In recent years, more Chinese people have been travelling at home and abroad, but some of them don't have good manners.

    For example, on Tiananmen Square in Beijing, there is chewing gum (口香糖) in almost every corner. And newspapers show photos of a child peeing (撒尿) outside a restaurant at Hong Kong Disneyland. In foreign countries, things are sometimes even worse.

    Some hotels in Singapore are upset with Chinese tourists. This is because some of them spit in their rooms and smoke in bed.

    Zhang Lei is a tour guide from Shanghai. Once Zhang led a group of three Chinese tourists to Europe. On the train, the group talked and laughed very loudly. Some of them even took off their shoes, and one coughed loudly without covering his mouth. Lots of other travelers moved away from them.

    "Bad manners hurt China's' international image (形象)”， explained Zhai Weihua, a Chinese government official.

    So, in mid-August, the government started an educational program so that travel agencie can teach good manners to tourists at home and abroad

Many Chinese people who have been to the United States think that Americans pay a little part of their money for food each day. Yet, in the latest 13 years, food prices have gone up 30% for most American families. Everyone agrees that the cost of feeding a family has risen sharply. But who is really responsible（有责任的）?

  Many people say the farmers who produce the vegetables, fruit, meat, and eggs are responsible. But farmers say that the rise in food prices is very small compared to (和…相比) the rise in their cost of living. Farmers think middlemen have got much more money than they do. Middlemen are those people who stand between the farmers and the people who buy and eat the food. For example, truck drivers, owners of food stores and so on. Are middlemen really responsible for higher food prices?

Economists（经济学家）don’t think so. They have found that the money that meat packers and food stores get is less than 1% in all. They say that food costs more now because modern housewives have jobs outside the home. They have less time for cooking after a day’s work. They like to buy food which has already been prepared before it reaches the market. They want to buy many kinds of food that can be put on their dining tables easily and quickly. But of course they must be prepared to pay for the services of those who make their work easier.

It seems that the answer to the question of rising prices is not an easy one. Quite a number of people share the responsibility for the sharp rise in food costs.

It is possible that the UK will have its first police cat in the future. The five-year-old girl, Eliza wrote to the police station recently and asked why they only used police dogs. She thought cats could be as useful as dogs because cats can climb trees to help people.

A police officer, Mr. Barton replied to Eliza. He said they were thinking about it, although they didn’t decide yet what a police cat can should do. He also drew a picture of his own cat Joey on the letter.

Eliza’s mother said she was surprised to receive the reply letter from the police station. “It’s amazing. They took Eliza’s advice seriously. She is smart and she came up with three ideas about what police cats could do. She thought cats could find out danger easily and they could climb up trees to help people. Also, they are good at finding their way home. So they could help people find the places they want to go. ”

 The day was warm and the sun shone down like a new beginning in my life. I was waving goodbye to my son, the last one of my children to leave home and go to a new place — university. I felt so light-hearted after spending many years looking after my four children — cooking, washing, ironing, teaching them hew to look after themselves and manage many other things — that I actually thought "At last, I was free".

   But, as I watched my last one leave, although it was joyful, I realized I had not been really prepared for this day. I was too busybringing upthese adults of the future to realize that they would all leave the nest and live by themselves.

   At first I didn't know what I wanted to do. I tried a part-time job, the result of which was that I ran out in tears. I started another business, but that didn't work, either. I grew my own vegetables and fruit, which lasted 3 years. But one day my doctor advised it was not fit for me to do this because of the pain of my feet.

   I began wondering whether I had a future of my own. I cried for the life I was used to, and hadn't known or wanted anything different.

   Then one day I saw an advertisement for foster(代养的) parents. I discussed it with my husband who was always behind everything I tried and then I rang up the number. A week later, a girl named Tracy became a member of my family.

   I now laugh and sing with my 14-year-old foster daughter, even when my kitchen is dirty and in a mess and my bathroom is totally out of order. I now know, 8 years later, the meaning of my doing all these things with the spare hours, days, and weeks when my last child flew the nest. The sun shines once again in my home.

“I sometimes get up at three or four in the morning and I surf the net.”

“I often check my e-mail forty times a day.”

“I often spend more than three hours during one time on the net.”

“I spend more time in chat rooms than with my ‘real-life’ friends.”

Do you know any people like these? They are part of a new addiction(瘾) called Internet addiction. Internet addicts spend at least thirty to forty hours online every week. The use of the Internet can be an addiction like drug(毒品) use. People lose control of the time they spend on the Internet

For example, one college student was missing for several days. His friends were worried, and they called the police. The police found the student in the computer lab，he was surfing the net for several days straight.

Studies show that about 6 to 10% of Internet users become addicted. And people worry about the teens because the Internet is changing the playing field for some of them. They spend more time in cyberspace（网络空间）than in the real world of friends and family.

