2 . After four years of growth, live streaming e-commerce (直播电商) has grown from the participation of Taobao and Mogujie platforms (平台) at the beginning to the standard allocation (分配) of all e-commerce platforms under the influence of the epidemic. Nowadays, direct seeding takes goods to become the upsurge (热潮) that Chinese enterprise is chasing with surging tendency (趋势).

As a form of e-commerce with live broadcast (广播) as the channel to achieve marketing purposes, live broadcast e-commerce is the product of the two-way integration (集成) of live broadcast and e-commerce in the digital (数字) era. Undeniably, although the essence (本质) of live broadcasting e-commerce is still e-commerce, it takes live broadcasting as a means to reconstruct the three elements of "people, goods and field". Compared with traditional e-commerce, it has advantages such as strong interaction                           (互动) and high conversion (转换) rate.

From the supply side, after years of development of the e-commerce industry, the cost of new users is rising. According to the calculation (计算) of e-commerce financial report, the overall customer acquisition cost of Alibaba, Pinduoduo and Jingdong is increasing from 2017 to 2019. Therefore, with the advantages of low cost of social traffic generated by live broadcasting and significant conversion effect, live broadcasting has become a new direction for many businesses to obtain (获得) traffic.

Through live broadcast and real-time interaction, merchants (客商) can reach consumers efficiently, greatly shorten the decision-making time of consumers and stimulate (刺激) the generation of consumer demand. At the same time, the preferential (优惠) commodity prices in the live broadcast scene are attractive to consumers, and the consumer surplus is formed under the stimulation of direct price drop, coupons, lottery and other preferential incentives. In addition to the commodity (商品) labels such as "limited amount" and "first release in the broadcast room" as well as the anchor's own ability of "planting grass", consumer surplus psychology is easily transformed into buying behavior.

3 . WeChat, China's most popular mobile social app, used to be a place where people could connect with each other through sharing photos and texts about their life in their friend circles, but now it is flooded with advertisements, showoffs, chicken-soup stories and even rumors(谣言).

In the age of social media, everyone is crazy about attention. When I first joined WeChat in 2011, like many people, I shared a lot of moments in my life. I felt like if I did not post something on my friend circle, I would feel less important in this world.

For years, I enjoyed it. It made me feel like I was more popular than I actually was in real life. However, when the number of my “friends” increased, it became a really bad dream.

WeChat's friend circle has become such a sensitive(敏感的) place that it has started to make relationships among people become tense. One day when I called my high school friend and asked how she was doing, she was kind of upset that I did not pay much attention to her friend circle. “All my moments are listed there. You don't even care about following me?” she questioned. Honestly, I have no interest in what everyone is doing every minute. But clearly, it is a big deal for some people.

“Why didn't you like my post?” “Why can't I see the moment you post? Did you keep me off?” “Why didn't you reply to my comment?” “Can you please help me retweet(转发) this message?” These are the questions I always get.

I believe that the reason why WeChat is so widely used is that it shows the very Chinese way of social life—we are all connected in different social groups such as classmate groups, co-worker groups and neighborhood groups. In real life, many Chinese people are good at role playing in different groups, which is similar to WeChat. It is like the traditional face-changing in the Sichuan Opera. You have to say things differently indifferent groups.

It has been reported that more and more people are leaving the friend circle because they are annoyed. I finally left too. I need to start thinking of how to use social media by hiding myself just enough while my friends all stay interested in me at the same time.

4 . My granddaughter, 10, was very happy the day before yesterday because her mother and the mother of one of her classmates took them to a park and a Pizza Hut (比萨饼屋) to celebrate Children's Day. For a whole day, the two girls played heartily—no homework, no extra-curricular (课外) skills training. The happy life lasted only for one day. Yesterday, everything returned to normal: doing homework till late at night and going over lessons learned at last weekend's English and “Olympic mathematics” (数学奥赛) courses.

Every time I went to my daughter's house in the evening, I saw my granddaughter sitting by the small desk in her room doing math exercises or writing a composition given by her teacher. On the white wall behind the desk are some words she wrote. One sentence reads: “Why is the exercise endless?” Poor girl!

Although teachers have stopped giving after-school homework to primary schoolchildren, parents have been forcing their kids to take part in different kinds of extra-curricular training courses—learning English, painting, music instrument (乐器) , weiqi, “Olympic mathematics” and so one very Saturday and Sunday.

Are these extra-curricular courses really necessary in children's education? The answer is certainly “No”. Take the so-called “Olympic mathematics” for example. These courses are very difficult for the children to understand. Often, they are difficult even for adults.