China’s youth are developing into a generation capable of shouldering the     1     (responsible) of national rejuvenation (复兴), said a recent white paper.

The white paper,     2     (title) “Youth of China in the New Era”, was published by the State Council Information Office on April 21. The document records the achievements and    3     (reflect) on the spirit of the country’s youth.

    4     the country developing rapidly, more than 25 million young people,     5     future prospects are supported by a solid foundation (基础), have escaped poverty. Young people in China now have more equal access to education, more diverse career options and more development opportunities. They grow and prosper in a     6     (good) legal environment, with more favorable policies and more     7     (rely) social security, said the white paper.

“In the new era, China’s youth have shown their grit (勇气) at critical moments,” noted the white paper. Since the COVID-19 pandemic broke, young people     8     (risk) their lives to combat (对抗)     9     deadly disease. As China opens its door     10     (wide) to the outside world, the country’s young people are gaining a greater understanding of international exchanges and cooperation.

5 . Several days ago Spanish fashion brand Zara sparked a fierce debate after releasing its latest campaign featuring a Chinese model with freckles (雀斑). Actually, there are some different beauty standards between the East and the West.

In East Asia, freckles might be considered a “destructive weakness” for celebrities, especially actors or singers. Although normal people don’t care that much, subconsciously they might prefer a “clean” face. Generally speaking, freckles are more likely to appear if people are out in the sun frequently, and most East Asian women avoid the sun as best they can.

Having freckles, instead, is a trademark for unconventional beauty in the Western world, and some call freckles “angel kisses”. For most westerners, having freckles is no longer just something you have to live with; instead, it is something to be desired. After all, not everyone is lucky enough to have freckles.

When it comes to eye shapes, it seems Western and Chinese beauty standards don’t see eye-to-eye. Many Chinese think girls with big eyes are the most beautiful. If their eyes have a double-fold eyelid, that is considered perfect. However, most foreigners seem to prefer Chinese girls with slanted (斜的) and narrow eyes and eyebrows. Chinese known model Lyv Yan is often considered the country’s most beautiful by foreigners, while quite a few Chinese people think her appearance doesn’t fit with traditional beauty standards.

Young, girly feature or hot and mature feature? Zhao Liying from China, Aragaki Yui from Japan and Lim Yoon-A from South Korea enjoy high popularity in Asia, as they boast bright faces with warm smiles, which win them lots of male fans. The three young celebrities represent Asia’s beauty standards: women with cute, girly features. Most women in Asia try their best to stay young accordingly. Unlike Chinese girls, Western girls think a more mature look shows independence and uniqueness. The superhero Wonder Woman is an ideal type for most.

As ties continue to grow between China and the West, it is unavoidable that these beauty standards develop. But one thing’s for sure-no matter how you look, you are who you are, and that should be satisfaction enough.

7 . As we’re all aware, social media is fake. People only showcase their best moments. But beyond this aspect, a lot of the photos are straight-up fake. Celebrities are airbrushed; some lie about their plastic surgery. Many Photoshop their faces and bodies to look exactly how they want. There are countless ways to pose to change their bodies.

TikTok (抖音) is not immune to these things. It may be harder to use Photoshop when it’s a video, but people find ways around it with different angles, lighting, and posing. This is not to say that they themselves don’t look good — it’s just that this isn’t how they look all the time. We can’t hold ourselves to that high of a standard when we see ourselves so often. But beyond the unrealistic standards that social media propagates (散播), TikTok heavily promotes eating disorder culture, and unhealthy attitudes about food and weight in general.

Unfortunately, it’s challenging to escape from this content. The TikTok is alarmingly accurate. If you interact with a video once, similar videos will continue to come up on your For You page. Interacting can be liking the video, commenting, sharing, following the creator, or even letting the video play multiple times. Once you’ve done this, it’s hard to escape from these videos. The best thing to do is to click “not interested” when one of these videos pops up.

I’ve learned a lot from my own struggle with an eating disorder. During my treatment, the most striking thing my nutritionist said to me was, “You don’t have to love your body.” I thought she was joking. But she’s absolutely right. What she meant is that it’s not realistic to love your body all the time. There are going to be moments when you don’t like something about yourself, and that’s okay. No one thinks every part of themselves is perfect. Self-love isn’t always realistic; self-acceptance is much better.

8 . It’s no surprise that Jennifer Senior’s insightful magazine cover story “I love My Children, I Hate My Life” is arousing much chatter — nothing gets people talking like the suggestion that bringing up a child is not a completely fulfilling, life-enriching experience. Rather than concluding that children make parents either happy or miserable, Senior suggests we need to redefine happiness: instead of thinking of it as something that can be measured by moment-to-moment joy, we should consider being happy as a past-tense condition. Even though the day-to-day experience of raising kids can be extremely hard, Senior writes that “the very things that in the moment damage our moods can later be sources of intense content and delight.”

