The city of Zibo has fought its way out of the fierce competition among Chinese     1     (city) to win tourists for its outdoor barbecues. In March, the government announced a barbecue festival would     2     (hold) around the May Day holiday. A seven-hectare “barbecue square” was set up,     3     can accommodate over 10,000 people at once.

Since March, the city has taken the Internet by storm.     4     various types of meat making a sound on stoves, and people gathering together outdoors, the barbecue stalls (摊) created a good atmosphere of hospitality and generosity,     5     (appeal) to tourists around the whole country.

According to data by the commercial bureau, since March the Zibo barbecue stores     6     (accommodate) an average of 130,000 visitors every day, and the daily turnover has seen a 35-percent year-on-year increase.

The success of Zibo has been     7     (wide) discussed among analysts. Zibo used to be     8     industrial city rich in oil, coal and iron ore. However, as the resources were exhausted, the city has been seeking transformation in recent years, shutting down high energy-consuming industries while promoting green development including tourism.

As the Zibo barbecues became a hit, the government has seized the opportunity     9     (promote) a whole package of barbecue-branded tourist merchandise, increasing the city’s     10     (finance) success.

4 . As energy costs rise across Europe, some people are taking an opportunity to head off to warmer climates in order to cut down on bills. Greece is one of a number of countries trying to draw visitors in for the winter-with a $20 million advertising campaign.

Famous for its sun, golden beaches and medieval city, the island of Rhodes in the south Aegean Sea is a magnet(磁铁)for northern Europeans. More than three million flock to the island every summer, but some also come in the winter.

In order to capitalize on the energy crisis, the Greek government launched a series of winter tourism campaigns aimed at attracting European visitors seeking an alternative to the bitter cold and high energy bills. Places like Santorini, Crete and Rhodes were high on the list, as temperatures there remain in the high teens.

However, the campaign to advertise Greece abroad hasn’t attracted as many visitors as expected. “The campaign from the ministry is in the right direction-I think they’re doing things right,”says Dionissis Tsiligiris, tourism marketing director for the Rodos Palace hotel and convention center in Rhodes. “But when it comes to winter tourism, Spain will always be the first choice,”Tsiligiris continues. Hotels and tour operators there just have more exposure. So competing for winter tourism is very difficult, as it’s a smaller market.

While it’s true that fewer people travel abroad than in the summer,entering the winter market could seem quite easy when you have the two key ingredients-almost guaranteed sun and well-established tourist facilities. But what’s making it difficult, according to Ashley Quint, senior holiday designer at a UK travel agency, is the message the government is sending. “Tourist boards and local governments can overcomplicate things sometimes and the message doesn’t necessarily come across. In this case, there needs to be a simple and clear message. In addition, broadening it out a little bit may be better, because we see very little here. ”

It seems that making Greece a winter destination for travelers to enjoy and save might need more than just the attraction of warmer weather.

Over time, foreign audiences have been getting more of     1     taste of Chinese literature through the popular medium of online novels. Online communities such as Volare Novels have recognized high-quality Chinese online novels     2     have worked hard to translate these works from Chinese to English for foreign audiences     3     (enjoy).

But what makes these Chinese online novels different from online novels     4     (source) from other countries? Chinese online novels dabble (涉猎) in popular mainstream genres – like fantasy, sci-fi, romance, etc, whereas they also delve (挖掘) into genres and cultural elements native     5     China, including wuxia, xianxia, and so on.

Another interesting and popular element of these novels that     6     (tend) to crop up again and again is the idea of transmigration, or traveling to another world. It’s not     7     (necessary) in the sense of traveling to another planet like Mars, but rather in the sense of moving through time to inhabit a new body and to live in an earlier era. Unlike many Western time travel novels     8     involve cycling or moving back and forth between multiple time     9     (period), Chinese online novels with this transmigration element usually involve a permanent trip to the previous era, making it very difficult to return to the     10     (origin) timeline.

6 . “Hey Alexa, play ‘You Raise Me Up’,” Kate Compton said from her home in Evanston, Illnois, where she teaches computer science at Northwestern University. A nearby smart speaker launched into an explanation: The song was not available, but it could be if Compton paid for a subscription. Alexa continued to walk us through the pricing plans. Compton tried again: “Hey Alexa, play classical music.” “Here’s a station you might like,” Alexa said, adding that the songs were hosted on Amazon Music.

From 2019 to 2021, the use of voice assistants among online adults in the United States rose to 30 percent from 21 percent. While use is on the rise, social media jokes paint voice assistants as automated family members who can’t get much right. As Brian Glick, founder of Philadelphia-based software company Chain.io, puts it, “I am not apt (倾向于) to use voice assistants for things that can have bad results.”

Take voice shopping, a feature Google and Amazon said would help busy families save time. Glick gave it a try and he’s haunted (烦扰) by the memory. Each time he asked Alexa to add a product – like toilet paper – it would read back a long product description: “Based on your order history, I found Charmin Ultra Soft Toilet Paper Family Mega Roll, 18 Count.” In the time he spent waiting for her to stop talking, he could have finished his shopping, Glick said. “I’m getting upset just thinking about it,” he added.

