Tang Dynasty poets sang for about three centuries in different tones. There were many famous poets living in the Tang period such as Li Bai, Du Fu, Bai Juyi and Li Shangyin. Poems of the Tang Dynasty edited in the Qing Dynasty is a collection of about 48,900 poems that were written by over 2,200 poets. But it didn't cover all the poems of the Tang Dynasty.

    During the Tang Dynasty, poems were recited when lovers walked under the moonlight. Poems were also recited when soldiers fought on the battlefield. People recited them in the open air or at temple fairs.

    In the Tang Dynasty scholars had to be poets. Their readers were not only people of high social position but also common people. Poets recited poems; women singers sang poems and other ranks of people, including old women and children, read Tang poems. This atmosphere affected foreigners who visited the country at that time. As a result, Tang poetry was introduced to some adjacent countries, like Japan and Vietnam.

    Tang poetry is a most brilliant page in the history of ancient Chinese literature. It's a miracle in the cultural history of mankind. The Tang Dynasty was a powerful empire with a vast territory. It inherited Chinese civilization that went back to ancient times, and was combined with the best of other cultures and adopted the benefits of other nations in the world. Tang poetry wasn't the only spiritual wealth created by the Tang Dynasty people. Philosophy and religion, handwriting and painting and music and dance all gained new peaks of development. Tang poetry, however, was the jewel in the crown and its greatest achievement.

    Trees are useful to man in three important ways: they give him wood and other useful things, they give him cool places, and they help to stop drought and flood.

    Unluckily, in many parts of the world, man has not found that the third of these points is the most important. Man wants to make money from trees, so he has cut them down in large numbers, only to find that without them he has lost the best friends he had. And also, he is usually too careless to plant and look after new trees. So the forests slowly disappear.

    This does not only mean that man will have fewer trees. The results are even worse: for where there are trees, their roots break up soil-make the rain in-and also bind the soil, thus stopping it from being washed away easily; but where there are no trees, the rain falls on hard ground and flows away, causing floods and carrying away the rich top-soil. When all the top-soil is gone, nothing is left but useless desert.

    Living in a foreign culture can be exciting, but it can also be confusing(令人迷惑的). A group of Americans who taught English in other countries recently discussed their experiences. They found that miscommunication was always possible, even over something as simple as "yes" and "no".

    On her first day in Micronesia, an island in the Pacific, Lisa thought people weren't paying any attention to her. The day was hot. She went into a store and asked, "Do you have cold drinks？" The woman there didn't say anything. Lisa repeated the question. Still the woman said nothing. She later learned that the woman had answered her: She had raised her eyebrows(眉毛), which in Micronesia means "yes".

    Jan remembered an experience she had in Bulgaria, a country in Europe. She went to a restaurant that was famous for its cabbage. She asked the waiter, "Do you have cabbage today？" He nodded his head. Jan waited, but the cabbage never came. In that country, a nod means "no".

    Tom had a similar problem when he arrived in India. After explaining something in class, he asked his students if they understood. They answered with many different nods and shakes of the head. He thought some people had not understood, so he explained again. When he asked again, they did the same thing. He soon found out that his students did understand. In India, people nod and shake their heads in different ways depending on where they come from. You have to know where a person is from to understand whether they mean "yes" or "no"．

    Many years ago, my mother read from the book Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey to me. I remember as if it were yesterday, hearing her voice at my side on a cold wintry night. My mother's voice changed my world.

    Long before I could read on my own, she shared with me the strength and beauty of McCloskey's language a story of a little girl and her mother out in nature, co-existing with a mother bear and her own baby. The power of the story, of language and of my mother all came together. And it happened many times after that, over and over. The read aloud made me a reader.

    Years later, I was reading aloud a picture book to a small child in a classroom. His life, so far, had not been easy. His childhood was troubled by poverty and loneliness. In that moment, in the joy of the read aloud, he had an idea that started something big.

    What he said was this: "Mrs. Allyn, let's make sure everyone knows how good this feels. Let's have a holiday for the read aloud" Therefore, my organization, LitWorld, created a grassroots movement World Read Aloud Day in 2010 to honor this young boy's wish for everyone to be able to have a read aloud every day.

    Since the day he shared that good idea with us, World Read Aloud Day has become a worldwide event reaching over one million people in more than 65 countries around the world. This year we are over 600 cities strong, a number that is growing every day.

    Children who grow up as readers become engaged citizens of the global world, and every child deserves the right to read. When I say that reading aloud will change the world, I know it sounds simple. But one of the many great things about giving kids access to the power of stories and sharing them together is that it is simple. It is also cheap and easily done. And the impact is huge.

    We all love bank holidays. In the UK, we only get eight bank holidays in one year, and at least five of those occur around Christmas time and Easter time! A bank holiday is a British English term. This is an official day that is decided by the government, when banks, shops and offices close for the day even though it's a weekday—usually a Monday, and a lot of people have a day off work.

    Bank holidays are different in Colombia -firstly, they are called "festivos". There are twenty festivos for the whole country in one year! In Britain, people get more holiday allowances(津贴)than Colombians but fewer bank holidays. There can be even more festivos in Colombia, depending on which region of Colombia you live in. This is because different regions have their own holidays. For example, some regions have a patron saint(守护神), so they have an extra festivo to celebrate that saint.

    However, there are some days that are national holidays for historical reasons. There is an Independence Day celebration on July 20 every year. This is just like Bastille Day in France on July 14, or Independence Day in the United States on July4. Other important festivos in Colombia are: Labour Day, on May 1, and Columbus Day on October 12. Columbus Day is a historical bank holiday that almost every county on the continent of America celebrates. This includes Colombia, Chile, Peru, Argentina, Mexico and the United States. It is memorialization of the day when the Italian sailor, Christopher Columbus, first reached land on the continent in the year 1492. Many people criticize this day and say it is not something to celebrate because of the way Columbus and his team treated the people that were already living there.

    Free Online Drawing Classes

    Drawing is a skill you can learn at any age. When you are ready, you can learn the basics of drawing by taking one or more of the free online drawing classes offered here. The websites all offer helpful instruction for beginning artists, and many of them offer classes at intermediate (中级的) or high levels. When you use the websites as your art instructors, you can log on to learn whenever you please.

    Artyfactory

    The Artyfactory Art Lessons Gallery offers free online art lessons that include basic drawing classes for pencil, ink and colored pencil. For visitors who want to expand their knowledge of art, the site also offers an Art Appreciation Gallery and a Design Lessons Gallery.

    Academy of Art University

    This free video class from the Academy of Art University called "How to Draw a Head" teaches you how to draw a head from a photo or from memory. The instruction is mainly on facial proportion (比例), expression and drawing basics.

    How to Draw It

    The How to Draw It website offers a simple approach to drawing animals and people. The animal tutorials (教程) are super easy to do, while the people lessons are a bit more difficult. All are free to visitors and making fast progress in your drawing skills is possible.

    Free Online Art Classes

    This site covers a range of art classes, but there are several free drawing tutorials for online learners, including: Learn Basic Drawing, Draw with Pen and Ink, and Learn Colored Pencils. Some of the classes are downloadable and some are in video form.