1 . Step aside, blue collar. And white collar, pink collar and green collar. There’s a new collar in town. “New collar” jobs are those that require advanced skills but not necessarily advanced degrees, especially in emerging high-tech fields like artificial intelligence, cybersecurity (网络安全), electric vehicles and robotics.

There are real fears that workers will lose jobs to technology, especially artificial intelligence, in the coming years. But “new collar” optimists think in a more positive way: There are also real opportunities ahead for skilled workers who know how to handle machines.

“Somebody has to program, monitor and maintain those robots,” said Sarah Boisvert, the founder of the New-Collar Network.

Even if millions of high-tech jobs are created in the coming years, the impact on workers who lose jobs may be significant. For many Americans without four-year college degrees, according to census (人口普查) data, the new job market will require training.

Ginni Rometty, a former chief executive of IBM, is believed to have created a “new collar” in 2016. At the time, she said, IBM was having trouble filling cybersecurity jobs, partly because outdated criteria required that candidates have college degrees.

“Due to our high qualifications in these online jobs, we overlooked a large number of qualified and available candidates,” she wrote in an email. “Unless millions of people are trained in the skills employers need now,” she added, “they risk being unemployed even as millions of good-paying jobs go unfilled.”

Christopher M. Cox, a researcher who has written about the new-collar economy, said, “The alternative model of four-year universities is really great.” However, he added that “new collar” may also be a clever term that relieves the anxiety of workers by defining the constantly changing labor market and technology companies as more ideal rather than “terminators (终结者).”

2 . The fact that touch can be highly influential in successful sales has led researchers to call the phenomenon the Midas Touch, named after King Midas in Greek mythology (神话) who was said to turn everything he touched into gold.

While touching a product is clearly not going to make it golden, it can make the person connect so strongly with the item that they take psychological ownership of it. This means that the consumer is much more likely to purchase it as they feel as if it already belongs to them. Partially, this will be caused by the emotions that they experience when they engage in interaction, as there is a close relationship in our brains between touch and emotions.

In a world where online shopping is almost unavoidable, and people can’t touch what they buy, it begs the question of how touch can work in consuming.

The reality is that many consumers have a high need for touch, and when they can’t touch, they become upset and often feel dissatisfied. This will, at least partially, contribute to the high online return rates, as people don’t feel satisfied with the products when they arrive.

Presenting shoppers (直播带货者) with visually-based concrete signs can help overcome the lack of touch. For example, if the goods are clearly described, it helps the purchaser know the product more accurately. However, such descriptions only work if they are specific.

Furthermore, using moving imagery, such as a brief film of a model moving around in a clothing item, also helps with touch-related visualization (形象化) as it becomes a mental understanding of touch. Actual textures (质地) of products can also help provide signs for what the products are like.

In fact, it appears that concrete input is primarily processed subconsciously, meaning that it is not something you can necessarily ask consumers about, as they simply don’t know that it affects them. Thus, the examples mentioned here are the kind of research findings that online sellers should take note of. With some creative input, they can be used to create more satisfied customers when touch is absent.

The labor service brand (劳务品牌) stands for the skills and service quality of labor in the job market, especially for migrant workers,     1     depend on labor service branding to be employed.

As a major labor supply province, Southwest China’s Guizhou province has taken various measures to develop its labor service brands. It aims to set up at least one labor service brand in each county by the end of this year     2     build various provincial labor service brands with Guizhou features by 2025. One of the examples     3    (be) Zunyi’s Zheng’an county, which is known     4     the guitar industry in China. It produces about 6 million guitars per year, with a total output value of 6 billion yuan. By     5    (build) guitar-making studios and university-company cooperation involved in the guitar industry, Zheng’an continues to sharpen the skills of its local guitar craftsmen (工匠).

Guizhou also cooperates with other provinces to supply labor and increase     6    (they) incomes. During the past few years, the government of Qianxinan Bouyei and Miao autonomous prefecture (自治州)     7    (sign) eight cooperation agreements with Huizhou city in South China’s Guangdong province and built eight labor cooperation     8    (station) in Huizhou.

Each county in Guizhou attempts     9    (improve) the employment rate of migrant workers and promote labor brands with unique features. These measures have     10    (great) developed the economy and culture of Guizhou province.

4 . Heavy clouds threaten rain, but this doesn’t seem to weaken the spirits of the gardeners who are cheerfully weeding in a community vegetable garden which lies deep inside Manguinhos, previously a rubbish dump.

The Manguinbos garden is part of the Hortas Cariocas project (Carioca Gardens). Launched in 2006 by Julio Cesar Barros, an agriculturist who works for the government, the project now includes 55 gardens that are located either in schools or in ‘vulnerable’ neighbourhoods, such as favelas (棚户区). The gardens produce organic food that is then supplied to feed low-income families around.

Barros explains that the expansion of the largest garden which will benefit five nearby favelas is under way. It will follow the same model as existing gardens. Each of the five favelas will provide a team of local gardeners. Half of the produce must be donated locally, but the team is then free to sell the other half, adding to the salary they receive,

Hortas Cariocas is run and funded by the government, but each garden is tended by a group of locals who receive a small salary for their work. The favela residents involved in the gardens are nevertheless enthusiastic about the project’s other benefits, such as education and bringing people happiness. “I always tell people, ‘Hortas Cariocas’ is the name of the project, but its surname is ‘Saving Lives’,” says Ezequiel Dias Areas, who manages the team of gardeners in Manguinhos. Dias Areas was unemployed for five years before getting involved in 2013. Without the garden “today I might be doing something illegal, I might be dead, I might be in prison”, he says.

Douglas dos Santos, a 30-year-old father-of-four, tells his story. “I feel valued,” he says, explaining how he learned about agriculture via the project. Despite his pride, dos Santos isn’t blind to the project’s shortcomings. He readily admits that juggling a pleasant relationship with the favela’s residents’ association is no easy task.

5 . A native plant of China, bamboo mainly grows in regions south of the Yangtze River. In traditional Chinese culture, bamboo is a symbol of moral honesty, loyalty, flexibility and modesty, making it a frequent theme of Chinese poetry and paintings.

The bamboo forest creates unique prospect (风景) around Anji, a county in Zhejiang Province. As the Kingdom of Bamboo, the city is the filming location of the Oscar-winning movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The bamboo scenery, along with other bamboo-related attractions, including a bamboo museum, has created unique tourism resources.

Bamboo is not only pretty and elegant, and Xie Zhiguang, a 48-year-old local bamboo dealer for over 10 years, explained that it is used for much more than just as an alternative to wood. It is the main food for giant pandas, and bamboo shoots are regularly consumed by humans. Also, the stem of the plant can be made into various products, including chopsticks, furniture, tissue and paper.

What makes all the functions even more valuable is the speed at which bamboo grows. “During peak times, bamboo can grow one meter a day and over 20 meters within weeks,” he said. “It takes years to grow wood, while the growth cycle of bamboo is much shorter.” This advantage allows farmers to make money faster by growing bamboo than by growing wood. In the battle against extreme poverty in China, bamboo has played a supporting role.

The county introduced processing factories for bamboo shoots and developed a series of products. Bamboo weaving techniques, some of which are listed as intangible cultural heritage (非物质文化遗产), also contributed to poverty reduction. A number of bamboo-weaving skill training centers were set up in poor areas to teach rural people, especially women, to transform bamboo into delicate items. With such items going to domestic and overseas markets, the bamboo weaving business has even become the mainstay industry for some of these regions.

“Bamboo is a sustainable, green resource,” said Wang Jingxin, a professor at Zhejiang University. “Such measures will help to speed up China’s economy and ecology.”