8 . All young people dream of travelling the world. They are excited and very eager to see new sights. However, they have little idea how they would really do it if given the chances. Because their knowledge of geography is quite limited, they seldom know much about the places they wish to visit or how they would get there.

Already hundreds of thousands of Chinese student tourists are visiting these places — Wuyi, Lhasa, Lijiang, Dali, Vientiane and Phnom Penh. Indeed, these students will soon be the most travelled generation in China’s long history. The World Tourist Organization predicts that a quarter of a century from now the number of Chinese tourists going abroad will be twenty times what it is today. The largest percentage of these tourists will visit Southeast Asia. Not all Chinese who travel abroad will be tourists, however. More and more youths are deciding to volunteer their skills in this region, much like their peers in the Peace Corps and VSO.

Critical thinking skills required include planning for a trip and solving problems after the trip has begun. The focus is on how to read an atlas (地图集) to make travel plans and how to find ways of travelling. An atlas offers a wealth of information about geography and is one way to increase students’ awareness of their global environment. The use of an atlas especially addresses the needs of students with different visual and spatial (空间的) learning styles.

9 . Women and girls already struggle with gender inequality, but when extreme weather damages a community, the UN found that inequalities worsen.

To explore the complex links between gender and climate change, CNN worked with seven women photojournalists to document the challenges women and girls face. This visual project gives a snapshot of the numerous ways climate crisis is changing their lives, but also shows how they are fighting back.

The Center for Girls’ Education runs a series of programs in Nigeria to help girls stay in school. One in every five of the world’s children who are out of school is in Nigeria, according to UNICEF, and it is girls who are impacted the most. More than 10 million children between 5 and 14 years old are absent from classrooms across Nigeria, according to UNICEF. For girls, the statistics are even bleaker: in states in the northeast and northwest of the country, fewer than half attend school.

This education crisis is the result of a tangle of factors, but against the backdrop of these individual factors is the broader context of the climate crisis. Nigeria is growing hotter and dryer, and extreme weather such as flash floods and landslides are becoming fiercer and more frequent. Climate disasters can make schools inaccessible and classrooms unsafe. Communities struggling to cope with extreme weather sometimes turn to their children to help or to earn extra money to support the family. And girls, whose attendance at school is already discouraged in some communities, are often most affected.

There are efforts to support girls’ education and equip them with the resources to cope with a fast-changing climate. The Center for Girls’ Education in the northern Nigerian city of Zaria runs programs to help girls stay in school and offers training on how to cope with the impacts of extreme weather. “I feel when we give the girls education on climate change, how to ease it, it will go a long way in helping the girls in how to support themselves in times of difficulties, and even help them prepare for it,” said Habiba Mohammed, director of the Center for Girls’ Education.

10 . For some, rice is simply bought at the market, ready to take home and steam or boil. But have you ever wondered about the journey the grains of rice take before they reach your plate or bowl, or fork or chopsticks?

Sowing the seeds

First, the seeds are sown. Sometimes, they are planted directly in the fields, but often they are sown in nurseries where they spend their first 30 days putting forth shoots and grow into seedlings (苗).

Transplanting to the fields

After about 30 days, the seedlings are transplanted to the fields. Transplanting is exhausting, tiring work that requires standing in water and repeatedly bending over.

Harvesting

When the mature plants are a golden yellow colour, the new grains are ready to harvest. Sometimes farmers use a mechanical reaper, but often they use only a sharp knife or sickle (镰刀).

Threshing (脱粒)

Threshing separates the grains from the stalks (秆). This can be done with mechanical threshers or combines, but often the stalks are simply pounded against a hard surface. When threshing is done without machinery, the rice is tied into bundles (捆) and dried in the sun first.

Drying the rice

Drying is very important because if the moisture (水分) content is too high, the freshly harvested grains will spoil easily. In many countries, the grains are laid out to dry wherever space is available, from basketball courts to sections of major highways. Wealthy farmers may put large quantities of grains into heated airdryers.

After that, some of these grains, after certain kinds of processing and transporting, will end up in your bowl; others will be saved for the seeds next year.