The magazine cover showing an attractive mother holding a cute baby is hardly the only Madonna-and-child image on newsstands this week. There are also stories about newly adoptive — and newly single — mom Sandra Bullock, as well as the usual “Jennifer Aniston is pregnant” news. Practically every week features at least one celebrity mom, or mom-to-be, smiling on the newsstands.

In a society that so persistently celebrates procreation (繁衍), is it any wonder that admitting you regret having children is equivalent to admitting you support kitten-killing? It doesn’t seem quite fair, then, to compare the regrets of parents to the regrets of the children. Unhappy parents rarely are encouraged to wonder if they shouldn’t have had kids, but unhappy childless folks are bothered with the message that children are the single most important thing in the world: obviously their misery must be a direct result of the wide-open baby-size holes in their lives.

Of course, the image of parenthood that celebrity magazines like US Weekly and People present is hugely unrealistic, especially when the parents are single mothers like Bullock. According to several studies concluding that parents are less happy than childless couples, single parents are the least happy of all. No shock there, considering how much work it is to raise a kid without a partner to lean on; yet to hear celebrities tell it, raising a kid on their “own” (read: with round-the-clock help) is a piece of cake.

It is hard to imagine that many people are stupid enough to want children because it looks so fantastic — most adults understand that a baby is not a haircut. But it is interesting to wonder if the images we see every week of stress-free, happiness-enhancing parenthood aren’t in some small, subconscious way contributing to our own dissatisfactions with the actual experience, in the same way that a small part of us hoped getting a part of the way celebrities live might make us look just a little bit like them.

9 . After a two-hour flight from Shanghai and an hour’s drive, I reached my destination: Jielingkou Village in Qinhuangdao City of Hebei Province, China. The tiny and ________ village is home to Shanhai Pass, where the Great Wall finally dives into the sea. During the Ming Dynasty (1368~1644), Jielingkou Village was considered an extremely important part of the Great Wall. But it slowly fell out of ________ and into disrepair—in modern China.

In 2018, an anti-poverty project began in the village, with the ________ of not only fixing the place up, but also ________ the living standards of the 200 people still living there. One of the ________ was to change all of the old homes into modern guesthouses. “This will allow city folks to enjoy the Great Wall in comfort,” said Ge, who was ________ the project.

But gaining the locals’ ________ took a lot of effort at the beginning. “Just two years ago, they weren’t ________ about the project at all,” Ge told me. “Seeing that they had to ________ water from a faraway well every day, we decided to build a water system that would send water to their homes. It’s one of the first, ________ we have made. It really ________ . Now some of those who were strongly against our project are now our greatest ________ .”

Ge said he hopes that as conditions are ________ becoming better in Jielingkou, some of the younger members of the village who left to seek opportunity in the cities will come back. “Already two university graduates who grew up in the village have returned to ________ the guesthouses. I hope more will be ________ by the potentials here soon.”

10 . A new survey shows that young people in China much prefer making fresh food to buying prepared food. Mei Lin, a college graduate from Anhui, has stopped buying cheap food at the supermarket. “I would much prefer my own bowl of noodles with fresh vegetables to the packaged noodles I can buy in a store. “Mei Lin often goes jogging and plays tennis at the weekend, in addition to swimming and training for a marathon in Xiamen in the autumn. She believes her fresh food choices help her stay fit and active.

But the trend (趋势) isn’t one that only women are taking up. Su Bo, a 26-year-old computer programmer in Shenzhen, says that he has given up eating packaged meals except when he’s travelling for work. “For me, I have a very demanding job, and I need a sharp mind and strong body. It does take more time to go shopping, but I find my energy levels are higher when I eat fresh food. “Su Bo used to order many of his meals online, so that he could spend more time working, but he soon stopped this habit. “I realized it wasn’t good to never take a break from my job. “ he said. “Besides, the food often made me ill. “ For Su Bo, this meant cooking his own vegetables, eating less meat, and carrying fruit to work for lunch. Like Mei Lin, Su Bo insists that eating healthy food helps him with his fitness routine.

Both admit that in times of stress or busy periods at work, they do sometimes give in and eat fast food or packaged meals. But Su Bo always regrets it and almost eats healthy meals. “Because I live at home and my mother prefers to eat like I do, we often cook together. It’s my father who likes to eat fast food in front of the TV, “ he laughs.

When asked whether their eating habits are common among their age group, both Mei Lin and Su Bo say they are. Yet, it’s not clear whether this food trend will be adopted by other young Chinese people. Are Mei Lin and Su Bo unique or are they setting a new trend? It’s too early to say.