I grew up in a big family---five brothers, three sisters and I ----with just enough of all the right part to make a childhood well remembered. It was a very strict upbringing.

On the first day of my second grade, my father asked me if I could read well. “Yes, I can,” I said. So he gave me a hand-draw map with street names and directions on how to walk to school. The school was three miles away, and I had never been there by myself.

He handed me the map and my lunch box and said, “Don’t stop and don’t turn back.” I was standing, scared, but he kissed me goodbye and sent me out of the door. On my way to school, I couldn’t help crying, but I continued to walk. I didn’t know how long it would take me to get there, or how many fearful and anxious moments I would have, but I do remember forever how I felt when I came around the last corner, and saw my school.

My heart was filled with relief and joy. I made it! I wished I could tell my father right then that I had make it. When he got home, he said to me, “Hi, did you have fun?” I murmured, “yes.” and waited for him to ask what had happened, but he never did.

Years later, I finally got the courage to ask him why he did that and why he didn’t care about what had happened. He just looked at me for a few minutes and then said, “I didn’t have to ask you, because I knew. I followed you the whole way. I saw you jump up and down at the last street corner. I felt what you felt.” Then I understood and cried.

One day last summer, watching the boys and girls trying to catch butterflies I remembered something happened when I was young. When I was a boy of 12 in South Carolina, something happened to me that cured me forever of wanting to put any wild creature in a cage.

We lived on the edge of a wood, and every evening the mockingbirds would come and rest in the trees and sing. No musician can sing more beautifully than the birds. I decided that I would catch a young bird and keep it in a cage and in that way would have my own private musician.

I finally succeeded in catching one and put it in a cage. At first, the bird flew about the cage, but eventually it settled down in its new home. I felt very pleased with myself and looked forward to some beautiful singing from my tiny musician.

I had left the cage out, and on the second day my new pet’s mother flew to the cage with food in her mouth. The baby bird ate everything she brought to it. I was pleased to see this. Certainly the mother knew better than I about how to feed her baby.

The following morning when I went to see how my bird was doing, I discovered it on the floor of the cage, dead. I was shocked! What had happened! I had taken good care of my little bird.

Arthur Wayne, the famous ornithologist, happened to be visiting my father at the time. Hearing me crying over the death of my bird, he explained what had occurred. “A mother mockingbird, finding her young in a cage, will sometimes bring it poisonous berries (干果). She thinks it better for her young to die than to live in cage.”

Never since then have I caught any living creature and put it in a cage. All living creatures have a right to live free.

B

Guo Jingming is a best-selling author in China. He was born in Zigong, Sichuan Province on June 6, 1983. He is well-known for his essays and fictions, such as On the Edge of Love and Hurt, City of Fantasy, and Tiny Times. His essays and fictions are especially popular with teenagers.

He is also a director and once directed his movie Tiny Times successfully. In June 2013, Guo was awarded the Best New Director at the Shanghai International Film Festival for his first movie Tiny Times. The movie has sold 6.7 million copies.

In 2001, Guo Jingming started to gain fame after winning the New Concept Writing Competition’s top award. Lots of young people got to know Guo Jingming little by little.

A year later, Guo entered the writing competition again and won the top prize for the second time. At the same time, a collection of his prose(散文) On the Edge of Love and Hurt was published.

In 2003, his first novel City of Fantasy came out. It was the novel that made Guo Jingming famous all over the country.

In 2008, Guo was elected to the Chinese Writers’ Association. He became the youngest member of the association. Guo’s Tiny Times series was published between 2008 and 2012.

Cacao, a 16-year-old dog, from Milan, Italy, has become a local celebrity (名人) after he appeared in local papers for his regular habit of taking the bus to his favorite place in the city.

Almost every day for the last few years, Cacao leaves his home and heads for the bus stop on Arrgone Bouleverd. There he sits alongside the other human passengers, waiting for bus 54.

But Cacao will only board the bus if it’s driven by the driver he’s known since he first started his secret trips. After he makes sure he’s got the right driver, Cacao gets on the bus and waits quietly until he reaches his favorite destination — a public park close to Lambrate Station, in north-eastern Milan.

While he is there, he likes to wander around the gardens, walking up and down in the public space for a few hours, enjoying the afternoon sunshine. When he’s tired, he walks back to the station and takes the same bus home.

Cacao’s owner, Nicoletta, a local bar owner adopted Cacao after she saw him wandering the streets. He was a quick learner, however, and in just six months of living with her, Nicoletta had taught him to cross the street on a green light and know to walk only on the pavement. She had so much confidence in his skills that she allowed him to walk around the neighborhood while she was at work.

When Nicoletta first heard about her dog’s unusual habit, she couldn’t believe it. One of her regular customers in the bar said that she had seen Cacao take the bus. Nicoletta then decided to follow her dog, seeing him get on the bus at the station close to her home. She believes he must have memorized the route that they take every Saturday on the way to the markets.

Thankfully, she did not stop Cacao from enjoying his routine, and the driver carried on turning a blind eye to the rules. The happy dog continues to be a regular on the number 54 bus.

Someone asked, “What has the greatest strength on earth?” The answer varied. However, all the answers turned out to be wrong at last. The most powerful thing on earth is the seed of a plant. The great strength which a seed is capable of is simply matchless.

Here goes a story: The bones forming a human skull(颅骨) are so tight and perfect that all the physiologist and anatomist(解剖学家), hard as they try, are powerless to take them apart without damaging them. At the suggestion of someone, some seeds of a plant were placed inside a human skull awaiting dissection(解剖) before heat and moisture(湿度) were applied to cause them to grow. Once they started to grow, they let loose a great force to separate all the skull bones, leaving each of them uninjured. This would have been impossible with any mechanical (机械的) power. See, how powerful the seeds of a plant can be!

This story may be somewhat too unusual for you to understand. Well, have you ever seen the growth of a bamboo shoot or the growth of grass from under a pile of rocks? Seeking sunlight and survival, the young plant will labor constantly through twists and turns to bring itself to the surface of the ground no matter how heavy the rocks overhead may be or how narrow the opening between them. While striking, its roots deep into the soil, the young plant pushes its new shoots above ground. The strength it can collect is such as to overturn any rock in its way. See, how powerful a seed can be!

Though nobody describes the little grass as a “husky”, yet its strength is matchless. It is the force of life which is invisible to the naked eye. It will display itself so long as there is life. The rock is completely helpless before this force—a force that will forever remain aggressive, a force that is resilient(能复原的) and can take temporary setbacks(挫折) calmly, a force that is persistent and will never give up until the goal is reached.