Americais a mobile society. Friendships between Americans can be close and real, yet disappear soon if situations change. Neither side feels hurt by this. Both may exchange Christmas greetings for a year or two, perhaps a few letters for a while — then no more. If the same two people meet again by chance, even years later, they pick up the friendship. This can be quite difficult for us Chinese to understand, because friendships between us flower more slowly but then may become lifelong feelings, extending (延伸) sometimes deeply into both families.

   Americans are ready to receive us foreigners at their homes, share their holidays, and their home life. They will enjoy welcoming us and be pleased if we accept their hospitality (好客) easily.

  Another difficult point for us Chinese to understand Americans is that although they include us warmly in their personal everyday lives, they don’t show their politeness to us if it requires a great deal of time. This is usually the opposite of the practice in our country where we may be generous with our time. Sometimes, we, as hosts, will appear at airports even in the middle of the night to meet a friend. We may take days off to act as guides to our foreign friends. The Americans, however, express their welcome usually at homes, but truly can not manage the time to do a great deal with a visitor outside their daily routine. They will probably expect us to get ourselves from the airport to our own hotel by bus. And they expect that we will phone them from there. Once we arrive at their homes, the welcome will be full, warm and real. We will find ourselves treated hospitably.

  For the Americans, it is often considered more friendly to invite a friend to their homes than to go to restaurants, except for purely business matters. So accept their hospitality at home!

With the fast development of our economy and tourism, we are supposed to further understand people around the world. Not a bit of it! Superb systems of communication by air, sea and land make it possible for us to visit each other’s countries at a reasonable cost. What was once the “grand tour”, reserved for only the very rich, is now within everybody’s grasp so that modern travelers enjoy a level of comfort. But what’s the sense of this mass exchange of populations if the nations of the world keep ignoring each other?

Many tourist organizations deliberately set out to protect their travelers from too much contact with the local population. The modern tourist leads a sheltered life, such as at international hotels, eating food and sipping drink there. However, he stares at the natives from a distance. Guided tours to places of interest are carefully planned. The tourist is allowed to see only what the organizers want him to see and no more, and language also holds them back. So he is only too happy to be protected in this way.

The sad thing about this situation is that it leads to the continuance of national stereotypes (成见) . That is, we don’t see the people of other nations as they really are, but as we have been brought up to believe what they are. So when you set out on your travels, the only characteristics you notice are those which confirm your previous knowledge. You leave with the highly unoriginal and inaccurate impression that, say, “Latin people shout a lot”. You only have to make foreign friends to understand how absurd and harmful national stereotypes are. But how can you make foreign friends when the tourist trade does its best to prevent you?

Researchers said that waitresses who wear red get up to 26 percent extra in tips than they would wearing other colors. However, the team finds that the sexes tip very differently—with the bigger tips coming only from male customers.

No matter what color they wear, female diners will give the same kind of amounts for service every time. Yet men, whether they realize it or not, add anything between 15 and 26 percent more to a waitress in red than they would if it was the same waitress wearing a different color.

The test was simple. Take 11 waitresses in five restaurants over a six-week period and ask them to wear the same kind of T-shirt every day but change the colors. Previous research has suggested waitresses could earn more if they acted charmingly or wore more make-up than their colleagues. But this study, by the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research, only changed the color of the T-shirt. Every other aspect from make-up to behavior remained the same.

When wearing either black, white, green, blue or yellow T-shirts, the size of the tips from both male and female customers was almost identical. But when they wore red, the size of the tips went up by between 15 and 26 percent from male customers, yet stayed the same from female ones.        

A total of 272 restaurant customers were studied by researchers Nicolas Gueguen and Celine Jacob for the international journal of the tourism industry.

Even as a T-shirt, it shows just how much the color red is thought, by men, to increase the physical and sexual attractiveness of woman, said the researchers.

The researchers wrote: As red color has no negative effect on women customers, it could be in their interest to wear clothes at work.

When you get in your car, you reach for it. When you're at work, you take a break to have a moment alone with it. When you get into a lift, you play with it.

Cigarettes?Cup of coffee ?No, it's the third most addictive thing in modem life, the cell phone. And experts say it is becoming more difficult for many people to curb their longing to hug it more tightly than most of their personal relationships.  

   With its shiny surface,its smooth and satisfying touch,its air of complexity, the cell phone connects us to the world even as it disconnects us from people three feet away.In just the past couple of years, the cell phone has challenged individuals, employers, phone makers and counselors(顾问）in ways its inventors in the late 1940s never imagined.

   The costs are becoming more and more evident, and I don't mean just the monthly bill. Dr. Chris Knippers, a counselor at the Betty ford Center in Southern California, reports that the overuse of cell phones has become a social problem not much different from other harmful addictions a barrier to one-on-one personal contact, and an escape from reality.

   Sounds extreme, but we' ve all witnessed the evidence: the person at a restaurant who talks on the phone through an entire meal, ignoring his kids around the table; the woman who talks on the phone in the car, ignoring her husband; the teen who texts messages all the way home from school, avoiding contact with kids all around him.

