China is the biggest market in the world, and many countries such as Germany, the USA, the UK and Russia do a lot of business in China. Let's have a look at some important tips to help you be successful when dealing with these nationalities.

    First, you must be punctual (准时的) with Germans. Even 5 minutes late makes a bad impression. Being punctual is also very important in the USA. In the UK, it's important to be punctual for business meetings, but nobody expects you to be on time for a social event. Half past seven really means a quarter to eight, or even eight o'clock! With Russians, you should always be on time, though it is not unusual for them to be one or even two hours late!

    It is best to dress formally and wear dark colours when you meet people from all the four countries. In Russia, designer clothes are very common. Don't be surpri if you go to an office in the UK on a Friday and find everyone wearing jeans. Many companies have “dress down Friday”, when people wear casual (随便的) clothes.

    In Germany, first names are only used by family members and close friends, so be prepared to use titles and last names. In the USA you will usually be invited to use first names almost immediately. The British are quite informal and using first names in business is more and more common, especially among younger people. In Russia, however, nobody uses first names, so use titles and last names.

    In conversation, the British and the Americans value humour, and both like to talk about sport. The weather is also a good topic of conversation with the British and the Americans, but avoid talking about politics. In Russia, say positive（肯定的） things about their country, but avoid making complaints. The Germans, however, prefer to get straight down to business!

    So, use these tips, and you will be on your way to a successful international business career!

    When I was eight or nine years old, I wrote my first poem.

My mother read the little poem and began to cry. "Buddy, you didn't really write this beautiful, beautiful poem!" Shyly, I said that I had. My mother poured out her welcome praise. Why, this poem was nothing short of genius!

What time will Father be home?" I asked. I could hardly wait to show him what I had accomplished. My mother said she hoped he would be home around 7. I spent the best part of that afternoon preparing for his arrival. First, I wrote the poem out in my finest handwriting. Then I used colored pens to draw a border around it. Then I confidently placed it right on my father's plate on the dining table. But my father did not return at 7, Seven-fifteen, Seven-thirty. My father had begun his motion-picture career as a writer. He would be able to appreciate my poem even more than my mother.

    It was almost 8 o'clock when my father burst in. He was an hour late, but he could not sit down. I can see him now, a big Havana cigar in one hand, the rapidly disappearing drink in the other, calling down bitter words on his employees.

    Suddenly, he paused and glared at his plate. There was a silence. He was reaching for my poem. I lowered my head and stared down into my plate.

"What is this?" I heard him say.

"Ben, a wonderful thing has happened," my mother said. "Buddy has written his first poem. And it's beautiful, absolutely amazing".

"If you don't mind, I'd like to decide that for myself," Father said.

I kept my face lowered to my plate. It was only 10 lines long. But it seemed to take hours. I remember wondering why it was taking so long. I could hear him dropping the poem back on the table again. Now was the moment of decision.

"I think it's bad," my father said.

    I couldn't look up. My eyes were getting wet.

"Ben, sometimes I don't understand you," my mother was saying. "This is just a little boy. You're not in your studio now. These are the first lines of poetry he's ever written. He need encouragement."

"I don't know why," my father held his ground. "Isn't there enough bad poetry in the world already? No law says Buddy has to become a poet."

    I couldn't stand it another second. I ran from the dining room, threw myself on the bed and cried.

    That may have been the end of the anecdote(轶事) — but not of its significance for me.

    A few years later I took a second look at that first poem, and unwillingly I had to agree with my father's tough judgment. It was a pretty bad poem. After a while, I worked up the courage to show him something new, a short story. My father thought it was overwritten but not hopeless. I was learning to rewrite. And my mother was learning that she could disapprove of me without ruining me. You might say we were all learning. I was going on 12.

As I worked my way into other books and plays and films, it became clearer and clearer to me how fortunate I had been to have had a mother who said, "Buddy, it's wonderful!" and a father who shook his head no and drove me to tears with his, "I think it's bad." In fact all of us in life need that mother force, the loving force from which all creation flows; and yet the mother force alone is incomplete, even misleading, finally damaging, without the father force to caution, "Watch. Listen. Review. Improve." Between the two poles of affirmation (肯定) and doubt, both in the name of love, I try to follow my true course.

    Maybe ten-year-old Elizabeth put it best when she said to her father. “But, Dad, you can't be healthy if you're dead.”

    Dad, in a hurry to get home before dark so he could go for a run, had forgotten to wear his safety belt — a mistake 11.5% of the US population make every day, according to a survey in 2015.

    The percentage doesn't seem so bad, but the big question is why still so many people ignore it when every day there are reports about car accidents and casualties (a death toll of 37461 in 2016).

    There have been many myths about safety belts ever since their first appearance in cars some forty years ago. The following are three of the most common.

    Myth Number One: It's best to be “thrown clear”of a serious accident.

    Truth: Sorry, but any accident serious enough to “throw you clear”is also going to be serious enough to give you a very bad landing. And chances are you'll have traveled through a windshield (挡风玻璃) or door to do it. Studies show that chances of dying after a car accident are twenty-five times greater in cases where people are “thrown clear.”