Is “surfing the net” a hobby or an addiction for you? You may have a problem if you have these symptoms:

●You do not go to important family activities or you do not do school work because you like to spend hours on the Internet.

●You can’t wait for your next online time.

●You plan to spend a short time online, but then you spend several hours.

●You go out with your friends less and less.

These days , more and more Chinese teenagers find   (1)   more difficult to live without their parents. They don’t know how to do   (2)   . Because their parents do almost everything for them at home. This is a big problem.

Alice is a 14-year-old girl. One day her parents went out for work , so she had to stay at home   (3)   . At first she thought she would be happy   (4)   her parents were not in. She could do   (5)  she liked to. But it was six o’clock in the afternoon , she felt   (6)   . “Oh, it’s time   (7)  dinner. Where can I get my food?” She said to   (8)   . Later she found some food in the fridge, but she   (9)   know how to cook. At that moment , she missed her   (10)   very much. At last she could only go to the supermarket and   (11)   some food to eat.

Many of teenagers are   (12)   as Alice . So I think they should learn some normal life   (13)   ,like cooking , cleaning up their rooms or taking   (14)   care of themselves. Do you   (15)   me?

In the Olympics, star athletes always get the public’s attention. Especially under China’s State-run sports regime(体制), gold medalists are seen as representatives (代表) and are highly valued. But this year is a little different for Chinese people because some of their most-loved athletes haven’t won championships.

 Swimmer Ning Zetao, didn’t enter the finals of his sports. Fu Yuanhui, a bronze medal winning swimmer, has become a new hero of Chinese people.

  On Aug.8^th, after learning that she got a new personal best in the women’s 100m backstoke(仰泳) semifinal in Rio, Fu said, “I’v already ….used my prehistorical powers (洪荒之力).”And when being asked about her expectations about the final the next day , Fu Yuanhui, “I don’t have many expectations. I am satisfied about myself.”

  Fu’s straightforward(直率)and happy personality won her millions of fans on the Internet overnight. People call her the “Prehistorical Girl”

 “‘Prehistorical Girl’and the netizens who appreciate her have taught all of us a lesson: Sport is about the struggle and , especially, enjoyment, but most definitely not about gold,”wrote People’s Daily in a commentary on Aug.9^th.

Winning used to be everything for China’s Olympians. Athletes who get gold have fame and fortune(财富), while those who disappoint often get ignored or even criticized.

Hurdle champion Liu Xiang became a national hero at the 2004 Athens Olympics. But four years later at the Beijing Olympics, when an injury forced him to give up just before running his first race, he was bitterly criticized.

Now , China is ready to welcome a sports star without a gold medal. “Public attitudes toward competitive sport and the Olympics have lifted to a higher level,” commented People’s Daily.

“As we mature(成熟) in mentality, learn how to appreciate competition , and become able to calmly applaud(喝彩) our competitors, we’d show the confidence and tolerance(宽容) of a great country,” said CCTV in its weibo post.

 Who’s building the new China? It’s not the factory owners or the businessmen. It’s the people who have left their homes to follow their dreams ,the dreams of a better life.

   We can see them every day, on every street corner, on every construction field（建筑工地） in cities, They work day and night even in the terrible working conditions and weather. They build the roads, the theaters the cinemas, and the supermarkets. They ever clean up our rubbish. They’re China’s migrant workers. Young and old, men and women are building the new China.

   More than 140 million migrant workers have left their homes in the countryside to look for jobs in big cities all over China. They hope to be rich, but they realize there will be many difficulties such as prejudice(偏见) and discrimination(歧视) from the people in cities.

   So many things need to be changed. The first is discrimination! They may not make as much money as some people in cities, they may not have everything people in cities have, but they are good and honest people just trying to live better. These worker are very important and necessary to China’s economic development and have become an important force for the change of Chinese society. They’ re building the new Child. So we should lend our hands and help them.

Most of us in China are used to paying for almost everything with our phones. But for foreign visitors who aren’t familiar with this method, it may seem strange. According to the country’s Prime Minister Lee HsienLoong. During Singapore’s National Day on August 20, Lee told the people about his first experience with Chinese payment methods.

Lee was waiting in line to buy chestnuts at a street stall in Shanghai and saw other customers show their phone and take the chestnuts without giving any cash. Soon after, he realized that the customers were using WeChat Pay, reported the Straits Times.

Lee pointed out that Singapore lags behind in mobile payments. “When visitors from China find that they have to use cash here, they ask, ‘How can Singapore be so backward?’,” Lee said.

With more and more Chinese tourists going abroad, lots of foreign companies and agencies accepted Chinese mobile payment, like WeChat Pay and Ali Pay. According to Xinhua News Agency, WeChat Pay has covered in 13 foreign countries and regions and Alipay over 200. So it is common to see a blue or green QR code in the mall of some foreign countries.

Maybe in the near future, when you travel to other countries, what you have to take is your smartphone.