   Is it just rude,or is it a kind of unhealthiness? And pardon me, but how is this improving the quality of life?

   Jim Williams, an industrial sociologist based in Massachusetts, points to a study by Duke University researchers that found one-quarter of Americans say they have no one to discuss their most important personal business with. Despite the growing use of phones, e - mail and instant messaging, in other words, Williams says studies show that we don't have as many friends as our parents.   

     The United States estimates that about one out of every 10 people on the planet today is at least 60 years old. By 2050, it’s projected to be one out of 5. This means that not only will there be more old people, but there will be relatively fewer young people to support them.

      Professor Richard Lee of the University of California at Berkeley says this aging of the world has a great effect on economics. “Population aging increases the concentration of population in the older ages and therefore it is costly,” he said.

       Aging populations consume (消耗) more and produce less. With more people living longer, it could get expensive. But Mr. Lee says with continuing increases in worker productivity and smart planning, it can be manageable.

       Societies have different methods for caring for the elderly, but each carries a cost. Generally, there are three types of support. Seniors can live off the wealth they gained when they were younger. They can rely on their family to take care of them, or they can rely on the government.

       In industrialized nations, governments created publicly-funded (公共资助的) support systems. These worked relatively well until recent years, when aging population growth in places like the United States and Western Europe began to gradually weaken the systems’ finances. These nations now face some tough choices. Mr. Lee says the elderly in some of these countries must either receive less money, retire later or increase taxes to make the system continuable.

       Most developing nations haven’t built this type of government-funded support, but have instead relied on families to care for their elderly. These nations also generally have a much younger population, which means their situation is not as urgent as more developed nations. But Mr. Lee says that doesn’t mean they can ignore the issue. “Third World countries should give very careful thought to this process, to population aging and how it may affect their economies — now, before population aging even becomes an issue,” he explained.

 It was once common to regard Britain as a society with class distinction. Each class had unique characteristics.

In recent years, many writers have begun to speak the “decline of class”and “classless society”in Britain. And in modern day consumer society everyone is considered to be middle class.

But pronouncing the death of class is too early. A recent wide-ranging society of public opinion found 90 percent of people still placing themselves in particular class; 73 percent agreed that class was still a vital part of British society; and 52 percent thought there were still sharp class differences. Thus, class may not be culturally and politically obvious, yet it remains an important part of British society. Britain seems to have a love of stratification.

One unchanging aspect of a British person’s class position is accent. The words a person speaks tell her or his class. A study of British accents during 1970s found that a voice sounding like a BBC newsreader was viewed as the most attractive voice, Most people said this accent sounded “educated” and “soft”. The accents placed at the bottom in this study, on the other hand, were regional（地区的）city accents. These accents were seen as “common” and “ugly”. However, a similar study of British accents in the US turned these results upside down and placed some regional accents as the most attractive and BBC English as the least. This suggests that British attitudes towards accent have deep roots and are based on class prejudice.

In recent years, however, young upper middle-class people in London, have begun to adopt some regional accents, in order to hide their class origins. This is an indication of class becoming unnoticed. However, the 1995 pop song “Common People” puts forward the view that though a middle-class person may “want to live like common people” they can never appreciate the reality of a working-class life.

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Who is more likely to lie and cheat一the poor person or the rich one? It's easier to think that the wealthier you are，the more likely you are to act fairly and think about what others may need. But research suggests the opposite is true：as people climb the social ladder, their compassionate（有同情心的）feelings towards other people decline.

Berkeley psychologists Paul Piff and Dacher Keltner ran several studies looking at whether social class，as measured by wealth, occupation and education, influences how much people care about the feelings of others. In one study, Piff and his colleagues carefully observed the behavior of drivers at a busy four-way intersection (交叉路口). They found that luxury car drivers were more likely to cut off other motorists instead of waiting for their turn at the intersection. This was true for both men and women upper-class drivers，regardless of the time of day or the amount of traffic at the intersection. In a different study they found that luxury car drivers were also more likely to speed past a pedestrian trying to use a crosswalk, even after making eye contact with the pedestrian.

In order to figure out whether selfishness leads to wealth rather than vice versa (反之亦然), Piff and his colleagues ran a study where they managed to control people's class feelings. The researchers asked participants to spend a few minutes comparing themselves either to people better off or worse off than themselves financially. Afterwards，participants were shown a jar of candy and told that they could take home as much as they wanted. They were also told that the leftover candy would be given to children in a nearby laboratory. Those participants who had spent time thinking about how much better off they were compared to others ended up taking significantly more candy for themselves一leaving less behind for the children.

But why would wealth and status decrease the feelings of compassion for others? Piff and his colleagues suspect that the answer may have something to do with how wealth give people, a sense of independence from others. The less they have to rely on others，the less they may care about others' feelings. This leads them towards being more self-focused. Another reason is their attitudes towards greed. Upper-class people may be more likely to agree with the idea that “greed is good.” Although greed is universal human emotion, it may have the strongest pull over those of who already have the most.

