B

    Some people like to collect stamps. Others prefer posters or coins. But Pinky Bhutia is different. She collects children. In her mountain village, in Sikkim, she is known as the wonderful young woman who adopts(领养) all the children she can.

    Pinky was 14 when she adopted her first child, a Nepali baby girl, whose patents passed away. Pinky's parents did not mind. Pinky left school and started working full time because she had a baby to feed. Today, she has twelve adopted children, and two sons from her marriage.

    Pinky is about 30 years old and she comes from a common family. If you passed her on the street, you wouldn't give her a second look. She lives in a brown mud-washed(泥刷的) house. There is a vegetable garden outside. Red hens with noisy chicks run all over the garden looking for food.

    If you ask her why she provides a home to so many kids, she smiles shyly. But her eyes are serious. “I know what it is to be poor and hungry.” As a child, her only dream was to eat a full meal, and her favorite amusement was watching people with shoes and imagining what it felt like. By adopting poor and homeless children she is making sure that they never feel that hopeless.

    Pinky feels very proud when she sees her children happy and bright, Her oldest baby, Aarita Rai, is now 20 years old, Then, there is  19-year-old Nimbe who came to Pinky because her mother was unable to look after her. She started to work in a government office two years ago. Ten-year-old Bhim and 14-year-old Kumar came to Pinky five years ago, after their father's death. They started living on a patch of land given by Pinky and grew vegetables for sale.

    “I like children. It's not one more mouth to feed but one more soul saved,” Pinky says.

    It's seven o'clock in the morning in Chennai, India Lavin always has her morning bath before school. But she doesn't have a bath at home. She has a bath in a small river outside with her best friend, a baby elephant.

    Lavin lives at Arignar Anna Zoo with her parents, brothers and sisters. Her father works at the zoo and he is a special keeper for the baby elephants. Lavin is only six years old, but she can control(控制)the elephants and she has a very special friendship with them.

    At eight o'clock in the morning, Lavin goes to school, but she doesn't go on the school bus. She rides an elephant to school. After school, Lavin plays football with her elephants.

    Now it is the evening, and the baby elephants are tired Lavin sits next to them and sings to them. Sometimes, they all sleep together-friends together in the day and friends together at night.

    A father and his son went to a kite-flying festival. The son was full of joy when he saw the sky filled with colorful kites. He wanted to fly a kite, too. The father then bought a kite for him.

    The son started to fly the kite. Soon, his kite was high up in the sky. After a while, he said, "Father, it seems that the string (线) is stopping the kite from flying higher. If we cut it, the kite will be free and fly even higher. Can we cut it?" The father cut the string. The kite started to go higher. This made the little boy happy.

    But then, slowly, the kite started to come down. And finally it fell to the ground. The son was surprised to see this. He asked his father, "I thought that after cutting the string, the kite would fly higher. Why did it fall down?"

    The father explained, "The string was not stopping the kite from going higher, but was helping it stay in the sky. You helped the kite go up in the right direction using the string. But when you cut the string, it could no longer support the kite."

    Sometimes, we may feel like there are certain things that are holding us back (阻碍) and stopping us growing. But in fact, these might be the things that support us the most.

I'm Linda. In my home, there's a black and white thing. We call it Xiaodu. When you say " Xiaodu, Xiaodu", it says to you,"I'm here!" When you say" Good morning!" it says," Good morning!" to you.

 In the morning, it is my clock. When it's 7:00, it tells me the time.

 For my mom, Xiaodu is a library. It reads books to her every day.

 My brother is 3 years old. He often asks Xiaodu for help," What's a telephone?"" What's a tape player?"… For him, Xiaodu is a dictionary.

 Xiaodu is our good friend. We love it. Oh, where is it? It's on the TV set now.

Pormpawee is a fan of traditional Chinese culture. She is among thousands of young people in Thailand who have learned Mandarin（普通话）. And she has been watching Mandarin in a creative way. making learning more enjoyable

In recent years, more young people in Thailand are trying to learn about China through social media, movies and TV programs, and hanfu is very popular with Pompawee's students. That's where she has got her new idea of teaching. She shares with them this latest Chinese fashion(时尚)in class, helping them learn about the culture as well as the language itself. 

Mandarin is like a key. helping me to open the door to understand China, "she said. Pormpawee developed a love for the Chinese language at the age of 13. When she was in high school, she made an important decision—learning Mandarin at college. Now35-year-oldPormpawee has taught Mandarin for over 10 years. 

Pornpawee visited China for the first time while she was in the university. She found Chinese food so great. Before travelling to China, Pornpawee had only heard of a few Chinese dishes, such as hot pot and jiaozi. She was amazed by the kinds, the tastes and the Chinese ways of cooking. "Chinese people are very kind to foreigners. During my first visit to China, my Chinese friends and their families always took good care of me and kept asking whether I was used to the life, "she recalled(回忆) . 

So far, Pormpawee has visited several Chinese cities, "China is such a large country, "she said. "My trip to China will never end and I'd like to introduce more to people of my country. "