1 . One day, a snowstorm blanketed Washington, D. C., the whole city became a white world. When I awoke, I immediately put on my warmest clothes and dashed outside. I wanted to build a snowman. Then I noticed I had audience — a couple with coffee cups in their hands. My face flushed (脸红) with shame as I tried to come up with an answer to their unspoken question: Don’t you have anything better to do?

A middle-aged woman playing by herself in the snow is an undoubtedly odd sight, but maybe it shouldn’t be. Modern adults are suffering from excessive physical and emotional stress. We’ve held back our natural play instinct (本能), and that’s causing all kinds of problems — for ourselves, our children, and our planet.

Playing suggests that somewhere, deep in our evolutionary history, a playful proto human came up with the concept of stone tools. Even today, the urge to play underlies most of humanity’s greatest inventions, artworks, and scientific breakthroughs. “When I interviewed Nobel Prize winners, I was struck by how most of them didn’t separate work and play. Their labs were their playgrounds,” says Stuart Brown, a play researcher.

While object play occasionally results in direct applications, it has a more general benefit as well, says animal behaviorist Marc Bekoff. “Most forms of play are about preparing for the unexpected by expanding your behavioral repertoire (技能).” When animals play by themselves — such as goats jumping around and intentionally landing awkwardly — they learn two lessons: How to recover from missteps and, more generally, how to remain calm when things go sideways.

When it comes to humans, as we fully transition to a knowledge-based economy, work and play are beginning to combine again. Some of today’s most successful companies were started by people running small business in their garages. Organizations like these understand the value of encouraging adults to play. In many cases, people aren’t needed for routine, boring tasks any more. “You need passionate people who can invent new things, who can think of new ways of doing things,” Brown says.

The next time I’m caught playing, I know exactly what I’ll say: “I am not wasting time or acting immature. I’m playing for the benefit of all humanity. You’re welcome.”

During the May Day holiday, many Chinese people went out for travel,     1    (show) the potential of the country’s holiday economy. Guangzhou and Chongqing were among the top domestic (国内的) cities in terms of consumer    2     (popular). In the meantime, Thailand, Japan and South Korea became some of the     3     (hot) overseas destinations during the five-day holiday.

Aside from traditional popular destinations, county tourism has developed into a new fashion and brought in new vitality (活力) into the tourism market. The tourism growth rate of small counties and towns is higher. Data from Alipay showed that many young     4     (generation) chose to go to attractions in small towns. Yili in Xinjiang, Yanbian in Jilin, Diqing and Pu’er in Yunnan have seen the largest year-on-year increase in cross-regional payments.

Tourists’ continuous enthusiasm for domestic travel is also proved by other factors, such as the number of short videos     5     (publish). During the holiday,     6     total number of posts on WeChat video accounts increased. Among them, scenic spots like West Lake     7     (become) popular destinations for video account users recently. Concerts, art exhibitions and other cultural activities have also played a significant role     8     improving cultural and tourism consumption. Cities such as Changzhou, Hefei, Beijing, and Yantai received high attention during this time period,     9     drove growth in local hotel, transportation, and dining services.

Furthermore, the inbound (入境的) tourism market is further heating up as visa-free policies and easy payment services provide     10     (convenient) for foreigners traveling to China.

4 . “When I was young, I had so much energy and I loved building stuff. If I had an idea, I had to build it right away using whatever I could find around me.” says Danish recycle artist Thomas Dambo. When Dambo was just seven years old, he bought some materials from the local market to construct a game room in his parents’ basement. As a teenager, he built a “crazy” castle in his backyard.

Decades later, 42-year-old Dambo is proudly surveying his latest creation: a troll (巨人) called Little Lui. Towering at five meters tall, Little Lui is one of the six trolls hidden in secret corners of the Peel Region of Western Australia as part of Thomas Dambo Giants of Mandurah, an Australian-first exhibition, which will be on show for at least a year. Dambo has made many impressive trolls, which have found homes in the United States, Belgium, China, Denmark, South Korea and so on.

“For me, trolls represent the voice of nature,” Dambo says. This deep respect for the natural world is a central message of Dambo’s practice. Dambo’s troll are made almost entirely from locally sourced recycled wood: their faces from secondhand furniture and their hair from branches and leaves. Taking about 750 hours to complete, each troll is constructed out in nature.

“We are slowly turning the world into a landfill. I hope that by visiting the trolls, people will think of rubbish as a resource. I think it’s really important that the next generation is connected to nature.” Dambo says. “That’s why I tried to design the trolls to appeal to younger people. I want people to be inspired to play and experiment, and to realize they don’t need a lot to create something big and beautiful. Go out, go around the corner and take advantage of whatever is there — you will find a lot of adventure in your own backyard.”