Military-Style Cotton Coats (军大衣) Have Made a Major Comeback this Winter and Stormed College Campuses

A video of college students in northeastern China     1     (wear) military-style cotton coats to class has trended on social media platforms. Meanwhile, many young women have started buying floral coats, often on sale.

With the price of down jackets (羽绒服) increasing, college students in China have picked up floral cotton-padded jackets and military coats to fend off the winter cold. Thanks     2     their low cost and high quality, cotton coats have made a major comeback this winter and stormed college campuses.

The general thinking among students     3     (be) that it isn’t about whether or not they can afford a down jacket     4     that cotton coats provide better quality at a much lower price.

One can buy ten cotton coats at the price of one down jacket. The     5     (cheap) military-style cotton coat costs less than 100 yuan, and they have become the most     6     (fashion) winter wear for college students in northern China.

Down jackets have been     7     must-have for many Chinese people. However, the prices have increased. According to data from the China National Commercial Information Center, the average price of down jackets     8     (rise) from 438 yuan in 2015 to 656 yuan in 2020.

The price of goose down has increased,     9     (main) due to the demand downstream. Many     10     (brand) have started to move towards high-end development, resulting in a more significant increase in demand for high-quality materials like white goose down, according to a down jacket seller in Jiangsu Province, surnamed Si.

Have you ever wondered what life is like now     1     (compare) to, say, the 1980s or the 1990s? I went to ask some people I know who were adults in the ‘80s and 90s’, and the answer I got was that “Overall, life is a lot     2     (good) now!” This didn’t really surprise me. I mean, these days we’ve got mobile phones and the internet and so on — but     3    (actual) those weren’t the things they talked about.

So what did they talk about? For     4     start, we don’t have to work physically hard since now there are a lot of things like dishwashers for housework. Then there’s the matter of how, these days,     5     is possible to work at home — it’s mainly     6    (computer) that have made this possible. Not only that, there’s a lot more     7     (equal) now. It’s easier for all people, whatever their social background, gender (性别), colour and so on, to have equal access     8     a variety of career opportunities.

That said, it’s not all a matter of improvement. Quite a few people told me that they feel more stressed these days because they rely a lot on technology and they are always     9    (anxiety) about security on the internet. Plus, we spend a lot of our time     10     (use) smartphones. One person said, “Wouldn’t it be great to be off the grid (不上网) for a few days?”

Socializing with my friends online is my life. The moment I wake     1     I check through all my social networking     2     (app), reading my emails and posting updates. I have 500 friends online and I live with several roommates, but I feel lonely. It seems that I have an active social life,     3     (attend) parties and playing sports, but I’m absent-minded because I     4     (strong) obsess over my phone.

Social networking     5     (be) the master of my life. Though sometimes I set deadlines    6     (tear) myself away from my phone, I fail again and again. Spending so much time socializing online. I always feel     7     (depress) and alone. As a result, I can’t finish what I should do in my real life.

It is common that at parties or at a family holiday, most members fix their eyes on their phones,     8    they think is normal rather than rude.

What is most worrying is that it is     9     (possible) to drop my phone. I need it for my studies because my teachers and classmates need to contact me. It is     10     problem that we are so close but really so far.

Digitalization,     1     is a main characteristic of the twenty first century, represents a transformation of society to a widespread use of digital technologies in various     2     (area) of life.

However, experts noted that too much social media use is known to have a negative influence     3     mental health. So they started a study to investigate how to improve mental health in this time of rapid digitalization.

The results of the study     4     (lead) by Dr. Julia Brailovskaia of the Mental Health Research and Treatment Center clearly showed that individuals who cut their social media use by 30 minutes a day     5     used this time for physical activity could     6     (significant) improve their mental health.

Participants who replaced 30 minutes of social media with exercise every day for two weeks     7     (have) powerful results. They reported feeling happier, more satisfied, less stressed and less depressed. The positive effects lasted for at least six months after the study had ended.

“This shows us how vital it is     8     (reduce) our availability online from time to time and to go back to our human roots,” said Dr. Brailovskaia. “These measures can be easily applied to people’s     9     (day) lives and they’re completely free and, at     10     same time, they help us to stay happy and healthy in the digital age.”

Machines work well at a constant speed ― and the faster the better. Whether they are spinning cotton     1     dealing with numbers, regular, repetitive actions are what they excel at.

Increasingly, our world is being designed by machines and for machines. We adapt to machines and hold ourselves to their standards: People     2     (judge) by the speed at which they respond, not the quality of their response. “Always on” becomes something to take pride     3    . When I ask people     4     they are doing, they almost always answer “busy”. Ticking things off the “to do” list becomes     5     means of defining ourselves.     6     (occupy) if not with work then with family or our social networks, most of us feel exhausted.

A few years ago, I became very interested in what it meant     7     (pause). I started to notice where pauses show up in my own work and life. For example, I realized when I was writing, a short walk was a(n)     8     (effective) way to focus than concentrating harder. The small walk acted as a pause,     9     (enable) me to rest, reflect or refresh, appreciate and break a block in my     10     (creative). I realized that pause is not nothing!

A minute eating ice-cream is not the same as a minute doing push-ups. Even time itself isn’t a uniform raw material ― as the physics of Einstein shows.

The buzzwords “brittle college students” has exploded on social media, with a great deal of comments     1    (share) experiences of college students subject to unexpected and amusing     2    （injury) such as “I just stretched a bit but my neck got twisted”, “I lay on my side to play with my phone     3    was diagnosed with strabismus (斜视)”, and “I twisted my ankle while dancing in the dorm.” Such comments have given rise to     4    (heat) discussions over the weakening physical fitness of contemporary college students,     5     is confirmed by the astonishing record of visits to one hospital in the city of Zhengzhou, north-central Henan Province.

The “2020 China University Students Health Survey Report” published by China Youth Daily pointed out that     6    (healthy) lifestyle is common among college students. Out of 12,117 collegians, 86 percent of participants said they     7    (experience) health issues such as poor skin condition, lack of sleep, and emotional problems.

In addition     8     insufficient exercise, the rising number of “vulnerable college students” can be attributed to irregular work and rest schedules and unhealthy lifestyles. “Nowadays, college students spend too much time on smartphones. Many stay up late playing games or     9    (write) essays, etc., which leads to waking up late and skipping breakfast. All of this are     10    (extreme) harmful to physical health, resulting in a more ‘brittle’ body,” a professional noted.