to tradition, the bride was wearing an eye-catching red silk sari.

I did not understand all of the traditional customs, but a few made a deep impression on me. One was the bridegroom’s entrance on a beautiful white horse. I had never seen that back home! Another was the part when Nadim’s father proudly led his daughter through the rows of seats to her husband. It reminded me of my sister’s wedding. Although our cultures are so different, the smiling faces are the same.

The customs that followed were anything but ordinary. The couple joined hands and walked around a small fire four times. Then they took seven steps together by the fire, and with each step made a different promise about how they were going to support each other and live together happily. It was very romantic!

After ceremony, it was time for the celebrations. That is a story for another day, but let’s just say there was a lot of dancing. Now I know I have two left feet... and both of them hurt!

9 . There was a time when an event would not begin without a photographer. “I remember the days when event organizers would even delay a show if the photographer was running late,” says Balachandra Raju, a photographer of Sathyam Studio, a still surviving photo studio in India’s southern city of Chennai.

Photo studios are facing extinction in the digital age. But as they struggle to continue doing the business, one research project is looking at ways to preserve their legacy (遗产) by digitizing archival pictures.

The project, funded by the British Library, visited around 100 photo studios across the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu and digitized 10,000 prints. Many of the photos were taken between 1880 and 1980, and they ranged from pictures of families and famous stars to weddings and funerals. “The digital archive will be useful for those interested in history,” said Zoe E. Headley, one of the researchers. Ramesh Kumar, another researcher on the project, called it a “gold mine” for photographers. “The research we’ve done also highlights production techniques used before digital photography arrived in our cities and towns,” he said.

However, the researchers would often find old photos piled on top of one another in the storage room of a studio. “No one had bothered to clean them,” Kumar said, adding that many photos had been damaged due to the hot and wet weather in Tamil Nadu.

The owner of Nallapillai Studio in central Tamil Nadu said he spends about 20,000 rupees (￡230, $310) each month to run the studio that was founded by his great grandfather almost 150 years ago. To survive in this digital age has been a struggle. “Many customers don’t book us for special events anymore,” he said, adding that they have all got smartphones to do the job. “I’m not sure if photo studios will exist five years from now,” he said. But this is why, according to Mr Raju, this archival project is so important.

    1    (locate) in Northwest China’s Gansu Province, the Bingling Temple World Heritage Tourist Area covers 150 square kilometers. It is home     2     the Stone Grottoes (石窟) of Bingling Temple, a component of the World Heritage of the Silk Road.

The tourist area lies along the most charming section of the upper reaches of the Yellow River, with magnificent natural scenery and splendid civilization. Thanks to     3    (it) places of interest integrating ancient and modern culture, the Bingling Temple World Heritage Tourist Area has become     4     good place for ecological tourism, science     5    (educate), and leisurely vacations.

As the largest stone grottoes in Gansu Province, the Bingling Temple Grottoes are a world cultural heritage with a history     6     dates back to more than 1,600 years ago. What is impressive is that the earliest China’s well-preserved statue inscription (铭文) during the Western Qin State     7    (discover) in the No.169 grotto. This grotto’s inscription, statues, and murals (壁画) provide     8    (rely) evidence for the confirmation of the history of the Bingling Temple Grottoes and the early stone statues in China.

With the grotto murals and stone statues of different historical periods, the Bingling Temple Grottoes are believed     9    (have) historical, artistic and academic value     10    (arise) from the development of stone grottoes and sculpture art in China.