Li Lei just graduated from college, he was going for a job interview in Shaoyang. He arrived at the bus station quite early for bus. The bus for Shaoyang would not leave until five to twelve. He saw a lot of people waiting in the station. Some were standing in line; Others were walking around. There was a group of schoolgirls. The teacher was trying to keep them in line. Li Lei looked around but there was no place for him to sit.

    He walked into the station Coffee. He looked up at that clock there. It was only twenty to twelve.  He found a seat and sat down before a large mirror（镜子） on the wall. Just then, Han Meimei, one of Li Lei's friends came in and sat with Li Lei. "What time is your bus?" asked Han Meimei. "There's plenty of time yet." Answered Li Lei. "Well, I'll get you more tea then" said Han Meimei.

    They talked while drinking, Then Li Lei looked at the clock again. "Oh! it's going backward!" he cried. "A few minutes ago, it was twenty to twelve and now it's half past eleven". "You're looking at the clock in the Mirror" Said Han Meimei. Li Lei was so sad, the next bus was not to leave for another hour, since then Li Lei has never liked mirrors.

    On Monday, I stopped my car in front of my daughter Juliet's middle school. She jumped in the front seat, feeling down. She asked me to help her study for her science test.

    "Dad I need to memorize a unit about the Reproductive Cycle of Plants. And I can hardly make it."

    "You know memorizing seems like the best way to study, but in fact you can do better in tests if you work on trying to understand the material."

    Juliet was open to my advice. It was Monday afternoon and we had two nights to study before the test on Wednesday. I suggested a plan. "Tomorrow night, you are going to teach the material to me. Tonight, read the unit. Prepare to teach."

    Asking her to teach me was an unusual idea but I was determined to do it. Studies show teaching somebody else is a very useful way to lean, Even if you don't do the teaching, the act of preparing to teach leads to more learning than just trying your best to memorize the material.

    On Tuesday afternoon, Juliet sat down with her Science book facing me said, "Okay Dad, let's study." I wanted her to teach me. But false starts happened. I couldn't be too hard on her. So instead we starred with me asking her some simple questions. She knew some but not other. When she didn't know the answers. I encouraged her to check the book.

    She started checking things that didn't make sense. And she was actively seeking to test her understanding. I was happy to see it. She wasn't memorizing, she was trying to make sense of things, which was exactly what I had hoped she would do.

    During the time of Jin Dynasty, there was a man named Le Guang. One day, Le Guang asked one of his friends to have dinner at his home. After dinner, his friend was back.

    For a long time, his friend didn't come. Then Le Guang heard that his friend was ill, so he came to visit him. Le Guang asked him what was wrong with him. His friend answered, "Last time, at your home I found a little snake in the glass and I was ill after I drank the alcohol (酒)." Le Guang was very surprised because there wasn't a snake in the glass. Suddenly, he remembered there was a bow (弓) on the wall. There must be the shadow (影子) of the bow which looked like a little snake.

    So Le Guang asked his friend to join him for a drink again. When the glass was full of alcohol, he pointed to the shadow of the bow in the glass and asked his friend to have a look. His friend shouted, "That is what I saw last time!" Le Guang laughed and took away the bow.

    "Can you see the snake now?＂ he asked. His friend was surprised to find that the snake was gone. After his friend knew the truth, he was well.

    For many years, this story has been used to advise people not to be too suspicious (怀疑的) easily.

    How funny would it be to see memes(表情包) in our textbooks? Fourteen high school students from Sichuan Province have made this a reality.

    They wrote a set of creative textbooks that includes five subjects: Chinese, English, Maths, Chemistry and Physics. They share their notes and experiences to help you prepare for high school entrance exams. You can see funny memes almost everywhere in their textbooks. The language they use is not too serious.

    Each textbook has its own highlights(亮点), too. The English textbook introduces tongue twisters(绕口令), movies and TV series. The chemistry textbook has wuxia characters. There is a boy named Shangguan Huaxue(chemistry) in the book. He meets a girl and they learn chemistry together. It has ancient poems and wuxia-style descriptions.

    Yan Zuhuai, 15, a top student from Chengdu No.7 High School, is the textbooks' editor-in-chef. He got the idea to create the books in June. "Many underclassmen wanted me to share my notes with them. When I saw people sharing bikes, I thought, why not share knowledge as well?" Yan said.

    But when he put all of his notes together, he found that they were boring. Realizing that his classmates enjoy online novels and memes, he decided to add these things. He wrote guidelines and samples for each textbook and invited 13 students to join him in creating them.

    Their first drafts(草稿) came out in August. Students and teachers praised them. But Yan felt the books needed to be improved. In October, he and his team learned how to use the design software to improve the books. The final version(版本) will come out at the end of December. About 2,500 people have preordered (预订) them. Many publishing houses have shown great interest in them. 

    Laurence Kim Peek was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, on November 11, 1951. It was clear from an early age that he was not like other children. A medical scan(扫描) showed that the two halves of his brain were not connected in the usual way. As a result, Laurence developed an amazing memory. He started to read when he was two. He used to read books and put them back on the shelf upside down to show that he had finished them. He remembered everything he had read.

    He memorized quite a lot of information subjects such as History, Geography, Sports, Music and Literature. He also had an unbelievable ability with numbers and dates.

    To read more quickly, he read the left page with his left eye and the right page with his right eye. By reading the two pages at the same time, it took him less than an hour to read a whole book. By the age of 30, he had memorized around 12,000 books.

    However, he did not develop so well in other areas. He could not walk until he was four, and he had problems putting on his clothes and shoes His social skills were poor, and he was extremely sensitive(敏感的) about meeting new people. In 1984, Peek and his father met Hollywood film writer Barry Morrow. Morrow was fascinated by Peek and began to write a new play about Peek's experiences. The result was Rain Man in 1988, a film that won an Oscar for Best Picture. This changed Peek's life. He got used to being the centre of attention. He self-confident (自信的). He appeared on TV and travelled around the country with his father to develop awareness(意识) of his condition. Sadly, Peek died of a heart attack in 2009.

    One Sunday evening, it was quite dark when old Stanley went for his walk. He was walking along the sidewalk. Suddenly, he saw a white car coming around the corner at high speed. It was going too fast and crashed into a red car in the street where he was walking. He rushed up to the cars to see if anyone was hurt and needed help.

    The two drivers were arguing.

    "You came around the corner too fast," one man said.

    "No!" said the driver of the white car, "That's not true! Your car was parked in a wrong place."

    Stanley listened to their argument and then said the white car driver was wrong to drive too fast. The driver of red car asked Stanley to prove he was right in court(法庭). Stanley gave the driver his name and telephone number.

    Next Thursday morning, Stanley was asked to go to the court. The lawyer for the driver of the white car asked him a lot of questions about what he had seen. Then he asked Stanley how old he was.

    "I'm eighty-two," answered Stanley.

    "Do you usually wear glasses?" asked the lawyer.

    "Yes, I do," answered Stanley.

    "Were you wearing them on the night of the accident?" the lawyer asked.

    "No," replied Stanley.

    Then the lawyer said, "Why should the court believe you? You are eighty-two years old, you were not wearing your glasses, and it was dark. How far can you see in the dark?" Stanley thought about it for a minute. "Well," he said, "when it's dark, I can see the moon. How far is that?"