The popular TV program Readers has prompted more people in China to practice reading aloud in booths(亭) set up in big cities across the country．

    As the latest TV show to help people's love for literature recover, CCTV program Readers invites people from all walks of life to read aloud their favorite poems，essays and books，or even personal letters they wrote to their loved ones．Just as the weekly show has been well-received，its reading booths, equipped with professional recording devices and cameras，have become instant hits．

    A crowd of more than 200 people were pictured lining up outside the Shanghai Library at 11 a.m. on March 4 — the first day of the booth's opening to the public in Shanghai. The deadline for registrations was brought forward to 2 p.m. instead of the scheduled 5:30 p.m., as the number of waiting readers continued to grow. Some waited more than nine hours for a try-out in the booth, according to library management．

     “There is an old photo in the late 1970s capturing people lining up outside the Shanghai Library before it opens. If that was a spring of reading in Shanghai, now I think another spring has arrived again.” library manager Zhou Deming, told the Shanghai-based The Paper．

    The reading booth is the only one of its kind in the city of economic center at the moment, but more are expected to be put into use in the coming months, according to the library's website．

    The Readers program has also led to booths in other cities including Beijing, Hangzhou, Guangzhou and Xi'an to appeal to more people to read and share their life stories．

    With the recent boom of culture-themed TV shows such as Readers and Chinese Poetry Competition，some are optimistic that this will help the country love literature and reading again in general．

    Every man wants his son to be somewhat of a clone（克隆）, not in features but in footsteps. As he grows you also age, and your ambitions become more unachievable. You begin to realize that your boy, in your footsteps, could probably achieve what you hoped for. But footsteps can be muddied and they can go off in different directions.

    My son Jody has hated school since day one in kindergarten. Science projects waited until the last moment. Book reports weren't written until the final threat.

    I've been a newspaperman all my adult life. My daughter is a university graduate working toward her master's degree in English. But Jody? When he entered the tenth grade he became a "vo-tech" student (技校学生). They're called "motorheads" by the rest of the student body.

    When a secretary in my office first called him "motorhead", I was shocked. "Hey, he's a good kid," I wanted to say. "And smart, really."

    I learned later that motorheads are, indeed, different. They usually have dirty hands and wear dirty work clothes. And they don't often make school honor rolls (光荣榜).

    But being the parent of a motorhead is itself an experience in education. We who labor in clean shirts in offices don't have the abilities that motorheads have. I began to learn this when I had my car crashed. The cost to repair it was estimated at $800. "Hey, I can fix it," said Jody. I doubted it, but let him go ahead, for I had nothing to lose.

    My son, with other motorheads, fixed the car. They got parts (零件）from a junkyard, and ability from vo-tech classes. The cost was $25 instead of $800.

    Since that first repair job, a broken air-conditioner, a non-functioning washer and a non-toasting toaster have been fixed. Neighbors and co-workers trust their car repairs to him.

    These kids are happiest when doing repairs. They joke and laugh and are living in their own relaxed world. And their minds are bright despite their dirty hands and clothes.

    I have learned a lot from my motorhead: publishers need printers, engineers need mechanics, and architects need builders. Most important, I have learned that fathers don't need clones in footsteps or anywhere else.

    My son may never make the school honor roll. But he made mine.

    In 2013, Gabby Frost founded Buddy Project when she was 15. At that time her best friend had been diagnosed(诊断)with a mental health condition, and that was the first time she was made aware of what mental illness was. She wanted to learn more and develop a good support system for her.

    Mental illness affects tens of millions of people in the United States each year, yet only half receive treatment, according to the National Institutes of Mental Health. Buddy Project's website says the service is not a substitute for therapy( 治疗)or other types of mental health care, and it directs people to resources for further help.

    Since founding the organization as a high school student, Frost has helped more than 200, 000 participants find a new friend. On the day when Buddy Project was launched, she used her powerful social media presence to attract nearly 3, 000 participants. "This was around the time when teens really began talking about mental health and found a supportive community online to talk about it,"she said.

    One of the biggest social barriers she had to jump over was that people didn't view her seriously because she was a 15-year-old girl, and even now, she's still a young woman. "Sometimes it's frustrating because people don't think what I do is needed or they don't think I'm professional" she said. "Most people are blown away that a 20-year-old girl is running this and that it's one person doing this but not a whole team. I'm just lucky that I've found a support system that has been able to help my mom and me with the project.

    Vaping can be just as damaging to your health as smoking. But the minute you kick the habit, you'll feel a difference.

    Vaping is the use of electronic cigarettes-e-cigarettes. Vaping became mainstream in the United States in the late 2000s. When e-cigarettes first hit the market, people believed they were a safer choice to tobacco cigarettes. We now know, however, that vaping, like smoking cigarettes can be quite damaging to your health-and equally addictive.

