Different from most women in their 20s, Zhang Wanting chose to work with farmers instead of taking a position as a college lecturer after gaining her master's degree in finance from overseas. Now her ecofarm has become one of the most famous agricultural tourist attractions in the city of Shenyang, Liaoning province, showing the nation’s efforts to improve farmers’ incomes.

Zhang’s ecofarm, Paddy Art Dream Park, which covers 20 million square meters, is fueled by paddy (稻田）planting，food processing and tourism. Last year，it attracted over 200,000 visitors, provided over 200 jobs and benefited over 2,000 local villagers. "I love this land and hope to build it into a modern farmland that could provide people with natural beauty and prosperity,” Zhang said. "Because everyone dreams of returning to the countryside to enjoy a comfortable environment and refreshment.”

Experts suggest that the key is to make use of the unique advantage of the countryside instead of moving farmers into cities. ”An ecofarm is not only a new attempt to modernize agriculture, but also a new form of agricultural industrialization. It could fundamentally transform traditional agriculture,said Li Hongbiao, a senior researcher at the China Academy of Northeast Revitalization.   “The ecofarm is of great significance to help improve farmers' incomes and promote the sustainable and healthy growth of the rural economy.”

Furthermore，the ecofarm provides financing services as well as rice sales services — two major challenges for farmers 一 so farmers can focus on green ecological planting and improving food quality.

So far, more than 400 farmers have joined Zhang Wanting, and their combined incomes increased to over 5 million yuan last year.   “With more partners, we could explore the new food processing industry, which includes rice noodles, brown rice ice cream and rice pudding,M she explained. “Tourism is the major driving force for my farm because it can help the farm attract attention and drive consumption.”

After six years of operation, her ecofarm has won the title of national 3A-level scenic area, and more college graduates have joined her to find their dreams. "The new countryside should not be dirty and messy, but a place that people long for," she said.

Science had always believed that trees competed with each other for carbon, sunlight, water and nutrients. But an ecologist, Suzanne Simard, says trees have a complex and interconnected social network existing underground. Her 30 years of research in Canadian forests have led to a surprising discovery: trees talk, communicating often and over vast distances. Trees are much more like us humans. They are extremely social and depend on each other for their survival.

Simard planted 240 trees in a Canadian forest and started her experiments. Once she discovered a loud sound of communication between the fir (冷杉）and birch (白梓树）trees who were sharing carbon with each other. She found birch sent carbon to fir, especially when it was shaded. Later the opposite happened. When the birch was leafless in winter, the fir sent over more carbon.

Simard’s groundbreaking work showed that trees are interdependent and cooperative. In fact, they are immersed in deep relationships with each other. The trees were having conversations via the mycelium (菌丝). These messages determined which trees needed certain nutrients. They communicated via carbon, nitrogen, and chemicals and then shared these elements, balancing the entire forest.

The mycelium connects different individuals in the same forest, from the same species and other species. This network works in a similar way to the Internet.

She discovered that mother trees care for and protect the younger trees and that a single mother tree can be connected to hundreds of other trees. Trees talk, and through these conversations they increase the adaptability of the whole community. It’s a magical community of trees all supporting each other.

Suzanne’s research has important environmental implications for the destruction of our forests. She says that when mother trees are injured or dying, they send their wisdom onto the next generation, but they can't do this if they are all wiped out at the same time. She hopes that her research will change the way we practice forestry.

If you are aiming to master anything quickly, you can learn from Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman. They offer practical advice you can use to improve your learning.

According to Einstein, improving your intellectual capacity should be fun and enjoyable —— happy learners are quick learners. In 1915, he wrote a letter to his 11-year-old son (Hans Albert) who was learning the piano and said:

“I am very pleased that you find joy with the piano. This and carpentry are in my opinion for your age the best pursuits, better even than school, because those are things which fit a young person such as you very well. Mainly play the things on the piano which please you, even if the teacher does not assign those. That is the way to learn the most when you are doing something with such enjoyment that you don’t notice that the time passes.”

To learn anything faster or better, choose topics you will enjoy — if you have control over what you are learning. Make the learning relevant. You should be able to answer the question “Why am I learning this?” at any point.

Richard Feynman won a Nobel Prize and always wanted to know more and to learn more. Known as the “Great Explainer”，he was famous for his ability to explain complex topics in simple ways.

The Feynman Technique, his approach to improving learning, features explaining or teaching what you learn to others. It can help you learn better and keep more of what you learn. According to Feynman, it is significant to have the ability to explain things simply — so simple, in fact, that you could explain it to an eight-year-old. Einstein agrees. He once said,  “If you can't explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

For thousands of years, people have known that the best way to understand a concept is to explain it to someone else. “While we teach, we learn,” said the Roman philosopher Seneca. Learners keep a greater percentage of what they learn when they explain or teach the concept to someone else, or use it immediately. Your ideas will never be more effective than your ability to make others grasp them. When you share, you remember better.

Every day, on British radio stations and on television, you can hear it. It gives the time before BBC radio news programmes, and on the BBC World Service. And you can hear it and see it every evening before ITV's "News at Ten".     11    

If you have been to London, you have certainly seen "Big Ben". It's very difficult to miss, standing almost 100 metres high beside the Thames, next to the Houses of Parliament.     12     But in reality, "Big Ben" is just the name of the biggest bell in the tower. The famous clock tower was built in the 1850s, after the Houses of Parliament were burned down.

The new clock was to be the biggest in the world, and extremely accurate. Lots of people thought that this would be impossible; a very big clock, they thought, could not be very accurate.     13     And the clock has always kept time almost perfectly.

The original "Big Ben" bell weighed 16 tons, and was made in the North of England. However, after it had reached London, but before it had been put in place, it cracked! So the original bell was therefore melted down (in London) and a new Big Ben was made and put in place in July 1859... but after two months it cracked.    14    A smaller hammer was put in place, and Big Ben began chiming (报时）again in 1862.

Since then, there have been several incidents.     15     And in 1976, the clock stopped for 26 days, when a part of the mechanism broke…after 114 years of service! Recently, engineers have decided that the tower and the clock were both in need of urgent repairs. Work began in 2017, and unless there are some unexpected problems, Big Ben will begin a new life in the year 2021.