China has decided to stop the use of free plastic bags. Supermarkets, shops and outlets(经销店) in China can't offer plastic bags any more.

    Every year, people use too many plastic bags. They throw them here and there after they have used them. The government has done its best to deal with them but failed. While we offer quick service（服务）to customers, the plastic bags pollute water, earth and air, and they waste the oil. The government asks people to go back to carry cloth bags and use baskets when they go to buy something. The cloth bags and the baskets can be used again and again.

    Many months have passed. The environment has been improved a lot.

    American and British people both speak English of course. But sometimes it does not seem like the same language. In fact, there are some important differences between British English and American English.

    {#blank#}1{#/blank#}Often, Americans don't say each word separately. They say several words together. Americans may say "I dunno" instead of" I don't know". Or they may say "Whaddya say?" instead of "What did you say?" However, the British are more careful in their speech. They usually say all the words and keep them separate.

    Sound is not only the difference between British English and American English. Words sometimes have different meanings too. {#blank#}2{#/blank#}Americans drive trucks, but in England people drive lorries.

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#}In England, if you are going to telephone your friends, you "phone them up". In America, you "give them a call".

    There are also some differences in grammar. For example, Americans usually use the helping verb "do" when they ask a question. They say "Do you have a storybook?" But the British often leave out the helping verb.{#blank#}4{#/blank#}

    Most languages are like this. Languages change over time. When people live in separate places, the languages change in different ways. This is what has happened to English. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}Many people in Canada speak French but their French is very different from the French of France.

    The sun was falling behind the hills. Andrea was driving back home to Brockboune. Then she saw an old lady, standing by the toad, with a sign saying "Brockboune" in her hand.

    Andrea stopped the car. When the old lady got in, Andrea could see that she was not that little. She was in a long dress and had a hat pulled down low over her eyes. She put her big brown shopping bag down onto the floor.

    "Do you live in Brockboune?" asked Andrea. "No, dear," answered the old lady in a low voice, "I'm just going to visit a friend, but my car won't start, so I decided to hitchhike."

    Something in the way the lady spoke made Andrea uneasy, Andrea secretly studied the half-covered face, the shapeless body, the arms with their thick black hairs… Thick black hairs? Andrea's blood froze. This wasn't a woman. It was a man!

    Her heart was beating wildly and her mind raced. Then suddenly, an idea came up to her. She stopped the car in a sudden. "My God!" she shouted, "A child! Did you see the child? I think I hit her!" "I didn't see anything", the "old lady" said, "I don't think you hit anything." "I'm sure it was a child!" shouted Andrea. "Could you just get out and have a look?" The "old lady" slowly opened the car door, leaving her bag inside. As soon as "she" was out of the car, Andrea drove away as soon as possible.

    Several minutes later, Andrea thought about the "old lady's" bag and opened it carefully. There was only one thing in it—a shining knife.

    An old lady walked into a clothes shop. She asked the salesgirl to show her a new dress in the shop window. The girl stood behind the counter, taking no notice of the request (要求) . The old lady asked again, but she still received no answer. Then the old lady said to herself, "I'm too old to see well. I can't even tell a plastic (塑料的) model from a real girl."

    When the girl heard this, she shouted. "What did you say? Did you say that I am a plastic model?" The lady was greatly surprised. She said to herself, "The model can speak! It must be a robot of a new type."

    There has been a lot of talk about Chinese bicycle sharing recently. Shared bikes are nowadays becoming the centre of attention in our We Chat friend circle. Many of our friends post photos of themselves riding bikes, especially during the weekend in natural parks, and we can see people logging in and out of shared bike apps. But are people really drawn to(被....所吸引) the idea of exercise and green transportation all of a sudden?

    Some people have tried Mobikes lately, and they don't particularly like Mobikes. They think the first generation Mobikes, the ones without baskets, are designed for athletes. They are very hard to ride, and the seat is not adjustable(可调节的). Then, they tried the yellow ofo bikes. They are easier to ride than Mobikes, but they don't usually have baskets, and you need to enter the password by hand, instead of scanning a QR code and having the lock open automatically like with Mobikes.

    We appreciate that there are shared bikes on the roads. They have saved us a lot of time during emergency situations. And on beautiful, clear days, we do enjoy riding them outside the city. But from what we've seen in our friend circles, people have been giving them endless praises, while we still saw some obvious flaws (缺陷).

    In our experience, there has never been a unanimous(一致的) decision on anything in public opinion. It makes us wonder whether these people really like riding shared bikes or are just saying this to agree with others. When we asked them individually, a friend of us, Lisa, secretly told us she tried the bikes to fit in(融入朋友圈). She doesn't like bikes and finds city's roads too harsh for bike riding. But the only way to hang out with her friends was riding out of town together. To join in social activities, she had to pick up bike riding again. Another young man, Simon admitted that he started talking about and forwarding information(转发信息) on shared bikes to appear cool and fashionable to friends. He started paying attention when Mobikes firs launched(推出). These views will give us something new to think about when we ride these bikes again.