One talented father created the tag “Dadfact” in an effort to persuade his child into eating their sandwiches using information that might not be completely reliable.

Flying is fine if you want to save time, but nothing beats the railway for a relaxing and down-to-earth journey. The Zhengzhou—Xuzhou and Xi'an—Fuzhou high-speed railways put into operation in September mark a connection of high-speed railways in China's eastern and middle-western regions, and they have brought out some of the country's best landscapes and cuisines.

    Here are four signature dishes(招牌菜) that you shouldn't miss as you travel along the railways.

Yangrou Paomo, Xi'an

    If one dish could represent Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi, locals would tell you without doubt that it's Yangrou Paomo. It is a bowl of lamb soup served with hard flour “bread”, which is broken up and added to the soup. The soup is topped with slices of mutton, scallion(葱) and coriander(香菜). Then it is usually eaten with picked sweet garlic.

Soup Dumpling, Kaifeng

    A popular snack in Kaifeng, Henan, the dish is made up of three things: skin, meat and soup. The skin is made from flour, while the filling is usually pork. And just as its name suggests, the soup dumplings are filled with tasty soup. But how does the steaming hot soup get into the dumplings? It's actually been cooled and cut into cubes, which fit easily into the dough(面团). Along with the pork, the cubes become liquid soup once they're steamed.

Smelly Mandarin Fish, Huangshan

    Despite its name, Smelly Mandarin Fish(臭鳜鱼) is known for its good taste. A lot of travelers who visit Huangshan in Anhui want to taste it because they have heard of its reputation. Once the skin has been removed, the fresh is preserved in salty water for six to seven days, then fried and cooked in soy sauce. Although salting gives the fish its special smell, the original tender flesh is preserved well and given a delicious and unique taste.

Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, Fuzhou

    The dish has enjoyed an over 100-year-long worldwide reputation since it was invented in Fuzhou, Fujian in the late Qing Dynasty(1644-1911). Fotiaoqiang, or Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, got its interesting name from a poem a customer wrote. The poem said the dish was so delicious that upon smelling it, monks in the neighboring temple would jump over the wall to come and get some. Buddha Jumps Over the Wall is made up of many ingredients, including sea cucumber(海参), chicken, pork and mushroom. Because of these ingredients, it tastes extremely delicious while being highly nutritious at the same time.

    Since my retirement (退休) from teaching music in 2001, I have spent a good deal of time painting as an artist. I actually began drawing again in the summer of 1995 when my father died, so perhaps I was trying to recover from the loss of my father, or maybe it was just that it brought back memories of him. In any case, I drew pen and ink animals and landscapes much influenced by Krenkel and St. John for five years.

    For some strange reason, I had been waiting until my retirement to start doing watercolors again, but as soon as I walked out of the school door for the last time I picked up my brushes and rediscovered Andrew Wyeth, who quickly became my favorite artist. I had looked through all the art books I had on my shelves and found his watercolors to be the closest to how I thought good watercolors should look. So I painted landscapes around Minnesota for three years and tried out many other types of painting. However, watercolors remained my first choice, and I think I did my best work there, showing my paintings at a number of art exhibitions.

    Art is now together with my piano playing and reading. There is a time for everything in my world, and it is wonderful to have some time doing what I want to do. As Confucius once said，“At seventy I can follow my heart's desire (渴望).”

    Once when I was facing a decision that involved high risk, I went to a friend. He looked at me for a moment, and then wrote a sentence containing the best advice I've ever had: Be bold and brave and mighty (强大的) forces will come to your help.

    Those words made me see clearly that when I had fallen short in the past, it was seldom because I had tried and failed. It was usually because I had let fear of failure stop me from trying at all. On the other hand, whenever I had jumped into deep water, forced by courage or circumstance (环境), I had always been able to swim until I got my feet on the ground again.

    Boldness means a decision to bite (咬) off more than you can eat. And there is nothing mysterious about the mighty forces. They are inner powers we have: energy, skill, sound judgment, creative ideas––even physical strength greater than most of us realize.

    Admittedly, those mighty forces are spiritual ones. But they are more important than physical ones. A college classmate of mine, Tim, was an excellent football player, even though he weighed much less than the average player. “In one game I suddenly found myself facing a huge player, who had nothing but me between him and our goal line,” said Tim. “I was so frightened that I closed my eyes and crazily threw myself at that guy like a bullet (子弹) ––and stopped him cold.”

Boldness—a willingness to get yourself to the extreme—is not one that can be gained overnight. But it can be taught to children and developed in adults. Confidence builds up. Surely, there will be setbacks (挫折) and disappointments in life; boldness in itself is no guarantee (保证) of success. But the person who tries to do something and fails is a lot better off than the person who tries to do nothing and succeeds.

