1 . Do you ever get restless if you haven’t checked your phone for a few minutes? If so, you’re not alone. Studies reveal that people these days check their phones once every four minutes on average! Some of this usage may be related to work. However, much of it is because many apps — particularly social media apps — use “clever techniques” to keep us coming back for more.

One of such techniques is to push notifications. You’re getting on with your work or something else when — ping! — a notification pops up on your screen, informing you that a friend has posted something new or commented on your post. It may seem like a small interruption, but it often is enough to break your concentration and make you go back to your phone again.

Another method is to make a game of the in-app experience by setting up a competitive goal element. Some apps, for example, uses streaks (连续纪录), which count the number of days you have used the app. If you keep a streak going, you might get a medal or some other rewards. Therefore, keeping one’s streak alive becomes a major reason to return to the app again and again.

Once you’ve opened an app, its goal is now to get you continue using it. Messaging apps use a simple but effective trick to keep you engaged even when you’re not writing anything. Have you ever noticed that in some apps, three dots (…) appear to let you know your friend is typing a reply? This trick is designed specifically to create your expectation or curiosity. You wonder what your friend is going to say. Well, you’ll have to keep waiting and see.

While using social media apps is certainly fun, becoming addicted definitely isn’t. Now that you know some tricks used by these apps’ designers, you’ll be better equipped to reduce their influence and keep a healthier relationship with your phone.

2 . Do you speak a dialect (方言) in daily life? While many Chinese people speak Mandarin, some local dialects are in danger of disappearing. To save them, the Chinese government started the Chinese Language Resources Protection Project a few years ago.

This project looks at how people talk in 1,712 places. Their languages include 103 dialects that are almost gone. It has helped China to build the largest language resource library in the world. There’s an online library where people can learn dialects from over 5.6 million audio clips (音频) and over 5 million videos.

Why is it important to protect the dialect culture? According to British linguist Harold Palmer, dialects are a key to store local cultures. Language faithfully shows the history, the beliefs and the biases (偏见) of an area, he said.

Scholar Zhang Hongming talked about his concerns of the disappearing of dialeets, “For about over 10 years, in the Wu dialect areas such as Shanghai and Suzhou, children aged 6 to 15 can understand but hardly speak the dialect. Meanwhile, young people above 15 years old sometimes speak it, but not very well. If this keeps happening, the dialect might disappear,” he said.

So how did China make this big library? “A big national effort has been put into the project to make it happen,” said Cao Zhiyun, chief expert on the project. Over five years, more than 350 universities and research groups joined in, along with over 4,500 experts and more than 6,000 dialect speakers.

The project is now entering into its second part. This includes creating digital tools like apps and mobile dictionaries to help people lean dialects.

3 . Every week, Liu Fang, a 38-year-old media worker in Beijing, goes to a store specializing in selling near-expired(快过期的) food and returns with a bag of snacks or drinks.

“The price tags on these goods have caught my eye. They are often _______ at 10 percent to 30 percent of the market price,” Liu said. “More importantly, most of them are from big _______. Why wouldn’t I love them?”

Liu is among the _______ number of Chinese people who enjoy buying near-expired food at much _______ prices. According to the latest report, the near-expired food industry had a _______ size of over 30 billion yuan in 2020. Young consumers aged between 26 and 35 _______ 47.8 percent.

Unlike the traditional _______ that buying such goods is embarrassing, more and more young people regard it as a kind of sustainable consumption that can help _______ food waste.

Indeed, food waste is a great _______ for China and other countries. According to a 2020 report, about 18 billion kilograms of food is wasted every year in China’s urban catering industry(餐饮业).

As people’s lives improved greatly, many began to make or ________ more food than could be consumed, CGTN reported. But the trend of buying near-expired food may ________ that the Chinese virtue of frugality(节约)is ________ a comeback.

“I’ve been very frugal all my life. Living ________ a hard time of hunger(1959-61), I’m used to saving every ________ and every penny,” Li Mei, a retired woman born in the 1950s, told CGTN. “I’m happy to see more young people, who used to ________ extravagantly(奢侈地), joining our ranks.”

4 . Virtual reality is quickly becoming the new technological frontier. Tech companies everywhere seem to be racing to get their foot in the VR door. However, virtual reality has a set of challenges and hurdles that it must overcome in order to work well. It should be noted that VR is heavily dependent on being very fast, very accurate and very good-looking. If it isn’t, the viewer will feel motion sick or disconnected from the world that VR is trying to create.

Now that we can actually build VR headsets that begin to meet these requirements, we are seeing a rising interest in VR. As it rises, so does the interest in creating new media to be experienced in using virtual reality. Journalism is a medium built on relevance. Journalists should always be finding new ways to tell stories and deliver content. It is a goldmine for storytelling. What better ways to tell a story to someone than to put them right in the center of it?

Virtual reality is a powerful tool for journalists. The consumer isn’t just reading or watching something play out; they’re experiencing it. The immersive nature of VR allows for people to connect with the subject matter on a much deeper level than just reading about it. The experience is emotional, speaking more to our instinct than our intellect. The possibilities for storytelling here are legion, and any storyteller wanting to do something more interesting than their peers should surely be considering the sheer power of VR.

