A Guide to the Library's Facilities(设备)

To use or reserve the facilities of the library, follow the procedures given at the circulation desk.

    Group Study Rooms (2F)

Students and teaching staff can use these rooms for group study. Students are advised to use unlocked rooms (3 rooms for 2 people, 2 rooms for 4 people) available for free. When you use locked rooms (2 rooms for 4 people, 1 room for 10 people), you need to go through reservation procedures at the circulation desk. These rooms are available for group discussion.

    Individual Reading Rooms (1-3F)

    There are 4 single rooms available for use by teaching staff and visiting scholars. Each room is equipped with a computer together 1 printer and 6 scanners. Reservation of these rooms is available for a period up to seven days on end.

    Meeting Rooms and Seminar Rooms (1-3F)

    Only teaching staff and graduate students can apply to use these rooms and reserve them one day in advance. The total number of seats is 40. They are available for workshops and small seminars.

    Computer Rooms (4F)

    These rooms are available for classes or seminars and so on. The total number of seats is 88. Only teaching staff can apply to use the computer rooms and reserve them one day in advance.

阅读理解

    When Allison Winn was eight and her family adopted a dog named Coco, they had no idea how much the little creature would change her life. “Coco helped me feel better,” says Allison, who was recovering from l4 months of treatment for a brain cancer at the time. “She would cuddle（偎依) with me when I didn't want to play.” Allison loved Coco so much that she told her parents she wanted to help other sick kids find the same kind of comfort.

    She started small, raising money by selling lemonade and home-made dog biscuits in front of her house. Her first customer was the mailman. By the end of that summer, she had raised nearly $l,000, enough to adopt and train two dogs and give them to children with cancer. Now, a little more than two years later, some groups gather to make dog treats for Allison's cause.

    Her organization, the Stink Bug Project, named after a picture she drew in memory of the end of her treatment, is run and managed in partnership with the Morgan Adams Foundation. Stink Bug helps families adopt pets from the Trained K9 Companion Program, where the rescued dogs are taught commands. Allison's mother, Dianna Litvak, who helps run Stink Bug, hopes to extend the pet-adoption program statewide and continue donating some of the money to help fund children's cancer research.

    “Allison has figured out how to help - in a way that no one else has,” Litvak says. “We involve her younger sister, Emily, her friends, the adopting families, and some others. It took the love of a little girl to wrap all that together into one amazing package.”

    Go to stink bug project. org to donate or to buy Allison's dog biscuits.

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    English Classes for Free

    Adults of all nationalities (国籍) are welcome to take our English classes. Our classes meet every day, Monday to Friday from 1 pm to 3 pm. Our classes are free because we are running a teacher training center and our teachers need students for teaching practice. Classes will cover grammar, vocabulary, conversations, reading and writing skills. Classes will begin on July 24th and will end on October 13th. All students must be 18 and over.

    Table Tennis Lessons

    If you love to play ping-pong and like to improve your game, welcome to Chicago Table Tennis Club all year around. We are the biggest club in Chicago with more than 100 members and students at all levels and ages. We can improve your ping-pong skills and within one class you will see the result. If you or your kids are interested, please feel free to call 317-287-9852.

    Dance Classes Start Soon

    Don't worry if you have no dance experience. 90% of our students don't. Our summer dance classes start you off at ground zero and build you up. The classes are for adults and are full of people in their 20's and 30's hoping to learn some moves, stay in shape, and meet cool people!

    We have been in business for 5 years now, and have taught almost 2,000 students!

    Summer Theatre Camp

    Our Summer Theatre Camp educates young people aged 7〜14 in the theatre arts. The camp offers classes in speech, character-building, dance, reading and so on. Camp hours will be 8 am to 4 pm. The camp will provide theatre experience for only 45 campers. The campers will have to join in a contest and be chosen for the camp.

    I went online to check if my pay was in my bank account. To my amazement, I discovered that not only had I been paid, a company I'd never worked for had also paid me! I knew I'd have been beside myself if my own salary was not in my account, so I tried to get the money back to the right person. It is easier said than done.

