The term “car boot sale” refers to the selling of items from a car’s trunk (后备箱). Most of the goods on sale are used personal items with only a few of professional traders     1     (sell) goods. However, in a growing trend (趋势), all-year hard-standing outdoor boot sales, are now appearing everywhere, especially in China,     2     (know) as the trunk fairs. It is very welcoming to those     3     want to run their own business at a low cost. Items for sale are extremely varied, including snacks and soft drinks. The youth in China are exploring a new lifestyle through the trunk fairs.

2 . Historians are often asked to examine the actions of our ancestors so we can repeat their wisdom and avoid their mistakes. But the present is just too different from the past. It is a waste of time to study Hannibal’s strategies in the Second Punic War so as to copy them in the Third World War. What worked well in cavalry battles will not necessarily be beneficial in cyber war. Studying history aims to loosen (松开) the hold of the past.

A young couple building a new home may ask the architect for a nice lawn (草坪) in the front yard. Why a lawn? “Because lawns are beautiful,” the couple might explain. But why do they think so?

The idea of growing a lawn at the entrance to private houses and public buildings was born in the castles of French and English aristocrats in the late Middle Ages. Well-kept lawns demanded land and a lot of work. In exchange, they produced nothing of value. The neat grass at the entrance to castles was a social position symbol nobody could pretend to have. Later the new parliaments (议会), supreme courts, presidential residences increasingly showed their power in row upon row of neat green grass. Humans came to identify lawns with political power, social position and economic wealth.

When you now come to plan your dream house, you might think twice about having a lawn in the front yard. You are of course still free to do it. But you are also free to shake off the cultural cargo given to you by the upper class. This is the best reason to learn history: not in order to guess the future, but to free yourself of the past and imagine different lives. Of course this is not total freedom — we cannot avoid being shaped by the past. But some freedom is better than none.

Open mainstream Chinese social media and you might get the impression that poetry is making     1     comeback among the country’s young generation. Lifestyle-sharing platform Xiaohongshu has organized online activities such as “poems battle”and “poetry Renaissance”. Poetry-related postings on the platform have over 3 million views and likes. Poetry societies     2     (establish) accounts on the video-sharing website Bilibili so far, gaining over 132, 000 followers. “Now I’m happy to see poetry making a rebound,     3     shows that poetry never dies as it always finds a way to keep its heart beating,”said Zhou Yuchen, a postgraduate at King’s College London.

4 . Early in the pandemic, refrigerators began popping up in unlikely places outdoors. Volunteers plugged them in on street corners in cities. Anyone could take food for free.

The fridges were necessary to address food insecurity, activists said. Many people lost their jobs during the pandemic and could not afford to buy food. The problem continues due to rising food prices.

Tajahnaé Stocker started the Community Fridge Project, in Wichita, Kansas. She raised $1.500 to buy, decorate, and stock a fridge with food. It was a step toward solving the hunger crisis. “Charity alone cannot solve every problem,” she says. The fridge is “just trying to fill in the gap of a grocery store.”

Volunteers have stocked hundreds of fridges around the U.S. They’re on street corners,outside cafés, and at churches and housing developments. Kristin Guerin runs a community fridge network in Miami, Florida, called Buddy System MIA. The group fills its fridges up to five times a day. Usually, the fridges are empty within an hour. “The need is still really high,” Guerin says.

Often, community fridges contain homemade meals or donations from restaurants and supermarkets. The group 901 Community Fridges operates in Memphis, Tennessee. It stocks fridges with leftover meals from other food-assistance groups, so meals don’t go to waste.

The movement has begun to expand beyond food. Donations of diapers and other baby items are accepted by 901 Community Fridges. The group plans to provide additional services, like laundry and help for recent immigrants. “Anything that might be needed in the community,” organizer L.J Abraham says. In Miami, the fridges are papered with flyers advertising summer camp and other programs. “The fridges have become small community centers”, Guerin says. “They have become a staple, and they will be for a while.”

Freelancing is the kind of job that promises to free people from a regular nine-to-five employment to one where the hours are flexible. Such choice is a blessing for people who are held back by other demands but still want to earn an income or make good use of their skills. Freelancing means that there can be more than one source of income, often short-time assignments also known as “gigs”.

It is unsurprising that the conventional image of today’s freelancer is young, laptop-carrying citizens, hurrying for gigs in a shared workspace or coffee bar in an attempt to strike a better work-life balance for themselves. In fact, those in their 30s and 40s make up the largest amount of the freelancer population in the United States and other developed countries. The US is also seeing a rise in freelancing in the retirees. Such is the appeal of the gig economy, and it does not seem to be decreasing.

Is the gig industry truly all sunshine and rainbows, though? While such an industry appeals to many folks with different needs and wants, the lack of certainty makes working in the gig economy unstable. The absence of a steady source of income makes it difficult for people to cope with emergency. Not working permanently (长久地) for a company also means one does not get to enjoy the additional benefits, such as health-care welfare, typically afforded to a permanent employee.

Moreover, instability (不稳定性) leads to insecurity. As gigs vary and assignments may not occur frequently, it is difficult to plan for the future, highlighting one of the biggest problems of the gig economy: unreliability. When life, in this increasingly uncertain and complex world, lands you in trouble, it makes perfect sense to have a permanent job, to have a steady footing in order to deal with it.

In a word, there are many benefits that come with short-term employment and more flexible, convenient working arrangement. However, there are two sides to every story. The key here is to be the captain of one's ship and master of one's fate.

7 . We know sleep is more important than aimlessly scrolling (浏览) on social media. So,why do we choose scrolling over sleeping?

    1     You scroll through your favorite apps for what feels like ten minutes, but then you realize hours have passed. You wake up tired the next morning and go to work sleepy but do the same thing again that night.

If you can relate to it, you’re not alone. Now called “revenge bedtime procrastination (报复性睡前拖延症)” this phenomenon is described as the tendency to give up sleep for leisure time that is driven by a busy daily schedule.Spending most of their waking hours working, people experience a serious lack of “me time” when they can be free of responsibilities.     2     Some people satisfy the desire by doing things often thought of as lazy or a waste of time.     3     By indulging (沉溺) in such activities in the small hours when the world is asleep people get a sense of “revenge” and regain control of their lives.

Revenge bedtime procrastination is experienced differently by various groups, though driven by the same reasons.Parents of young children spend most of their day trying to balance work and childcare, so they are thirsty for some time alone.For them,this is only possible at night.     4    

Are people really driven to stay up for “me time” — or just night owls who prefer nighttime?     5     People indulging in bedtime procrastination do so at the cost of their health and work, while night owls don’t necessarily fight for “me time” at any cost.

As the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games approaches, the low-carbon trend of the event can be observed in the reuse of sports facilities. In the past, many sports venues (场馆)were not used     1     the games. To reduce waste, the organizing committee has worked with the host cities to make full use of the venues    2    (build) for the 2008 Olympic Games. Only one ice sports venue is    3    (new)constructed; the other four were adjusted to meet the green requirements.