A short Chinese man is one of the biggest men in the world right now. He is Jack Ma (Ma Yun), the Chairman（董事局主席）of Alibaba Group. On Sept. 19,2014, Alibaba went public（上市）and raised $25 billion（十亿）. Ma, a former English teacher, has become the richest man in China.

    Born in 1964 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, Ma grew up as a happy kid. When he was a teenager, he wanted to learn English. Every morning, he got up at 5a.m, rode his bike for 40 minutes to a hotel near the West Lake and talked with foreign tourists in English. He did it for nine years, rain or shine.

    The experience made him an excellent English speaker and also opened his eyes to the outside world. In 1994, Ma Yun heard about the Internet. And on a 1995 trip to the US, Ma was shown the Internet for the first time. He searched the word “beer” on Yahoo, and found that there was nothing there about China. Seeing the chance, Ma returned to China and set up a website called China Pages without even knowing much about computers.

    Four years later, Ma, his wife and his friends set up Alibaba in Hangzhou. He believed in the Internet business potential（潜力）when few other Chinese did, 15 years later, Alibaba has developed into the world's largest e-commerce company（电子商务公司），owning popular shopping websites like Taobao and Tmall.

    Jane Browning works in a busy hospital (医院) in Boston, USA. On weekdays, she usually gets up at six o'clock in the morning and has a shower. Then she goes to work at seven o'clock.

Her husband (丈夫), David usually gets up at seven o'clock. He is a science teacher. They have one son. His name is Andy. Andy is thirteen. He goes to school at seven thirty in the morning with his father.

    After Jane gets to the hospital, she talks to her patients and asks how they are. Then she meets the new patients. At about one o'clock in the afternoon she has lunch.

Usually Jane gets home at six o'clock in the evening and she is very tired (疲倦的). But she loves her job, because she likes helping people.

    Barbara Finch, from England, started a friendship with Elizabeth Martin from New Zealand when the two were just 14 years old. And they have been penfriends for the past seventy years.

    "Seventy years is a long time and such a lot has happened," says Barbara. "I've lost my husband and my son, and she's lost her husband and her daughter. With things like that, her friendship means a lot to me."

    The two started writing letters to each other in November 1947. At that time, Barbara was a pupil. In her school, there was an exchange teacher from New Zealand. She helped her students to find penfriends from her country. Among the many penfriends, Barbara and Elizabeth were the only pair to form a long-term friendship.

    Now both 84, the pair continue to send weekly emails to tell each other about their daily lives. Barbara, who's a proud great-grandmother, has kept every single letter and card Elizabeth sent her over the years.

    "We email each other now rather than write letters, partly because it's quicker but mostly because there's no cost," Barbara says.

    The pair not only write to each other, but they also meet face to face. They have visited each other 15 times—Barbara flying to New Zealand 10 times and Elizabeth flying to England 5 times.

    "Her family has become a second family to me. She says I am the sister she never had," Barbara says.

    David walked down the street. All he wanted to do was to play basketball with Jim. But his mother told him to return his sister's books to the library on his way to Jim's house.

    In his eyes, books and summertime just don't go together. He thought he had read a lot during the school year. And he had never set foot inside a public library. Today he'd just drop the books off in the outside return box, but it was locked. He had to go inside to return them.

David walked inside the building a few minutes before closing time. He put the books into the return box. After a quick drink of water and a short stop in the toilet, he'd be on his way to meet Jim. He walked out of the toilet. The library lights were turned off. He was locked — in a library.

    David tried to use the telephone, but he couldn't find one. As the sun began to set, he searched for a light and found a little one on the desk. He used a pencil to write a note on a big piece of paper. It read," I'm locked inside. Please call for help." He put it on the front door. Surely, someone passing by would see it. He then turned his attention to the library itself.

    He was surprised to discover that this place was not so bad. Rows and rows of books! When he saw a book about Michael Jordan on the desk, he picked it up. He opened the book and began to read. He felt that being locked in the library didn't seem to be such a terrible thing.

    Hi, I'm Tina. I'm a student in Grade One. I have a twin brother, and his name is Tom. We are in the same class. We go to school together every day and we know each other very well.

    Tom likes music very much, and he likes JJ Lin's songs best. He wants to be a singer like him when he grows up (长大). After dinner, Tom tells me he wants to go to JJ Lin's concert tomorrow, but we have lessons. So he calls our teacher Mrs. Green on the phone.

    "Hello, Mrs. Green," Tom says, "Tom is ill and needs to stay at home tomorrow." "I'm sorry to hear that," says Mrs. Green. "Who is that?"

    "This is my mother, Mrs. Green."