    Kids and teenagers are especially attracted to vaping, thanks to attractive flavors. Vape use in high school students rose by 900 percent between 2011 and 2015.

    Quitting vaping can be difficult, just like trying to stop smoking. There are some immediate, though often temporary, negative effects. The positive ones soon outpace the negative, however.

    In as little as 20 minutes, your heart rate returns to normal, your blood pressure drops, and your circulation starts to normalize. Your breathing may improve, too.

    Daily e-cigarette doubles a person's risk for a heart attack. If you quit, however, the risk begins to fall very quickly. Also, vaping, like cigarette smoking, can blunt your senses, reducing your ability to smell and taste. After just 48 hours without vaping, you may begin to notice your ability to taste and smell food has improved. Nicotine affects more than your brain: new research suggests nicotine can raise your blood sugar, too.

    Smokers often have a troublesome cough or make a breathless sound when they breathe that many refer to as a smokers cough. Smoking even e-cigarettes can badly harm your lung health and make fighting off infections difficult. Quitting, however, will help your lungs recover. After one month, your lung capacity improves.

    There will come a day when the bad habit of vaping won't have any lasting influence on your body and your health.

    Nine years ago, when the closest and largest full moon fell on March 19, 2011, many people used the term, "supermoon", which we had never heard before. In 2012, we heard this term again to describe the year's closest full moon on May 6, 2012. Supermoons also appeared in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017 and 2019.

    What does "supermoon" mean exactly? And how special was the March 19, 2011 supermoon?

    The word "supermoon" didn't come from astronomy. Instead, it came from astrology (占星学). In 1979, astrologer Richard Nolle defined it as a new or full moon which occurs at or near its closest point to the earth in its orbit. In short, the earth, moon and sun are all in a line, with the moon at its nearest point to the earth.

And the full moon of March 19, 2011 was the largest moon of that year. This "supermoon" was at perigee (近地点) — its closest point to the earth in its orbit. It was bigger and brighter than other full moons of 2011. Astronomers call this sort of close full moon a perigee full moon.

    That doesn't sound very special, does it? In fact, the March 2011 full moon lined up much more closely with perigee than Nolle's original definition. But were you able to notice with your eyes alone that this full moon was bigger or brighter than usual? Astronomers said no. But it was fun to stand outside under this full moon and know that the moon was closer than ever.

    In 2019, there were three supermoons. The first supermoon of 2019 was the Super Blood Wolf Moon on January 21, which occurred with a total lunar eclipse (月全食) at the same time, also known as a "blood moon". The second supermoon of 2019 was on February 19, also called the Snow Moon, which was the closest full moon of the year. The third and final supermoon of 2019, known by Native Americans as the Worm Moon, occurred on March 21. It fell on the day of the vernal equinox (春分), which signals the end of winter and the beginning of spring.

Sugar-free cookies, sugar-free candy, and diet soda – are these better for you? After sugar became a no-no in the nutrition and wellness world, sugar-free food and drinks acted as a replacement for once beloved sweet drinks and snacks. Being claimed to be ZERO sugar means the food and drinks are healthier, better for diabetics, and help you slim down… Right? Wrong. Sugar-free products aren't better for you. In fact, they are worse. For most sugar-free products, it means that artificial sweeteners (甜味剂) are used instead of real sugar. The problem is that these sweeteners do not come from natural sources and they can do you more harm than good.

Let's get into what these artificial sweeteners actually are. Sugar-free sugar sounds wrong because there is no such thing as sugar-free sugar. Some of these sugar-free alternatives even contain sugar and the ones that have chemicals your body often does not know how to process. Most artificial sweeteners are a lot sweeter than sugar so only a small quantity of them are needed. That's why they can market sugar-free alternatives as "low-calorie" or "no-calorie". It also means that you get no nutritional value from consuming them, which is why so many sugar-free replacements are classified as "non-nutritive". These artificial sweeteners tend to hide under some names. Actually, they are 200-600 times sweeter than sugar.

When you eat sweet stuff, your body continues to desire it and, even though your body cannot metabolize (代谢) these sugar-free alternatives, your brain does not know the difference. In turn sugar-free alternatives relate to weight gain and Type-2 diabetes. Besides, artificial sweeteners also damage your gut's ability to break down sugar which impacts everything you eat. In other words, your body doesn't know how to handle artificial sweeteners because they have nothing real to process.

Here is a good rule of thumb: stay away from artificial sweeteners and look for non-sugar, natural sweeteners like stevia (甜叶菊) or date sugar. In the war against artificial sweeteners and real sugar, both lose. Satisfy your sweet tooth with natural sugar that comes from fruits and stay away from products claimed to be sugar-free.