The question of virtual reality, though, is not how powerful it is. That is immediately apparent. The question of VR is one of viability and availability. Telling stories must be easy to do, and access to those stories must be readily available. This is the biggest challenge that VR faces. If the tools to tell a story with VR aren’t easy to pick up and learn, VR will fail. If VR technology isn’t both top-of-the-line and affordable, VR will fail.

Accessibility was one concern for Thomas Hallaq, assistant professor of journalism and mass communications, who said that current VR technology, is pretty exclusive right now. Despite that, he said he doesn’t think the exclusivity of this technology will be a problem in the long run.

“I think it’s very promising,” Hallaq said. “We’re seeing more technology become accessible, and more people having access to that technology. Just look at smartphones.” Like radio, TV and the Internet before it, virtual reality will change the way we tell stories.

5 . Going against the trend of going to well-known yet crowded tourist destinations on vacation, a growing number of holidaymakers in China are spending their holidays at less-known places to look for unique and relaxed holiday experiences. “Reverse tourism” (反向旅游) has appeared as a new trend among young holidaymakers in China.

During the weeklong public holiday, which ended on Oct 7, large numbers of vacationers, especially youth who long to escape their busy city lives, avoid popular holiday destinations in order to get off the beaten track and enjoy some peace and quietness.

According to data from online travel agency Qunar, the number of rooms booked at hotels in less-traveled cities during the holiday was up 30 percent year-on-year. Bookings for four and five-star hotels in less-traveled places, including Linxia in Gansu province and Shizuishan in Ningxia, all increased at least 10 times from the same period of 2021. Even 12.5 percent of youth who normally have little time for themselves simply had a time in a hotel to make the much-awaited holiday more relaxing.

Besides crowds, some vacationers chose less-traveled places to save on the cost of trips to popular destinations, which often involve expensive tickets, meals and hotel stays. What’s more, less-known attractions are able to offer more natural experiences, according to social media posts. And unlike popular destinations, some undeveloped places with little online attention can offer more surprises.

Jiang Han, a senior researcher at the Beijing-based public policy think tank Pangoal (盘古智库), said that reverse tourism will become one of the future directions for the market and is an opportunity for growth which can match the camping economy.

7 . Should we allow modern buildings to be built next to older buildings in a historic area of a city? In order to answer this question, we must first examine whether people really want to preserve the historic feel of an area. Not all historical buildings are attractive. However, there may be other reasons — for example, economic reasons — why they should be preserved. So, let us suppose that historical buildings are both attractive and important to the majority of people. What should we do then if a new building is needed?

In my view, new architectural styles can exist (存在) perfectly well alongside an older style. Indeed, there are many examples in my own hometown of Tours where modern designs have been placed very successfully next to old buildings. As long as the building in question is pleasing and does not dominate (影响) its surroundings too much, it often improves the attractiveness of the area.

It is true that there are examples of new buildings which have spoilt the area they are in, but the same can be said of some old buildings too. Yet people still speak against new buildings in historic areas. I think this is simply because people are naturally conservative (保守的) and do not like change.

Although we have to respect people’s feelings as fellow users of the buildings, I believe that it is the duty of the architect and planner to move things forward. If we always reproduced what was there before, we would all still be living in caves. Thus, I would argue against copying previous architectural styles and choose something fresh and different, even though that might be the more risky choice.

8 . Schools in US are huge consumers (消费者) of energy. According to ENERGY STAR, K-12 schools spend more than $ 6 billion every year on energy, far more than the amount spent on other resources, and at least 30 percent of this energy is used inefficiently or needlessly.

Realizing that, some schools are looking for measures to save energy in several ways, from low-cost adjustments, such as turning off lights in unused rooms, to large-scale projects, such as turning to green equipment.

As solar energy (太阳能) is becoming a more financial choice for powering buildings, more schools are making the move toward the renewable energy and using solar panels (电池板) on their rooftops. According to an online solar marketplace Energy Sage, schools have their strong points to use solar energy. They often have the kind of enough space, suitable locations that are perfect for setting up solar panels.

In September 2020, a nonprofit Generation 180 released its third edition of a study on solar use in US schools. The findings showed that more than 7,300, or 55 percent, of K-12 public and private schools used solar energy, the number has increased by 81 percent since 2014.

They also described how solar schools were saving millions in energy bills, and provided several cases to show the increased savings achieved by solar-powered school districts. For example, an Arkansas school used its every year’s energy savings of nearly $ 100,000 to increase its teachers’ salaries.

The Interstate Renewable Energy Council, which tracks the number of K-12 schools with solar equipment and helps schools go solar, says on its website that schools with solar setups have an opportunity to educate students about clean energy, and show them that they are doing something for students’ and the planet’s health and future.

Third-party ownership also makes funding for 79 percent of schools to use solar energy possible, meaning a majority of schools don’t have to spend large amounts of money but can get the rewards of solar energy.