    Myth Number Two: Safety belts “trap” people in cars that are burning or sinking in water.

    Truth: Sorry again. but studies show that people knocked unconscious (昏迷) due to not wearing safety belts have a greater chance of dying in these accidents People wearing safety belts are usually protected to the point of having a clear head to free themselves from such dangerous situations, not to be trapped in them.

    Myth Number Three: Safety belts aren't needed at speeds of less than 30 miles an hour (mph).

    Truth: When two cars traveling at 30 mpb hit each other, an unbelted driver would meet the windshield with a force equal to diving headfirst into the ground from a height of 10 meters.

    As the parent of a 7-year-old boy, sometimes I feel like "no" is my most frequently said word. But if I look honestly at the big picture of my daily vocabulary, I probably would conclude that it actually contains too much "yes". Saying yes means opening myself up to new experiences, inviting new or deeper relationships. But too much "yes" leaves any of us feeling anxious, overcommitted（过分受约束的）and powerless to set and maintain boundaries in our lives.

    This had been on my mind when The Book of No: 365 Ways to Say It and Mean It－and Stop People-Pleasing.

    Forever came across my desk. The new edition of this decade-old book by psychologist Susan Newman is a must-read book for those of us who struggle to say "no" with authenticity, confidence and kindness.

    Newman calls people who feel forced to say yes all their way through life "people-pleasers". The chief symptoms of this condition include associating helping others with your self-respect, holding expectations that you will care for others and feeling unwilling to state your own needs when a request comes your way. For people-pleasers, "yes is the path of least resistance and the way to avoid damaging your relationship with the asker," Newman writes.

    The book offers brief dialogues for hundreds of scenarios in which "no" is the right answer, for reasons ranging from time management to financial pressures to emotional boundaries. Newman considers what came about among friends, at work, within families and in parenting. Reading through the scenarios, I realized they have some things in common－things that immediately started helping me improve my "no" skills.

    Do you think this book might be helpful to you? It's OK if the answer is "no", but I do highly recommend it for your Positive Reading List shelf.

    Government in Tibet have denied the permanent( 永久的) closure of Mount Qomolangma National Nature Reserve.

    The announcement came after a report went viral online claiming the base camp of the world's highest mountain was "permanently closed due to heavy pollution" and caused a universal misunderstanding.

    Mount Qomolangma National Nature Reserve was set up in 1988. Covering an area of more than 33, 800 square km, it is home to one of the world's most weak ecosystems(生态系统).

    Kelsang, deputy director of the reserves administration, said ordinary tourists are allowed to visit areas around Rongpo Monastery, almost 5,000 meters above sea level. As for travelers who have a climbing permit, they can go to the base camp at an altitude of 5,200 meters. The mountaineering activities have been permitted by the regional forestry department.

    To conserve the environment surrounding Mount Qomolangma, China carried out three major clean-ups at an altitude of 5, 200 meters and above last spring, collecting eight tonnes of household wastes, human wastes and mountaineering trash. This year, the clean-up will continue, and the remains of mountaineering victims(受害者) above 8,000 meters will be centrally dealt  with for the first  time. Meanwhile, the number of people who stay at the base camp will be kept under 300.

Recently, there are 85 wildlife protectors in the reserve, and 1,000 herders have part-time jobs going around and cleaning up garbage.

These measures aim to strike a balance between various demands such as environmental protection, local poverty relief, mountaineering and education, said Wang Shen, county chief of Dingri at the mountain foot.

The ancient Herculaneum scrolls (卷轴)are thought to contain works of important thinkers in ancient Greece. But the scrolls can't be unrolled (打开). Even a light wind threatens to reduce them to dust. The reason is that they were turned into carbon by a natural disaster in A.D. 79.

But now researchers from the University of Kentucky have found a way to look inside the scrolls without having to touch them. They first create a light that is 10 billion times brighter than the sun by taking advantage of a machine. Then they will use the light to go through the Herculaneum scrolls to study and finally read the words recorded on the scrolls. Researchers think it might take them six months to read the scrolls.

This isn't the first time researchers have tried to read the Herculaneum scrolls. Several years ago, scientists from the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) worked on uncovering the mystery using an X-ray beam 100 billion times brighter than anything used in a hospital, This didn't allow scientists to actually read the scrolls, but it allowed them to make one surprising discovery. The scrolls were written in metallic (金属的) ink, a writing technology that scientists didn't know existed at the time the scrolls were penned.

"For a long time, we thought our studies have let us know everything about the ancient ink used to write on scrolls. Now we find it's not the case. This shows that we should tell ourselves it may not be true when thinking we fully know something once some research is done," said Daniel Delattre, one of the study's authors.

The finding wasn't just a historical curiosity. To learn just how special these scrolls are, consider that the thinker Chrysippus in ancient Greece is said to have written over 700 works; but all are lost, with the exception of a few works found in the Herculaneum scrolls. In other words, it's possible that these scrolls represent the only existing complete works left by this great thinker. And who knows what other great works could exist in the scrolls?