1 . The woman bringing Mandarin to Uganda

Wang Lihong Sooma, who moved to East Africa from China more than two decades ago, is determined to teach Ugandans how to speak Mandarin (普通话).     1     The first 30 teachers have now completed their training and have started holding Mandarin classes in schools across the country.

Forty more teachers are now enrolled (入学) and classes start at 8:00 and finish at 22:00 from Monday to Friday.     2     However, Pavin Mulokwa, a teacher from Mbarara, sees it as an opportunity to broaden her job prospects. Another trainee, Praise Twebaze, agrees and hopes it will enable him to travel too.

    3     Gao Yahui, who has been teaching Mandarin in Uganda for a year, says it has changed her understanding of Africa. From Xi’an city in central China, the 39-year-old left her husband and child behind to come and teach but was warned by her family and friends not to because of “diseases and war”. “    4     When I go back to China, I will introduce the real Africa to the people in China and change their way of looking at Africa.”

Wang’s goal is to have 100 teachers trained up and teaching Mandarin in 60 Ugandan schools by 2023. She sees it as a win-win situation, giving the example of how Chinese have benefited from learning English. “    5     We learnt their technology and skills and then we developed.”

Among many changes the COVID-19 pandemic has brought     1     the U. S., one is a possible move closer to a cashless society.

Since more people decided to stay home when the coronavirus outbreak spread, they were spending     2    (little) money than before. If people were out, fear of catching the virus kept them from     3    (touch) many things, including loose change at the register.

Unfortunately, a move to a cashless society could cause problems for some communities. About 8% of Americans don’t have a checking account. About 18% of Americans rely on alternative banking     4    (solution), like a check cashing location, even though they have a savings or checking account. So these people rely on cash     5    (purchase) goods and services.

“For those     6     have the option to move away from cash to credit cards, there will be fewer problems,” said Harvard business professor Shelle Santana. “But there are     7     number of people who don’t have the ability to do that substitution (替换), and those are the vulnerable (易受影响的) people in the community.”

While     8    (convenient) is an advantage of using a card or electronic payment, everything someone purchases     9    (track) and documented. Cash, however,     10    (protect) the user’s privacy and doesn’t leave a footprint behind.

4 . Feeling pressure from the Internet is nothing new for Lizzie Velasquez, an anti-bullying (霸凌) advocate, who found that browsing social media had a negative impact on her self-esteem.

In 2006, when she was just 17, a video calling her “The World’s Ugliest Woman” went viral on YouTube. It was a difficult period for her, who had been dealing with a lifetime of bullying due to a rare health condition. “I was diagnosed with neonatal progeroid syndrome (新生儿早衰症), which doesn’t allow me to gain weight and severely affects my eyes, my bones and my heart.”

Growing up, Velasquez says that she lived in two different worlds. At home, her family treated her just like everyone else. Her parents raised her to be optimistic and confident. Yet, things got hard when she started school. “I didn’t become aware of it until I entered this other world where I had to face the reality of, ‘I do not look like everybody else,’” says Velasquez.

As Velasquez transitioned into high school, she gained more understanding about her condition. This new level of self-acceptance inspired Velasquez to make new friends, join the cheerleading squad, and write for the school newspaper. She had started to feel gratitude for what she had accomplished, but then came the YouTube video, which threatened her already-shaky foundation. “To just see a video that says ‘the world’s ugliest woman,’ it felt like, within two seconds, everything that I had worked for up to that point was just sort of knocked over and done.” says Velasquez.

According to DoSomething. org, about 37 percent of teenagers have been bullied online. Among them, only one in 10 teen victims (受害者) will inform a parent or trusted adult of their abuse. But Velasquez did speak up. That moment of bullying inspired Velasquez to use her newfound platform for good. In 2013, she gave a TEDxAustin Women talk about her experiences, reaching millions with her uplifting messages about beauty and happiness.

“My mission is just to remind people that no matter how different you are, you are meant to be in this world. Your purpose in life is out there waiting for you,” says the motivational speaker.

10 . On The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, there is a group of people regularly moving through the snowy mountains, lakes and pastures (牧场). They are doing one thing: picking up rubbish.

They are from the “Beautiful Travel”, an organization founded by Shi Ning. In 2014, when he traveled alone from Dali to Lhasa, seeing amounts of garbage along the road, he became shocked. Later, Shi Ning and his two companions discussed possible solutions to environmental problems. In 2015, they launched a series of campaigns, starting from picking up trash along the highway in Xizang areas.

Since then, more than 45 tons of deserted plastic bottles have been recycled thanks to the “Beautiful Travel“. If you pile these plastic bottles up, they would be about 25 times as high as Qomolangma.

However, it is difficult for garbage transporters (运输车) to run at high altitudes during rainy and snowy days, with the closure (关闭) of roads. They established rubbish pickup sites with the local government. Volunteers go to villages, towns and mountainous areas to collect garbage and when the garbage is piled up to 500 kg, vehicles are sent to collect it. They also call on tourists and local residents to stop littering (乱扔垃圾) to protect local biodiversity. The campaign involves about 30,000 tourists all the way.

Volunteers sort out 20% recyclable garbage and recycle it according to the local price. The remaining 80% of non-recyclable garbage will be handed over by volunteers and staffs to the municipal (市政的) waste removal department for further recycling.

The T-shirts worn by the volunteers were made using recycled materials from the trash. Blue, representing the blue sky and our planet, is specially chosen for this organization. “It’s like planting the seeds of civilization in people’s hearts, and I believe that one day, they will come out, forming a beautiful landscape,” Shi Ning said.