3 . Xing Yifan and his parents were thrilled to learn that he had been admitted to Beihang University with a score of 645 out of a possible 750 points in this (2021) year’s national college entrance examination, or gaokao. It would take most high school graduates great effort to score that high.

But the challenge for 18-year-old Xing was greater, as he was born with congenital muscular dystrophy (营养不良), a group of disorders characterized by muscle weakness and problems with the eyes and central nervous system.

After the Spring Festival in 2004, the Xing couple took Yifan to Beijing for treatment, and he was finally diagnosed with CMD (先天性肌营养不良亚型) at Peking University First Hospital.

When relatives and friends heard the news,they advised the couple to have another baby, but they were determined to pour all their love and care into their son.

“Yifan is an angel who came to our family,” the father said. “He might have broken wings, but we will never give him up.”

The young man’s health continued to deteriorate (恶化). As a result of his condition，he is unable to grow much muscle, so his skeleton (骨骼) suffers from a lack of support and protection.

“He has never walked independently and can only sit against a support,” said Xing Dacheng.

“And every 30minutes,he has to lie down to rest,even in the classroom.”

The condition has also deformed Xing Yifan’s spine and fingers, making it difficult for him to write. “His teachers and principals from primary school to senior high school never refused him. The opportunity of education gave us lots of help,” his father added.

Hou Suyun, head teacher at Xing Yifan’s primary school,carried him up and down stairs during the six years he spent at the school.

Yang Weihong, head teacher at Xing Yifan’s junior high school, gave him extra care but subjected him to the same strict academic requirements as his classmates. “I tried everything I could to stimulate his desire to study, hoping to give him more confidence,” Yang said. “I also hoped he would discover his own sense of worth.”

Yang’s methods worked. Xing Yifan got the highest score in his school for the senior high school entrance examination in 2018.

4 . I enjoy throwing stuff away. I’d love to go full minimalism (极简主义), but my wife and two teenage kids do not share my dream of a house with almost nothing in it. I have tried. When the kids were little, I taught them my two favorite games – “Do We Need It?” and “Put It in Its Place”– and made them play every few months. Their enthusiasm never matched mine.

If I’m going to be honest, my own tidying skills are not as great as I’d like. My “discarded” pile is never quite the trash mountain I want because I make up excuses for why things are useful. I consider this unhealthy. I want to be better at moving on.

So, this time I found help – the classics for people like me: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo. Kondo’s commitment to her craft is astonishing. Her philosophy is only to keep things you love. Can I go full Kondo? I will try. One central idea is to clean by category. You start by collecting all clothes and gathering them together for consideration. It makes you rethink how you organize. Next, hold each item and ask if it brings you joy. This way you’re choosing what to keep. And that’s how I find myself with all my clothes on my bedroom floor. My wife walks by and gives me a look that says I’m nuts. She’s probably not wrong.

Somewhere near the bottom of this chaos is my special jacket. I move through the pile: pants, shirts, suits and shoes. Then my last category: jackets. I haven’t worn the thing in about 30 years. Somehow, it has survived. Now that I’m striving to follow Kondo – surely, its time has come?

I hold it in my hand. There is a tear just below the collar that widens as I hold it. It’s literally falling apart. Will I ever wear it again? Not a chance. Does it feel good to wear? Does it bring me joy? Actually, yes. At this moment, my daughter walks in. She asks about the jacket. I tell her the story. She thinks I should keep it. It’s cool and unique and full of memories. She is arguing that nostalgia (怀念) is the very reason.

I’m not entirely convinced by my daughter’s arguments. I believe in looking ahead, not backward. Nevertheless, sometimes it’s hard to let go. So I gently place the jacket on the “keep” pile.

5 . On January 9, 2022, it was another cold morning. Temperatures reached lows of 17. 6 °F (-8℃). Dusti Talavera, a housewife in the south suburbs of Denver, was washing dishes in her kitchen when she witnessed a frightening scene outside her kitchen window. Glancing out her kitchen window, she noticed a group of young children playing on an icy pond. Moments later, the children fell through the ice.

