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.

China is facing seriously traffic problems. Too much cars travel on the roads. This heavy traffic causes delays and a plenty of air pollution. Although many cities in China have traffic problems, some of the worse are in Beijing. One of the reason why there is so much traffic is what only a small number of people use public transportation.

I think one way solve the traffic problems was to make people use the public transportation system. For example, they can take buses instead of drive cars. Meanwhile, the government should make them more reliable and convenient to travel by bus.

3 . When I was a college student, I did a lot of traveling abroad. That was because a professor _________ me to do so. She said, “Now is the time for you to travel around the world, _________ your knowledge through actual experiences and have fun!” I _________ her.

Since I started to work for a _________ company, however, I have done most of my traveling through the Internet. By using the Internet, I have seen the _________ of many cities on my computer screen. And I have really made business _________, too. With the help of the Internet, I have also got _________ about food in different countries.

Therefore, I was beginning to feel that actual trips were _________ necessary when I happened to read a famous chef’s (厨师) comment on the Internet. He said, “It is very difficult to have real Italian food in a foreign country, because we enjoy food and the _________ around us at the same time. So why don’t you fly over to Italy and enjoy real Italian __________?” Those words reminded me of my __________ advice. As information technology __________, you might be able to do without making some real trips. But this also means that you will miss the various __________ you can get from traveling.

Today there are people who __________ direct communication with others and spend much of their time on the Internet. It is not surprising to see a group of people __________ not with each other but into their micro phones. It seems as if such people are __________ by an invisible wall. They seem to be losing out on a good chance to __________ and talk with other people. I do not think that they are taking good advantage of information technology. We should use information technology as a tool to make our daily __________ more fruitful. However, we should never let it __________ our time for face-to-face communication. Let’s make use of information technology more __________, and have great fun in experiencing the actual world.

4 . Advertising plays a major role in the competitive business world. Many industries take advantage of the power of advertising to attract or to win customers away from their business competitors. The influence of advertising is so huge that it causes many people to buy things that they do not want at the start.

Advertising encourages people to buy things they don’t want through misleading ideas. Advertising is proven to be a successful tool to stress the features of their product to the public even though it is regarded undesirable (不受欢迎的) such as cigarettes, drugs, alcohol and so on. For example, Dunhill, a cigarette company which sponsors (赞助) many football teams, seems to be promoting cigarettes to the public. Without the sponsorship, the company will be less known to the public, resulting in fewer sales of cigarettes.

Besides that, advertising has a large influence on the decisions made by the people in their everyday life. Many businesses use advertising as a form of promotion to create awareness (意识，认知) about their product in the market. For instance, in a fast food industry, the introduction of a new flavor o f burger needs advertising to reach the public while the other burgers require advertising to increase sales. Children, especially, are easily influenced by the advertisement and will have the desire to dine at fast food restaurants after that. Although fast food is bad for health, it has successfully become attractive to the public through advertising

However, advertising plays a part in helping customers to compare a product in terms of price, quality, reliability (可靠性) and so on. Without advertising, it will be very difficult for customers to judge the worthiness( 价值) of a product. For example, advertisements published by various companies have given the customers the opportunity to choose wisely when buying an item. Without the power of advertising, customers will choose a brand (品牌) which may not offer the best choice.

Yours,

Li Hua

One of a most important sections of the Human Development Report are the Human Development Index. China is in the middle of the list, that is one of the examples of successful development. In the last ten years , China has increased life expectancy to 13 years and 150 million people have been moved out of poverty. But, a great many people in developing countries still remain hungrily. Over half of these are in South Asia or Africa. In developing countries about 115 million children are not complete being educated . And more than 1 billion people don't have safe water drink, so the report suggests that we make greater effort in the future.

10 . Almost every day we come across situations in which we have to make decisions one way or another. Choice, we are given to believe, is a right. But for a good many people in the world, in rich and poor countries, choice is a luxury, something wonderful but hard to get, not a right. And for those who think they are exercising their right to make choices, the whole system is merely an illusion, a false idea created by companies and advertiser, hoping to sell their products.

The endless choice gives birth to anxiety in people’s lives. Buying something as basic as a coffee pot is not exactly simple. Easy access to a wide range of everyday goods leads to a sense of powerlessness in many people, ending in the shopper giving up and walking away, or just buying an unsuitable item that is not really wanted. Recent studies in England have shown that many electrical goods bought in almost every family are not really needed. More difficult decision-making is then either avoided or trusted into the hands of the professionals, lifestyle instructors, or advisors.

It is not just the availability of the goods that is the problem, but the speed at which new types of products come on the market. Advances in design and production help quicken the process. Products also need to have a short lifespan so that the public can be persuaded to replace them within a short time. The typical example is computers, which are almost out-of-date once they are bought. This indeed makes selection a problem. Gone are the days when one could just walk with ease into a shop and buy one thing; no choice, no anxiety.