    So, always try to live a little bit beyond your abilities — and you'll find your abilities are greater than you ever dreamed.

    Happy, angry, amazed—these are some of the emotions we like to express these days when we're sending a message on our smart phones! That's why many of us now add little pictures to our texts to brighten up someone's mobile screen but we're also using them as a quick way of telling someone how we're feeling. Yes, emojis (表情符号) have become a popular tool for communication.

    The emoji was first invented in Japan in the late 1990s and the word "emoji" comes from the Japanese words for "picture" and "character". The number of different images has greatly increased since then and now we have a picture for nearly every mood or situation.

    Why are emojis widely used today? Professor Vyv Evans says, "Increasingly, what we're finding is that digital communication is replacing face-to-face talk in some ways. One of the reasons why emojis are so interesting is that they really do enable us to express our emotional selves much more effectively."

    Another advantage of emojis is that they are an international language—they don't use words but tell a message with pictures so they can be easily understood whatever your native language is.

    But as linguist (语言学家) Neil Cohn says, "To many, emojis are an exciting evolution (进化) of the way we communicate; but to others, they are linguistic Armageddon." It does show by using emojis, there is a lot more to our communication than words alone, but does this also mean that the traditional writing will die out one day?

    Breathing dirty air comes at a high price. Air pollution lowers the average life spans (寿命) by a year worldwide and in more polluted parts of Asia and Africa, dirty air shortens lives up to twice that much. Scientists shared their new findings in Environmental Science & Technology Letters. The study used data gathered in 2016 as part of a project known as the Global Burden of Disease and was the first major country-by-country look at the connection between the length of life and what's known as fine PM.

    Air pollution has been linked to many health problems. Most earlier studies had looked at how tiny air pollutants affected rates of illness or death. Joshua Apte is an environmental scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. By looking at life expectancy (预期寿命), his team had hoped to make the threat easier to understand. PM2.5 is what scientists call tiny particles (颗粒) of pollution in the air. Higher levels of PM2.5 can cause health problems and cut months, if not years, from the average length of life. This analysis shows how pollution affects life expectancy in different parts of the world.

    The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends limiting PM2.5 to 10 micrograms per cubic meter of air. Apte's group calculated how holding pollution to this low level would help people. In countries with very dirty air, meeting this standard would lengthen people's lives. However, in countries whose air already meets this standard, the study shows no gain in life expectancy. In other words, meeting the WHO standard won't reduce health costs resulting from dirty air because even below 10 micrograms per cubic meter, pollution still causes serious risks. Meanwhile, the scientists compared how other threats including smoking and cancer shorten the length of life across the globe.

There is increasing evidence suggesting that ultra-processed food addiction is indeed a significant issue. These foods, which are carefully manufactured in industrial factories rather than in the familiar setting of grandma's kitchen, are filled with altered ingredients that are artfully combined to enhance fat, sugar, and salt levels. Moreover, they contain a lots of flavor and sensory enhancers, which render them irresistibly appealing. Examples of ultra-processed foods range from packaged snacks to fast food and mass-produced desserts. In fact, they account for nearly 60 percent of the calories consumed in the United States.

Studies have revealed that up to 20 percent of adults and 15 percent of kids and adolescents might exhibit signs of addiction to these foods, a phenomenon that has been recognized for decades as rat studies in the 1980s demonstrated that the brain's reward system is powerfully activated when rats consume certain foods, a reaction similar to that when they self-administer cocaine.

In recent years, as the obesity rate in America has soared to 42 percent, especially among Black and Hispanic populations, scientists have been devoting increased attention to the impact of ultra-processed food addiction. These foods not only activate the brain's reward system but also may involve the gut-microbiology. Symptoms of craving and withdrawal are clearly evident with ultra-processed foods. People will go to great lengths to obtain these foods, and when they are refused, they may experience a series of discomforts such as headaches, fatigue, and irritability(易怒的). A study in 2022 found that ultra-processed foods meet the same addiction criteria as tobacco products.

High consumption of ultra-processed foods is linked to numerous health problems, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, depression, anxiety, and an increased risk of death. Thin people can also be addicted, perhaps burning off the extra calories through exercise or having a genetic predisposition(易患病体质) not to gain weight easily. Food companies argue against denying these foods, but experts advocate for clear nutritional labels and restrictions on marketing to children. Treating food addictions remains an open question, but there is hope that people will become more aware of the dangers, just as they did with smoking.