Dusti’s heart raced as she saw the children fall through the ice, and she immediately grabbed her shoes to run outside. Submerged（淹没）in the freezing water, the children had lost the strength to stay above the surface. Their fingers were only visible as they desperately tried to grab onto the edges of the ice.

Without hesitation, Dusti placed her own life at risk by stepping on the thin, unstable ice to try to reach the three children. As she reached her hands out to grab them, she also broke the ice and fell into the 15-foot deep pond.

Dusti was first able to reach and pull out the 4-year-old girl and 11-year-old boy. She struggled to reach the last child, a 6-year-old girl. After hearing the loud screams for help, the young girl’s 16-year-old cousin suddenly arrived on scene. He threw Dusti a rope, which she used to drag herself and the young girl out of the water.

All three children were pulled out of the icy water as first responders arrived on scene. The 6-year-old girl was not breathing and had no pulse after being submerged in the icy water for two minutes. First responders performed life-saving CPR. Once the girl was able to breathe on her own, the EMTs (emergency medical technicians) rushed her to the hospital.

8 . I climbed up a ladder to the roof of our house, catching a book about the evolution of animals. I was 10 years old, and I’d just finished cooking dinner for my entire family—a task that was my daily responsibility. We didn’t have any lamps in our house, so I needed sunlight to read my book. I didn’t know it at the time? but that study routine was my ticket to a career as a scientist.

I had a passion for learning, and when I was allowed to go to school, I quickly shot to the top of my class. When I was 10 years old, my father sent me to a better school, which was mostly attended by students from wealthier families. I was at the top of the class there, too, but I was treated poorly by classmates who saw me as a child of the poor areas. When I graduated from high school, I wanted to become an engineer? but my father said I couldn’t study engineering because it was for boys； he said I should study food science instead. My first reaction was that food science was the last thing I wanted to study. After a childhood preparing meals for my family, there was nothing I hated more than cooking. I enrolled in a food science program anyway, and I quickly discovered that food science wasn’t so bad.

In the years that followed, I received a PhD in food engineering and wanted to handle malnutrition (营养不良) in slums. Other researchers laughed at me, but I’ve proved them wrong. My work has won numerous national and international awards and companies, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies have all sought my expertise.

In my life, I’ve faced poverty, hunger, and discrimination, but I didn’t let them hold me back. I hope others can take inspiration from my story and realize that—despite the challenges they may be facing—they, too, can make it.

9 . I saw my first tree today. Dad used to tell me stories about the trees that still existed when he was a boy. There weren’t very many even then, with the urbanization program in full swing.

The O’Brien home was one of the few examples of old-style wooden structures that hadn’t been destroyed in Boston’s urban-renewal campaign. The family had been able to avoid this because of its wealth and political influence, and the house was passed on through generations to the present. Old man O’Brien had no children, so when he died, the Urban Center bought it. Then an official discovered that the house had a backyard-in the yard was a live tree!

When the news of the tree’s discovery leaked out, quite a few sightseers stopped by to have a look at it, and the local government, realizing the money-making potential, began charging admission and advertising the place. By now it had become a favorite spot for family trips like ours.

Dad paid the fee and we walked through a doorway hidden in a bookshelf and into the backyard. I just couldn’t help noticing the tree!

It was located at one end of the yard, with a fence around it for protection. It was similar in form to the plastic trees I’d seen, but there was much more. You could see details more delicate than in any artificially made plant. And it was alive. But best of all was the smell-fresh, living smell, unfamiliar to the world outside with metal, plastic, and glass. I wanted to touch the bark, but the fence prevented me from doing so.

On the way back, I read through the brochures. One part said the O’Brien home would be torn down next year to make room for some insurance building, and the tree will have to go, too.

I just sat still, fingering the object in my pocket that I had picked in the O’Brien’s backyard. I think it’s called an acorn (橡子).