1 . In the spring and summer months, thunderstorms are common.     1     In thunderstorms, lightning can strike people and buildings and is very dangerous.

It was reported that a man was struck by lightning when he was making a phone call under a tree. He died at once. You may not know it, but nearly 1,800 thunderstorms are happening at any moment around the world.     2     So what should you do during a lightning storm? Scientists say that a person’s chances of   being struck by lightning are 1 in 600,000.     3    

If you are indoors during a thunderstorm:

*Stay away from anything that is metal because lightning can come into the house through it.

*Don’t stand near the windows.

*Don’t take a shower or bath. Lightning can travel through water.

* Never use the phone.       4    

If you are caught in a thunderstorm outdoors:

*     5     If there’s no building around, try to find a low place to stay in.

*Do not go under a tree because the lightning could hit the tree and travel through the tree to hit you.

* Never use a cell phone.

2 . Chinese cuisine is widely known and enjoyed all around the world. Who doesn’t long for a favorite Chinese dish? But there is one interesting concept concerning Chinese food which is almost unheard of in the West, and which is becoming increasingly ignored by the youth of the East—the ancient custom of “tonic food”.

Tonic food is food which is consumed to improve one’s well-being or avoid sickness. For instance, it was once the custom for new mothers to eat a sesame oil(麻油) chicken soup every day for the first month after giving birth. It was believed that this dish would benefit the muscles, reduce pain, improve circulation, stimulate sweating, and warm the body. Some foods, such as goat meat and spinach, are seen as “hot”, while others, such as Chinese cabbage and radishes, are seen as “cold”. One should be careful not to eat too much of either “hot” or “cold” food. However, how much “hot” or “cold” food one should eat depends on the time of the year, how the food is prepared and what it is prepared with, and the individual’s health.

The custom of employing tonic food for a healthier life also influences the catering industry. Chinese herbal medicines, such as wolfberry(枸杞子), can be found on many a restaurant menu, either added to fruit tea or as a beneficial addition to a dish. These herbs attract customers, such as overworked office staff, in need of a modest pick-me-up.

So, whether you need to boost your strength with a large helping of chicken soup, or increase your mental powers with a serving of fish soup, you may find that this ancient Chinese custom could be just the tonic you were looking for.

5 . It’s 2035. You have a job, a family and you’re about 40 years old! Welcome to your future life.

Getting ready for work, you pause in front of the   mirror. “Turn red,” you say. Your shirt changes from   sky blue to deep red.Tiny preprogrammed electronics   (智能电子元件) are rearranged in your shirt to change its color. Looking into the mirror, you find it hard to believe you’re 40. You look much younger. With amazing advances in medicine, people in your generation may live   to be 150 years old. You’re not even middle­aged!

As you go into the kitchen and prepare to pour your breakfast cereal into a bowl, you hear, “To lose weight, you shouldn’t eat that!” from your shoes. They read the tiny electronic code(电子源码) on the cereal box to find out the nutrition details. You decide to listen to your shoes. “Kitchen, what can I have for breakfast?”A list of possible foods appears on the counter as the kitchen checks its food supplies.

“Ready for your trip to space?” you ask your son and daughter. In 2015 only specially trained astronauts went into space—and very few of them. Today anyone can go to space for day trips or longer vacations. Your best friend even works in space. Handing your children three strawberries each, you add, “The doctor says you need   these   for   space   travel.” Thanks to medical advances, vaccination shots (防疫针) are a thing of the past. Ordinary foods contain special vaccines. With the strawberries in their mouths, the kids head for the front door.

It’s time for you to go to work. Your car checks your fingerprints and unlocks the doors. “My office. Autopilot,”you command. Your car drives itself down the road and moves smoothly into traffic on the highway. You sit back and unroll your e­newspaper. The latest news downloads and fills the viewer. Looking through the pages, you watch the news as video film rather than read it.

6 . Taking good notes is a time-saving skill that will help you to become a better student in several ways.     1    . Second, your notes are excellent materials to refer to when you are studying for a test. Third, note-taking offers variety to your study time and helps you to hold your interest.

You will want to take notes during classroom discussions and while reading a textbook or doing research for a report.     2    . Whenever or however you take notes, keep in mind that note-taking is a selective process.     3    . The following methods may work best for you.

● Read the text quickly to find the main facts and ideas in it.

●Carefully read the text and watch for words that can show main points and supporting facts.

● Write your notes in your own words.

●    4    .

● Note any questions or ideas you may have about what was said or written.

As you take notes, you may want to use your own shorthand (速记). When you do, be sure that you understand your symbols and that you use them all the time.     5    

7 . Learning to say “yes, and”

When I first heard about the improvisation (即兴交流) class, I was hesitating. As a quiet and shy girl, I feared improvising in front of strangers. However, I knew I wanted to work as a science communicator after finishing my Ph.D., so it seemed like a perfect chance to learn how to speak and communicate with others effectively. I signed up, knowing the experience would give me help.