An Amazon spokeswoman said Alexa’s understanding has improved significantly, despite increasingly complex requests from users. For its part, Google says it’s investing in the assistant’s language understanding and speech technology to help it better deal with nuance (细微差别) and respond in a natural way.

But there’s a deeper emotional problem at play, says Compton. In developing voice assistants, she says, companies ignored the often unspoken rules of human small talk. We use small talk to show other people that we’re on the same wavelength – it’s a quick way to signal, “I see you, and I’m safe,” Compton said.

7 . Chances are you can name a few animals that are facing extinction. But what about plants? With some 40% of plant species under threat of extinction—and given humankind’s reliance on the plant world-one might think there’d be more urgency around protecting them. Yet in the United States, for example, plants receive less than 4% of federal funding for endangered species, despite comprising 57% of the endangered species list.

Much of mankind suffers from “plant blindness”. Defined by botanists Elisabeth Schussler and James Wandersee, plant blindness is the inability to see or notice the plants in one’s own environment, which leads to the inability to recognize the importance of plants in the biosphere (生物圈) and in human affairs.

Now a paper published by Oxford University Press might have found a cure for that. Having noticed that nature shows increased viewers’ interest in the animals on the shows, the researchers set out to discover if nature documentaries could do the same for plants. For the paper, they focused on The Green Planet, the 2022 BBC plant-focused documentary narrated (解说) by Sir David Attenborough.

To figure out if the documentary engaged viewers enough to want to learn more, the researchers looked at people’s online behavior around the time of the broadcast. They noted which species appeared on the show and then looked at data on Google Trends and Wikipedia page hits for those same species before and after the episodes (集) of the documentary aired. The researchers found some 28. 1% of search terms representing plants mentioned in the BBC documentary had peak popularity in the UK, measured using Google Trends, the week after the broadcast of the relevant episode. Wikipedia data showed this as well. Almost a third (31%) of the Wikipedia pages related to plants mentioned in The Green Planet showed increased visits the week after the broadcast. The investigators also note that people were more likely to do online searches for plants that enjoyed more screen time on The Green Planet.

“A barbecue restaurant owner I know told me to come back on Monday, so as to leave the weekends to out-of-town visitors.” said Huang Yang, a native of Zibo city in Shandong province     1     works outside his hometown. He recently returned home for a visit and wanted to have some barbecue,     2     he failed to find seats in four different restaurants.

Thanks to social media recommendations, Zibo has gone viral on Chinese social media platforms.    3     (video) on sites such as Xiaohongshu show thousands of people traveling to the city to try its local barbecue, which they say     4     (wrap) in a pancake and has a “distinct taste” .

Taking advantage of the barbecue craze, Zibo has gone all out to promote local tourism resources, while     5     (work) to ensure the safety of visitors and the quality of tourism products. To provide visitors     6     a happy experience, market regulators have carried out inspections on barbecue restaurants to ensure food safety. Police have increased     7     number of patrol (巡逻) personnel to ensure visitors’ safety. Railway authorities have even added two additional high-speed trains between the     8     (province) capital Jinan and Zibo on weekends to meet the growing passenger demand. The local government now has released a map of barbecue joints and added 21 new bus routes     9     (facilitate) urban transportation.

According to data from on-demand service platform Meituan, Zibo has seen an 800 percent increase in accommodation bookings for the upcoming holiday     10     (compare) to 2019, ranking first in Shandong province in terms of growth rate.

10 . Online grocery delivery has skyrocketed (飞涨) all over the world. Since COVID-19 cases have been declining, new companies such as Zapp, GoPuff, or Getir have entered the grocery delivery market with a mission to permanently change consumer habits. These rapid grocery delivery services make a novel promise: Groceries can be delivered within minutes to your door. This option sounds great to busy parents who cannot leave their children alone to pop into the store or people who have guests and urgently need a few extra beers without leaving the house. However, shoppers should watch out for the allure (诱惑) of rapid delivery whenever possible.

While a one-time rapid delivery is certainly harmless for the shopper and the whole market, repeatedly using such services will ultimately harm grocery shops and corner shops. So far, rapid delivery companies have been backed by capital fund (资金) to finance their costs，but they need to be profitable in the long run to survive. So they will push up prices and gradually cancel promotions once their capital funding has dried up. Last week, a delivery company was reported to have shut down after running out of cash, leaving its workers jobless. We should think about the serious outcome that may come up, such as much less lively cities that miss the small shops and delivery workers who face tight deadlines and little job security.

As consumers,we often think that our daily decisions are harmless. Just as one doughnut (甜甜圈) doesn’t compromise our healthy diet and one skipped workout doesn’t affect our fitness,one rapid delivery will not harm the little shops that make our neighborhood lively. Research shows that consumers who perform a behavior regularly for about six weeks have created a habit. So ordering rapid delivery every day will hurt our neighborhoods and make us poorer once prices increase.

Thus, approach the rapid delivery option as you would refuse to accept any other allure. Be careful not to create a habit that you might later come to regret.