1 . Every festival has its own meaning. Labor Day, for example, celebrates the value of hard work. Thanksgiving is about showing thanks to people around you. And Valentines’ Day is a time when you express love to your loved ones. But somehow it now seems that all festivals we just care about one thing — shopping. And that can be a big problem.

“In a way, over-consumption (过度消费) is the mother of all our environmental problems,” Kalle Lasn once told CNN. Lasn is the organizer of Buy Nothing Day, a day set up in Canada in 1992 to fight against unhealthy spending habits, and has now become an international event. It’s held on the day, which is known as Black Friday — a famous shopping day in the US and Canada.

You can see the irony (讽刺) here.

Even though the idea of Buy Nothing Day was brought up 26 years ago, we seem to need it now more than ever. It’s just as Lasn said, all the different kinds of pollution in our lives today — bad air quality, the reduction of forest area, endangered animal species, and plastic bags found in the ocean — seem to be the same cause: over-consumption.

The latest example is the Singles’ Day shopping craze of Nov 11, which saw a new sales record. But as Nie Li, a campaigner at Greenpeace, told Reuters, “Record-setting over-consumption means record-setting waste.” And it was reported that last year the Singles’ Day packages left more than 160,000 tons of waste, including plastic and cardboard. The Collins Dictionary has also just named “single-use” its Word of the Year, pointing out the problem that there’re too many things we tow out after only using them once.

So, Buy Nothing Day might only be here for one day a year, but it’s not just to remind us to the a break from shopping on that day, but to change our lifestyle completely, focusing on fun “with people we care about” rather than wasting money on useless things.

2 . Online eating shows, or Mukbang, were originated in South Korea and have gained popularity globally. Many hosts of such shows become popular for their ability to eat large amounts of food. However, these shows have also received criticism for their waste of food. While some hosts actually do consume the amount of food shown, others may be faking it. On Aug 12, CCTV exposed several Chinese hosts who were eating large amounts of food while on camera, but actually later threw it away.

To discourage this practice, many video and live streaming platforms, including Douyin, Kuaishou and Bilibili, have removed videos that show food waste, and have promoted messages to “avoid food waste and eat reasonably”.

In June 2020, the United Nations warned that the world is on the verge of the worst food crisis in 50 years. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, about a third of the world’s food—1.3 billion tons—is wasted every year. In China alone, 50 million tons of food ends up in landfills every year, according to Beijing News.

Recently, campaigns against food waste have been further promoted. In August, President Xi Jinping stressed the need for safeguarding food security and avoiding food waste.

According to China Daily, restaurants and catering associations in more than 18 provinces and all 4 municipal cities have issued guidelines to control food waste.

In Shaanxi province, local restaurants have been asked to serve half portions to avoid waste. The Wuhan Catering Association proposed that restaurants adopt the “N-1 mode”. For example, a group of 10 diners should only order enough for nine people at first. More food is only brought to the table if required.

In addition, a nationwide “Clear Your Plate” campaign has been launched online. Users of Sina Weibo are encouraged to share photos or videos of empty plates after finishing their meals.

3 . Growing up as kids we are told to share our toys and not to be selfish. We also live in an age when discussing our feelings is encouraged. But when does it all become too much? With new trends growing all the time, such as dance challenges and wearing a carpet as a dress, the question is: when can sharing become oversharing on social media?

“Oversharing” has become associated with social media, but it isn’t exclusive to this platform. Imagine you head to a party and meet someone. Within five minutes they have revealed private details about their life. While some of us may try to escape these people, according to marriage advisor Carolyn Cole, this form of oversharing could come from a strong desire to connect with someone. But how does this translate to social media?

Dr. Christopher Hand, a lecturer in cyberpsychology (网络心理学), says the more details people uncover, the less sympathy we express when things go wrong. It seems that searching for sympathy by oversharing is generally considered as negative rather than the cry for help it could really be.

However, Dr. Hand’s research also seems to suggest that the more we post on a platform, the more socially attractive we become-only if the posts that we share are positive. Even back in 2015, Gwendolyn Seidman PhD said that we should avoid complaining and being negative online. We should also avoid showing off, especially about our love lives. It makes sense-if your date is going “that well”, would you really have time to share a photo with text?

So, how can you know if you are oversharing? Well, why not ask your friends in real life. They would probably be happy to tell you if your posts about your breakfast or your complaints about your lack of money really are too much.

4 . The idea of low material desire, low consumption and refusing to work, marry and have children, concluded as a “lying down” lifestyle, recently struck a chord with many young Chinese who are eager to take pause to breathe in this fast-paced and highly-competitive society.

Many millennials (千禧一代) and generation Zs complained to the Global Times that burdens, including work stress, family disputes and financial strains, have pushed them “against the wall”. They said they hate the “involution(内卷),” joking that they would rather give up some of what they have than get trapped in an endless competition against peers.