During our first class, we learned an important concept of improvisation: “yes, and.” It means that, as improvisers, we’d better accept what fellow performers say. If someone says that rhinos (犀牛) are librarians, for example, then rhinos are librarians. We do not question the logic; we say “yes” and then continue with the scene as if nothing is wrong.

The first few scenes were hard, but as weeks turned into months, I became more comfortable and even started to enjoy our classes. I became better at listening, relating to my conversation partners, and communicating clearly in the moment. Once when I was giving a presentation about my science, an audience member surprised me with a question that didn’t grow out of the information I’d presented. Instead of getting confused and nervous, I took the “yes, and” approach—accepting the question and letting my mind focus on why it was asked. That helped me find an appropriate answer. I got pretty excited about it.

The benefits of improvisation go beyond communication. Before attending the class, I would get stuck when my experiments produced unexpected data, thinking that I had made a mistake. But now, instead of getting discouraged, I will stay open to the possibility that the results are real, keep exploring the data and end up identifying a new type of cell—one that isn’t behaving as expected.

I think all scientists can benefit from this lesson. If the data say rhinos are librarians, then it’s worth finding out whether rhinos are, in fact, librarians. As scientists, our job isn’t to challenge data that support, a preconceived story, but to say “yes, and.”

8 . 4-Day Classic Beijing Tour

The 4-day classic Beijing tour is designed for tourists who come to visit China for the first time. It covers the most popular and typical places in Beijing, fully displaying the scenery, culture, history, local lifestyles and features, food and drinks, business, etc. to you.

Day 1: Arrival in Beijing

Your guide meets you at Beijing Capital International Airport, and helps you check in at your hotel.

Enjoy Peking duck as welcome dinner.

Accommodation: Downtown Beijing

Day 2: The Great Wall & the Summer Palace

Start your day at the most famous part of the Great Wall, the Badaling Great Wall. Leave the downtown for the Great Wall at 8 am. Since it is a long drive to the Great Wall (about 2 hours' riding), have a break at the Beijing Bona Jade Museum on the way. Lunch will be enjoyed in a local restaurant. In the early afternoon come back to the city and have a sightseeing (观光) tour of the Summer Palace.

Suggested activity: Beijing opera shows (Liyuan Theatre, 19:30-20:30 every evening)

Accommodation: Downtown Beijing

Day 3: Beijing city sightseeing & the local experience

Your guide meets you at the hotel at 8 am and set out for the day's touring: Tian'anmen Square and the Forbidden City.

After visiting the two sites, have a break and get ready for lunch.

Hutong visit: see some traditional arts of the old Beijing, such as paper cutting and kite making, and visit a local family.

Accommodation: Downtown Beijing

Day 4: Beijing Olympic sites

Visit the Olympic sites: the Bird's Nest, the Water Cube and the Olympic Green, showing the fast developing modern China. Enjoy some free time after visiting the sites.

After lunch, it is shopping time and then the tour is over.

9 . Although problems are a part of our lives, it certainly doesn't mean that we let them rule our lives forever. One day or another, you'll have to stand up and say—problems, I don't want you in my life.

    1    Problems with friends, parents, girlfriends, husbands, and children—the list goes on. Apart from these, the inner conflicts within ourselves work, too. These keep adding to our problems. Problems come in different shaped and colors and feelings.

But good news is that all problems can be dealt with. Now read on to know how to solve your problems.

Talk, it really helps. What most of us think is that our problem can be understood only by us and that no talking is going to help.     2    Talking helps you move on and let go.

Write your problems.     3    When you write down your problems, you are setting free all the tension from your system. You can try throwing away the paper on which you wrote your problems. By doing this, imagine yourself throwing away the problems from your life.

Don't lose faith and hope. No matter what you lose in life, don't lose faith and hope. Even if you lose all your money, family…you should still have faith.     4    

Your problems aren't the worst. No matter what problem you get in life, there are another one million people whose problems are huger than yours.     5    Your problems might just seem big and worse, but in reality they can be removed.

Go about and solve your problems because every problem, however big or small, always has a way out.

10 . Toni Morrison was an American writer who received the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her novels, Beloved, Song of Solomon and others explored the way African-Americans search for freedom and identity in a country obsessed (受困扰的) with skin colour. Morrison was nearly 40 when she published her first novel The Bluest Eye in 1970. The Nobel Prize committee described her writing as “language itself, a language she wants to liberate from race”. Her novels discussed America’s past, focusing on black history and the effects of slavery and racism. She called her characters “the unfree at the heart of the democratic experiment”.

In 1988, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel Beloved, the story of a mother who kills her baby daughter rather than permit her to return to slavery. It became a best-seller and was later made into a film. Many Americans admired her as the country’s greatest writer, including former President Barack Obama.

She was born in 1931. She attended Howard University, an all-black university in Washington, DC. At Howard, she read African, British and American literature, including writers William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf. After a short marriage, she became a single mother of two sons and worked as a book editor in New York.

Several publishers rejected her first book The Bluest Eye, but it impressed The New York Times’ book critic John Leonard, who believed Morrison was an important new voice. He said her writing was “so full of pain and wonder that the novel becomes poetry”.

Morrison enjoyed her literary fame and was proud of her Nobel Prize.