When night falls, the hustle and bustle of the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou turns to the banks of the Pearl River in Liwan district. Hundreds of people and cars     1     (decorate) with colorful lights and eye-catching shop signs swarm (挤满) a local car boot sale bazaar (集市).

Liang Jinsheng, a local youth, sells lemon tea at the bazaar,     2     was opened to the public on July 15 last year. The almost one-square-meter car trunk is his space for tea making.

“I used     3     (work) in the catering industry. I saw on the Internet many people doing business at car boot sale bazaars. So I decided to give it     4     try, as doing business is low-cost and low-risk,” Liang says.

“Although my ‘shop’ is small, I have obtained the necessary business licenses     5     will stick with hygienic (卫生的) standards to ensure food     6     (safe),” Liang adds.

While     7     (make) the lemon tea, Liang also livestreams on short-video platforms to drive traffic.

“Recently, a lot of residents     8     (come) to my tea booth after watching my livestream. I make around 1,000 yuan ($148) at the bazaar every night,” he says.

    9     most cases, Guangzhou will support these new types of business activities, says the city’s commerce department, noting that many commercial plazas (露天广场) have offered     10     (much) space for car boot sales and introduced night-themed activities to stimulate consumption.

2 . I came across an image recently of a distance runner with a message that told readers to persevere (坚持) at all costs. It reminded me of a conversation I had. My colleague’s teaching assistant was asking for my advice. He wanted to know when to quit something. He described how he’d been playing an online game with people for some time. It hadn’t been very fun lately, but there was always that small chance of a reward (upgraded equipment, etc).

I inquired further about his relationship with the players and his gains from the game. I then discussed the sunk cost dilemma, a concept I studied in advanced school due to its personal impact. In high school, I applied to five universities, planning to choose the cheapest one. SUU offered the best scholarship, and after paying a $100 commitment fee, I heard back from another school with an even better scholarship. Despite the new offer, I stayed committed to SUU, believing that switching schools, even if it meant acknowledging the “wasted” $ 100, would have been the wiser financial choice.

A rational (理性的) decision maker is not ruled by past investments, but weighs future outcomes. I didn’t focus on future outcomes when weighing colleges. I focused on the money I sunk into SUU. Rather than evaluating future career options, I focused on the fact that I’d already taken elementary education courses.

I’m not the only one that’s fallen prey to this. I wear clothes I dislike simply because I spent money on them (and that money won’t come back). Unhealthy relationships last because of the invested time (leading to more unhappy years). However, time, effort, or money that you’ve invested doesn’t mean you should continue. Society often stresses perseverance — never quit, never give up, don’t waste. However, only you know your right path. Walking away can be the toughest choice. You might realize a path you’re on is no longer the right one or never was.

3 . How cuteness has taken over the world?

Scroll through any social-media feed, and before long a cute video will appear.     1    . The supply of these adorable clips is huge. On TikTok, there are 65 million videos tagged# cute.

    2    . Japanese artists in the Edo period (between 1603 and 1868) painted puppies or fashioned them out of ivory. Joshua Paul Dale, the author of “Irresistible”, argues that the popularity of Cupids in Renaissance and Rococo art made winged babies “the major expression of cuteness in Western art for three centuries”.     3    . People could watch and share amusing content of their children or favourite animals at any time. In2022, more than 90,000 videos of cats were uploaded to YouTube every day.

Cute things are everywhere, not just online. In America, a puppy has advertised beer, and a cute gecko helps company Geico sell around $39billion in car insurance a year. In Britain a cartoon koala helps peddle toilet paper.     4    . However, a study from 2015 found that participants felt more energetic and positive, and less annoyed, anxious or sad, after watching cat videos.

Cuteness has real-world uses. Lovot, a companion robot with big eyes and a button nose, is covered in sensors and responds positively when hugged. Such innovations may help fight with loneliness among the elderly. Policymakers, too, might take advantage of the power of cute to guide people’s behaviour.     5    .

An appreciation for cute things is a joy in and of itself, but it also has the potential to change the world. How’s that for a cute idea?

4 . 听下面一段独白，回答以下小题。

5 . By now, the story of Britney Spears’s guardianship and its eventual end is well known: For years, Ms. Spears was trapped in a legal situation in which most of the money she earned went to her father, who controlled not only her finances, but things like her medication, her performance schedule and more.

Ms. Spears’s story triggered an examination of guardianship laws, and that may have helped prompt recent assessments of the protections - or lack thereof - available to child influencers. Yet in nearly all of the United States, these workers have no legal protections and no guarantees that they will ever see any of the money that they have earned.

If this has parallels with Ms. Spears’s guardianship, its roots stretch back nearly a century. In 1938, a 23-year-old named Jackie Coogan, who had starred in Charlie Chaplin’s “The Kid” as a toddler, learned that his mother and his stepfather had spent the millions of dollars he had earned as a child star. He sued and won, and in response, California passed a bill in 1939, commonly referred to as the Coogan Law, to protect children in similar roles.

Today, a revised version of the law requires that 15 percent of a child entertainer’s earnings go into a trust. A few other states have their own versions of California’s law, but barring one exception, these laws do not extend to children who are making their names on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube or any of the other major social media platforms. Even if child influencers produce their own content and are not managed by their parents, they are at risk of being exploited by adults in their lives.

