学进去

Four Island Countries for a Trip

Garbage or trash is a major kind of environmental pollution. Each person produces about 2kg of trash a day. We are making waste products faster than nature can break them down. And we are using up resources faster than they can be replaced.

This adds up to trouble for the environment. Where does all that garbage go? What can be done to help dispose of(处理) garbage? How can we make less garbage?

Garbage isn’t just the smelly rotting fruits, vegetables or meat that we throw away in our homes. Those are only a small part of all the stuff we throw away. We create other kinds of waste in construction, mining and in our factories.

Did you ever wonder what happens to your garbage? Most is burned or buried in landfills(垃圾填埋场). Less than a quarter of our waste is recycled.

With a population of 1.3 billion, garbage is a big problem for China. Chinese cities create around 148 million tons of garbage every year. The amount is growing at around 10 percent each year.

Once we used about 3 billion plastic shopping bags every day in China. The result was a great waste of resources and serious pollution. So we did something about that. Now we use more cloth bags and shopping baskets when we shop.

In the coming years China will build waste-to-energy plants in cities to clean up the garbage. But there’s a lot more that needs to be done. And you can play a part.

There’s nothing better than a walk in the countryside for lifting our spirits. Connecting with nature can help our mental health. For many people, it feels great to take a walk through a forest, but as we admire the trees around us, it’s worth knowing these trees are doing more than just being nice things to look at.

We have already noticed that trees play an important role in taking care of our world—they produce oxygen and clean the air we breathe by taking in about a quarter of all human-caused carbon dioxide emissions（二氧化碳排放）.

But there’s more to these trees than we might think. Researchers have discovered that they are actually very smart.

It’s thought that trees use a fungal network（真菌网络）to talk and share resources right under our feet. Under the ground are tree roots, bacteria（细菌）and super fine threads of fungi（菌丝）. And research has shown that they are all mixed together. They can help each other by sharing “food”, and they can even tell them some coming dangers. Scientists say it’s like the trees are talking to one another.

Ecologist（生态学家）Suzanne Simard has called this network the Wood Wide Web. She discovered that parent trees use this network to help their children. She also found that trees are smart enough to change their behaviour to live in a changing environment.

So it seems trees really are the stars of our natural world, and with around three trillion of them on our planet, it’s time to show them some respect if we want them to grow better.

The traditional Chinese skill of turning thick bamboo into beautiful pieces achieved fame on the short video platform(平台)Tik Tok. 1．

Skilled bamboo weavers(编织工人)are recording the producing process of their works-cutting, weaving, burning and boiling. 2．

“That’s amazing,” A Tik Tok user from America wrote in her video after watching the whole process.

3． Pan Yunfeng, 51, from Lin’an in Zhejiang Province, makes pot brushes and bamboo umbrellas on Tik Tok. 4． With over 5 million followers on Douyin, he has become popular among netizens(网民)abroad.

Bamboo weaving art began 2, 000 years ago. 5． In 2008, it was listed as a national intangible cultural heritage(非物质文化遗产). Now, the popularity of bamboo art on Tik Tok has opened a window for foreign netizens to better understand Chinese culture.

The teacher sent me home with a note for my mother that said I needed to visit the eye doctor because I failed the vision test. The trip home that day was very slow.

My mother said it would all be just fine. "It wouldn’t hurt a bit," she said. But I wasn’t worried about pain-I was worried about looking _______.

The next day, my mother pulled me to the eye doctor’s office. I _______ a set of frames (镜框) and tried to believe my mother when she said they looked really _______ on me. The doctor said the glasses would be ready soon. But I wasn’t ready at all, and I didn’t think I ever would be.

When the glasses arrived, the eye doctor put them on my face and walked me out onto the sidewalk in front of his office. When I looked _______ from my shoes, I found myself in a whole new world – a world filled with _______ pictures, bright colours, and fine detail everywhere I looked. Suddenly I _______ the beautiful outline of red leaves on trees. I could see the details of people’s faces long before they were standing in front of me. I could see my mother _______ as she watched me see the world in a whole new way.

"Glasses aren’t so bad, are they? " Mom asked.

"Not at all, " I thought to myself. On that first day, they were a _______.

The Monday morning came, and I had to _______ the kids in my classroom. And it happened, just like I feared it would be. A mean kid pointed at me in the middle of the maths class and shouted, "Four ________! " But at the same moment, looking through my new glasses, I could see all the way across the room that the kid who had said it had an awfully big nose.

My father was German, but he worked in England. He married my mother, who was English. Her family name was Robinson, so when I was born in 1632, in England, they called me Robinson, after her.

My father did well in his business and I went to a good school. He wanted me to get a good job, and live a quiet, pleasant life. But I wanted adventure and an exciting life.

“I want to be a sailor and go to sea,” I told my mother and father. They were very unhappy about this.

“Please don’t go,” my father said, “You won’t be happy you know. Sailors have a difficult and dangerous life.” And because I love him, and he was unhappy, I tried to forget about the sea.

But I couldn’t forget, and about a year later, I saw a friend in town. His father had a ship and my friend said to me, “we are sailing to London tomorrow. Why don’t you come with us?”

On September 1st, 1651, I went to Hull and the next day we dialed for London. But a few days later, there was a strong wind. The sea was rough and dangerous, and the ship went up and down, up and down. I was very ill, and was very afraid.

“Oh, I don’t want to die!” I cried, “I want to live! If I live, I will go home and never go to sea again!”

The next day the wind stopped, and the sea was quiet and beautiful again.

“Well, Robinson,” my friend laughed, “How do you feel now? The wind wasn’t too bad.”

“What!” I cried. “It was a terrible storm.”

“Oh, that wasn’t a storm,” my friend answered, “just a little wind. Forget it, come and have a drink.”

After a few drinks with my friend, I felt better. I forgot about the danger, and decided not to go home. I didn’t want my friend and family to laugh at me!

I stayed in London for some time, but I still, wanted to go to the sea. So, when the captain of a ship asked me to go with him to Guinea in Africa, I agreed, and so I went to the sea for the second time.

It was a good ship, and everything went well at first, but I was very ill again. Then when we were near the Canary Islands, a Turkish pirate(海盗) ship came after us. They were famous thieves of the sea at that time. There was a long, hard fight, but when it finished, we and the ship were prisoners. The Turkish captain and his men took us to Sallee in Morocco. They wanted to sell us as slaves(奴隶) in the market. But in the end, the Turkish captain decided to keep me for himself, and took me home with him. This was a sudden and terrible change in my life. This Turkish captain was now my master.