“Instead of always following the ‘virtues’ of struggle, endure and sacrifice to bear the stresses, they prefer a temporary lying down as catharsis (宣泄) and adjustment,” said a scholar. “It is no wonder that some young people, under the growing pressures from child-raising to paying the mortgage (按揭) today, would try to live in a simple way and leave the worries behind.”

Interestingly, the majority of millennials and Gen Zs reached by the Global Times, who claim to be big fans of the lying down philosophy, acknowledged that they only accept a temporary lying down as a short rest. It is true that with the great improvement of living conditions, some Chinese youth have partially lost the spirit of hardship and are not willing to bear too much hard work. But in fact, lying down is not entirely comfortable. Young people who lie down always feel guilty about their constant loss of morale (士气) far beyond their reach.

“Young people on campus have both aspirations and confusion about their future, but most of us have rejected setting ourselves up in chains to waste opportunities and challenges,” a postgraduate student told the Global Times. “It’s no use running away. I have to ‘stand up’ and face the reality sooner or later.”

8 . Knock, knock. Starting from Nov.1, 2020, people will be knocking on doors across the country to collect personal information. But don’t panic. This is for the seventh national population census (人口普查). The Chinese population census takes place every 10 years. It gathers data including name, age, ID number, gender, education, job, marital status and housing situation.

Tracking down more than 1 billion Chinese citizens is by no means easy. This year, about 7 million staff will be needed to visit homes for registration work, according to Xinhua. New methods will also be used during this census, including online information registration, application of electronic devices and big data. Compared with previous surveys, new methods will be convenient for people who are not living where they are officially registered, as well as those who do not want to be bothered by census takers’ door-to-door surveys. The new methods also reduce census takers’ workload.

The data is expected to give a full picture of the population, including its size, structure and distribution and recent changes. It provides support for making national development policies.

The census has a large impact on our lives. For instance, areas with a high number of children may receive more funding for public schools. Researchers can use the results to investigate population trends in different cities. The census will help to find out the number of foreigners living in China. It can also tell how many Chinese people have moved to other countries.

However, citizens’ privacy concerns could be one of the biggest challenges. Some may not be willing to give their personal information to census takers because they are worried about what the data would be used for. There are also worries about privacy leakage among the public.

In response to such concerns, Jiangsu’s pilot work zone allowed residents to upload personal data on their own through WeChat, which avoids information leakage. The data will be delivered directly to the National Bureau of Statistics through a WeChat program.

9 . My wife and I were at a crowded grocery store not long ago. It was a weekday evening, cold and wet and tense. People were carelessly blocking aisles, complaining and cutting one another off with their carts. At one point, two women quarreled for several minutes in the freezer section.

Things got worse at the checkout line. The cashier scanned a man's discount card, but he misread the savings on her screen as an additional charge. He decided she was acting on purpose and began to argue.

Other customers looked away as the cashier tried to reason with him. She called a manager, who took him to customer service. Shaken, she moved to the next customer in line.

We’ve all witnessed uncomfortable scenes like this in public places. My reaction when I see them is both personal and professional. I am a data analyst and sociologist who studies how and why people interact with one another--or why they choose not to. To me, the grocery scene was another example of how our trust in others has disappeared. But it was also a teachable moment on how we can rebuild our faith — starting with just one person.

Therefore, my wife and I reached the disturbed cashier. I grabbed a bottle of water from a nearby cooler and handed it to her. We learned her name was Beth.

“We felt bad about how that man treated you and wanted to buy this for you.” I said.

Beth’s face lit up, and we talked as she scanned our items. She told us she had been working that evening through severe foot pain and would be having surgery later that week. We wished her well in her recovery, and she thanked us as we left.

That is the balancing act, the moment of countering social and emotional pain with healing, that will add up to restore trust across the United States. You can start that pattern in someone else's life , even in a place as ordinary as the neighborhood grocery store.

10 . It’s nothing new that you can find many files or services you can download or use from the Internet. The question is: Is downloading legal or not? In most cases the answer is negative. Of course, you can find files for legal downloading, but you have to pay for them.

It seems innocent if you click on the download mark, but it isn’t. It should be compared with stealing in a store. Would you steal a magazine, an MP3 player or a car? Downloading from the Internet is a then, and sharing files, once you have stolen them, only makes it worse.

Many people may think it better, easier and cheaper to do downloading. I think, that is the main reason why Internet users prefer sharing something to buying them. In the modern world we love convenience and what could be more convenient than getting music, films and games without having to leave your house? However, you could be in big trouble if you are caught. But so far only a tiny amount of people have been charged for downloading illegally. The majority of people who download illegally, and use the files for their personal use, will not get in trouble. And that’s why it’s important for people to understand what the long-term consequences are if they don’t want to pay for their music, films and TV. Will film and music companies still spend millions of pounds every year if they have no chance of making a profit? The answer is plainly “no”.

Finally I would like to say that the Internet offers a lot of services for money, but people will always try to get them for free. To summarize my thoughts, I’d like to highlight that illegal downloading is both unfair towards producers and dangerous for those who practice this kind of activity. You have to decide whether to buy or download.