    The bank couldn't help as it wasn't a bank problem. The human-resource department as the company that paid me was unable to help as I didn't have enough details. I rang the bank again. Thankfully I had sympathetic call operator who gave me a name, so I again rang the company “Daniel” worked for.

    I expected the bank would contact me to arrange to take the money from my account and repay Daniel. I heard nothing for a month and the money remained in my account when Daniel called, explaining he'd tried to get back his money but had been unsuccessful as neither the bank nor his company felt it was their error. He had rung to ask if I could speak to the bank, but after chatting for a few minutes we realized we could probably fix this problem ourselves.

    We decided I would take the money from my account and he would pick it up from me. Due to my busy job I was unable to meet Daniel personally but he left me a lovely bottle of wine in exchange for what was rightfully his. I never had any intention of keeping Daniel's pay, but red tape（繁琐手续）made it difficult to do the right thing. It all came down to two people being able to do what a huge bank and a large company couldn't do — admit a mistake has occurred and fix it.

    This day marks the rising of a new food startup, the first company to be financed entirely by the crowd, and of it every business thus relies on thousands of customers to grow. Lisa, 25, its main founder and CEO, believes it will be a path that will become increasingly popular, and ultimately will produce more thriving（繁荣的）businesses from the scratch.

    “In the food industry, no venture capital (VC, 风险投资) will even look at you until you've hit a million in sales. As a fresh hand in business, unless you're independently wealthy, you will likely need to raise some money before then,” Lisa complained. So few businesses approached VC firms at the beginning. It was no exception with her. Thus, she turned to a new financing tool at hand, crowdfunding, to raise money from the crowd who'd like to take a bet on her company.

    But for a company, it didn't make sense to seek investments when all they had was an idea and a few months of consumer testing data. The food market is extremely competitive. No investor would put money behind a totally unproven new super food product founded by a bunch of twenty-somethings. “But we had a story. And crowds love stories.” Lisa said delightedly. So she put together an online crowdfunding campaign, explaining how she began working with this amazingly nutritious plant in the Peace Corps and then started selling it in the U.S. to support the poor in the West Africa.

    On the online platform where they were to raise the money, a friend convinced them to change their goal from $20,000 to $50,000. Lisa stayed up all night worrying they wouldn't hit it. But they reached $24,000 in 24 hours and ended their funding with $53,000. Seeing the number, Lisa said, “Thank you! To my crowd and for your belief!”

At my first lesson in Chinese calligraphy, my teacher told me plainly: "Now I will teach you how to write your name. And to make it beautiful." I felt my breath catch. I was curious.

Growing up in Singapore, I had an unusual relationship with my Chinese name. My parents are ethnically Chinese, so they asked fortune tellers to decide my name, aiming for maximum luck. As a result, I ended up with a nonsense and embarrassing name: Chen Yiwen, meaning, roughly, "old", "barley （薏米） "and "warm".

When I arrived in America for college at 18, I put on an American accent and abandoned my Chinese name. When I moved to Hong Kong in 2021, after 14 years in the States, I decided to learn calligraphy. Why not get back in touch with my heritage? I thought.

In calligraphy, the idea is to copy the old masters' techniques, thereby refining your own. Every week, though, my teacher would give uncomfortably on-the-nose assessments of my person. "You need to be braver," he once observed. "Have confidence. Try to produce a bold stroke （笔画）." For years, I had prided myself on presenting an image of confidence, but my writing betrayed me.

I was trying to make sense of this practice. You must visualize the word as it is to be written and leave a trace of yourself in it. As a bodily practice, calligraphy could go beyond its own cultural restrictions. Could it help me go beyond mine? My teacher once said to me, "When you look at the word, you see the body. Though a word on the page is two-dimensional, it contains multitudes, conveying the force you've applied, the energy of your grip, the arch of your spine." I had been learning calligraphy to get in touch with my cultural roots, but what I was really seeking was a return to myself. Now I have sensed that the pleasure out of calligraphy allows me to know myself more fully.

During a recent lesson, my teacher pointed at the word I had just finished, telling me: "This word is much better. I can see the choices you made, your calculations, your flow. Trust yourself. This word is yours." He might as well have said, "This word is you."