Since the end of World War I (WWI) in 1918，Canadians, and millions of others around the world have paused at the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month to honour the sacrifices our soldiers have made in different wars, fighting for the freedoms that we all enjoy today.

 Known as Remembrance Day, the day originated as a tribute to the soldiers of WWI，a dark period for our young country, which claimed the lives of over 60,000 military personnel and civilians and over 16 million dead worldwide.

As there are no more surviving soldiers of WWI，today we rely on the wisdom and words of those soldiers who fought in the wars that followed，and this day now also recognizes their heroic contribution.

They tell us to always remember what those brave souls fought for, and all they ask in return is that we never forget.

That’s why we wear the red poppy (罂粟花);that’s why when we see a soldier in uniform we should stop him or her and say “Thank you”; that’s why we take a pause from our busy lives for two short minutes today to honor that request.

Yet this message is fading away, year after year.

Take for example the terrible decision to allow parents to excuse students from Remembrance Day ceremonies at school.

Not only is this disrespectful, it distances the student from his or her classmates.

It is difficult to understand why any Canadian parent would want to remove their child from the time-honored tradition of reading the poemIn Flanders Fields, while a wreath of poppies is laid.

It is more important than ever to teach school-aged children about our history，no matter how violent it was. Sheltering them from the realities of war is a great disservice.

Understanding why conflicts happened, or happen today, can help shape choices and decisions they make as adults.

Of course, because we live in a free society, we cannot force an individual to do something. It is unfortunate, but some parents now have their child “opt-out” of the services. These people should be reminded they are free to make such choices only because of the men and women the rest of us are remembering.

Online purchases have soared during the Chinese New Year holiday.

    It’s the dead of winter in Shanghai. Delivery man Liu Jia and his colleagues start the day when most of people are still asleep. Working at a distribution point of a shopping website in Shanghai, they promise to deliver products within three hours of an order being placed. “I buy most of my grocery online, especially the heavy items. It’s convenient and cheap compared to the supermarket in my neighborhood,” Customer Chen Hong said. Orders such as these have increased for the New Year, forcing Liu Jia to work around the clock. “The orders are usually rice, laundry detergent（洗涤剂）, tissue paper and snacks, mostly food and articles for everyday use,” Liu Jia said.

According to an industry report, China’s B2C （Business to Customer） online sales are growing at an annual rate of 25 percent. Competition between online giants like Taobao and Jingdong is now fiercer than ever. “The advantage of online shopping is that customers can buy products easily. So the competition is about: firstly, the range of products; secondly, the depth under each category of products; third, the price and user experience,” Pan Biao, vice president of YHD.com, said. E-commerce is one of China’s fastest growing sectors. It’s changed people’s buying habits, and even their living habits. And it’s had a huge impact on the retail industry. To make online shopping more convenient, major sites are investing heavily to build payment systems and logistics（物流）networks.

On average, a retailer now can deliver goods to the majority of cities within 3 days, and to towns and more remote areas in the country within a week. “Competition will produce a number of good companies, making better products and services that customers need. In the field of E-commerce, we are leading the world in terms of products, services and industry development,” Liu Yinbin, associate professor with Dept of Information Management, Shanghai University, said.  Experts also say customers are increasingly making their online purchases from mobile devices, opening up vast new opportunities and competition for retailers.

    Most people agree that honesty is a good thing. But does Mother Nature agree? Animals canˈt talk, but can they lie in other ways? Can they lie with their bodies and behavior? Animal experts may not call it lying, but they do agree that many animals, from birds to chimpanzees, behave dishonestly to fool other animals. Why? Dishonesty often helps them survive.

Many kinds of birds are very successful at fooling other animals. For example, a bird called the plover sometimes pretends to be hurt in order to protect its young. When a predator（猎食动物）gets close to its nest, the plover leads the predator away from the nest. How? It pretends to have a broken wing. The predator follows the "hurt" adult, leaving the baby birds safe in the nest.    

Another kind of bird, the scrub jay, buries its food so it always has something to eat. Scrub jays are also thieves. They watch where others bury their food and steal it. But clever scrub jays seem to know when a thief is watching them. So they go back later, unbury the food, and bury it again somewhere else.

Birds called cuckoos have found a way to have babies without doing much work. How? They donˈt make nests. Instead, they get into other birdsˈ nests secretly. Then they lay their eggs and fly away. When the baby birds come out, their adoptive parents feed them.

Chimpanzees, or chimps, can also be sneaky. After a fight, the losing chimp will give its hand to the other. When the winning chimp puts out its hand, too, the chimps are friendly again. But an animal expert once saw a losing chimp take the winnerˈs hand and start fighting again.

Chimps are sneaky in other ways, too. When chimps find food that they love, such as bananas, it is natural for them to cry out. Then other chimps come running. But some clever chimps learn to cry very softly when they find food. That way, other chimps donˈt hear them,  and they donˈt need to share their food.

As children, many of us learn the saying "You canˈt fool Mother Nature." But maybe you canˈt trust her, either.