Now, politicians are starting to catch up, motivated in part by civic-minded teenagers who have watched as popular family vloggers like Machelle Hobson and Ruby Franke have been exposed for abusing and exploiting their children, mostly behind the scenes, but sometimes on camera.

7 . Like so many other ABCs (American-born Chinese) and younger first and second-generation Chinese immigrants (移民), sisters Sarah and Kaitlin Leung reached a point in their adult lives when they started to long for the Chinese food they’d grown up on, but found it really difficult to learn how to prepare it. There was such a “representation gap”, as Sarah puts it, in terms of what kinds of cuisines were noticeably featured in those early days of TV celebrity chefs and the emerging food blogosphere (博客圈).

As it turns out, though, the Leungs were uniquely positioned to do something about it. Bill, the father, had spent years cooking beef at his family’s Chinese American takeout restaurant. Judy, the mom, was born and raised in Shanghai and had deep knowledge about traditional Shanghainese cooking. Meanwhile, the two sisters had grown up in the New Jersey suburbs, eating their parents’ food, but also growing in America’s own food-obsessed culture.

So, in 2013, the Leungs started The Woks of Life. What distinguished their blog from others was that the intergenerational heritage (传承) of knowledge that the Leungs were so eager for was baked right into the concept—The four family members took turns posting recipes, each sharing their own favorites, tapping into their own areas of expert knowledge.

Kaitlin is proud that The Woks of Life follows along line of pioneers-folks like Joyce Chen, Martin Yan and Ming Tsai, who first started to bring Chinese home cooking into the mainstream in the US. “We feel proud that we have made a meaningful mark over the past decade, casting light that there’s a huge demand for these recipes,” she says .“It’s about representation, yes, but there’s also a huge demand. Asian Americans look to reconnect with the food of their heritage.”

Five years ago, you wouldn’t have been able to find a ton of Chinese recipes in the New York Times food section, Kaitlin notes. Now you can.

8 . About ten years ago, logging into Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram would mostly show posts from friends and family in the order they were posted. Today, these platforms present a mix of content, tailored by algorithms (算法) to match users’ interests, whether it’s plants, sports, cats, or politics.

Kyle Chayka, a writer for The New Yorker, discusses this topic in his book, Filterworld. He explains that algorithms analyze user data to predict and influence what they will likely engage with. This means that instead of a simple, chronological feed, users encounter a dynamic stream, constantly adapting to their preferences. Chayka examines how these algorithmic recommendations control what we consume, from music and movies to food and travel destinations. He argues that this machine-driven selection process has turned us into passive consumers, making our preferences and tastes more similar.

Chayka points out that algorithms make us passive by always showing us content that we’re unlikely to click away from but won’t find too unexpected or challenging. This constant stream of recommendations reduces our exposure to diverse or challenging content, subtly shaping our preferences and behaviors.

Moreover, Chayka points out that algorithms also pressure content creators, like musicians and artists, to tailor their work to fit these digital platforms. For instance, musicians on Spotify or TikTok might focus on creating catchy hooks at the beginning of their songs to grab the listener’s attention.

Despite the strong presence of these algorithms, Chayka believes that regulation could reduce their influence. He suggests that if Meta, the parent company of Facebook, were required to separate its various services, like Instagram or WhatsApp, and make them compete with each other, it could give users more control and choice over their digital consumption.

In summary, the change from simple, time-ordered social. media posts to algorithm-driven content has a big impact on both the viewers and the creators, influencing what we see, hear, and even think. Chayka’s insights highlight the need for greater awareness and potentially more regulation in our increasingly digital world.

9 . How many bosses could rely on their employees threatening to quit in mass if they were abruptly forced out? Sam Altman received such a show of support from more than 700 staff after he was fired from Open AI that he was swiftly restored to his position by the board. But this level of loyalty is not typical and may not always be a good thing.

Management experts say staff who are loyal to their employer are inclined to invest more time and effort in their jobs, helping to create an engaged and higher performing workplace. In turn they receive promotions and pay rises. They have a greater sense of belonging and potentially a longer career at the same organisation. But it is not all rosy. People who are too loyal are more likely to take actions that are deemed wrong to keep their jobs and protect their employer, according to a 2021 academic paper. They might overlook wrongdoing and be less likely to expose corruption. Loyalty is sometimes seen as such a force for good that it can be used to justify bad behavior.

Often companies and senior bosses are the real winner a of employee loyalty. Research led by Matthew Stanley at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business published this year, found that managers were more likely to exploit loyal individuals. Stanley recruited almost 1,400 managers to read about a fictional 29-year-old employee called John, who worked for a company that was trying to keep costs down. They had to decide how willing they would be to ask John to work longer hours and take on more work without more pay. Researchers created various situations including labelling John as loyal versus other traits such as honest and fair. Managers were more willing to ask loyal John to take on the burden of unpaid work.

However, Consultancy Gallup’s latest state of the workplace report showed that half of the 122, 416 employees who took part in a global survey were looking out for new work. “You can’t guarantee anyone will stick around these days,” says a consultant who advises boards. This is particularly true of younger generations. They trust their bosses less and are not as patient when it comes to career progression, seeing little benefit in keeping their heads down and following orders if they do not see results quickly.