Mary is an American girl. She is now in Beijing with her parents. She doesn‘t know Chinese, but she is trying to study and speak it .She often tries to speak Chinese to her Chinese friends. Sometimes they don't understand (理解 )her, because she can't speak Chinese well.

    It's Saturday morning. Mary goes out. She is on her way to the park. She is going there to see a flower show But she doesn't know how to get there. She asks a Chinese boy. The boy can't understand her. Then she takes out a pen and some paper. She draws some flowers on it, gives the picture to the boy and says something about it. The boy smiles and then shows ( 指 ) Mary the way to the park.

    Helen Keller lived in the U.S.A. She was a great woman.

    When Helen was a baby, she got very sick. After many weeks, the doctor said, “She is better, but now she can't see or can't hear.” Her mother and father were very sad.

    After a few years, things got worse. There was no way for Helen to speak with other people. She heard nothing. She saw nothing. She didn't understand anything.

    Then one day a teacher came to live with Helen and her family. The teacher helped Helen learn about words. Helen was a very bright child and soon she learned to spell her first word. When she was older, she went to college(大学).

Helen was very famous. She helped many blind(盲) and deaf(聋) people. She traveled around the world and helped many people.

    Helen was a very old woman when she died. The world remembers her today as a brave and wonderful person. She was blind and deaf, but she found a way to see and hear.

    Can you write down a Chinese word being read to you? Sometimes it can be difficult when you find the word is not included in most dictionaries.

    Lu Jialei, 14, from Hangzhou Foreign Language School, won the CCTV Chinese Character (汉字) Spelling Contest on Oct 18^th, 2013. About 160 people competed. The host read a word to the contestant, explained its meaning and gave sample sentences. The contestant was required to write down the word.

    Winning the contest was a “surprise” to Lu. “I was not the smartest one,” she said. “But I paid attention to details.” To prepare for the contest, she and her teammates studied the Modern Chinese Dictionary for 10 days. There are more than 56,000 entries (词条) including characters, words and phrases in it. She also had a secret weapon. She studied how Chinese characters were formed.

    “When others paid attention to the plot of a story, she looked at how authors use words and sentences to express themselves,” said Su Yunsheng, Lu's Chinese teacher. Su is happy to see students like Lu find the beauty of Chinese language.

    “Besides using something Chinese and having Chinese traditional festivals, learning to write Chinese characters is also an important part of inheriting (传承) Chinese culture,” said Su.

    In the 1920s, the airlines were just beginning. It was unusual for people to travel by air because it was expensive and dangerous. In those days, there were no flight attendants (服务生) to look after the passengers. Young men, or “stewards” helped the passengers onto the airplane and carried the passengers' bags but they did not provide food and drinks. But then in 1930, a woman called Ellen Church invented the “stewardess”.

    Ellen Church was born in 1904 on a farm in Iowa. She was a different child. She didn't want to work on a farm or marry a farmer. She wanted a more adventurous (冒险的) life. Ellen studied to be a nurse at the University of Minnesota and then got a job in a hospital. For the next few years she stayed at the hospital and at the same time took flying lessons and got her pilot's license.

    Ellen was 25 years old when she first got in touch with BAT (Boeing Air Transport). She loved flying but she understood that airlines were a man's world. Though women like Emelia Earheart were becoming famous, she realized it was impossible for a woman to have a career as a pilot. But she had another idea. Most people were afraid of flying because flying was still not a very safe way to travel. There were often delays (延误), many crashes and the bad weather made many passengers sick. Ellen thought nurses could take care of passengers during flights and BAT agreed.

    The young woman from Iowa and seven other nurses became the first air stewardesses.

    At first pilots were unhappy because they did not want stewardesses on airplanes, but passengers loved the stewardesses. In 1940 there were around 1000 of them working for different airlines. The early “stewardesses” had to be under twenty-five-year-old, single and slim. When a woman joined an airline, she had to promise not to get married or have children. It was a hard job and not well paid. They worked long hours and was paid $1 an hour.

    In the 1970s, stewardesses were unhappy in their job and airlines had to make some changes. Since the 1970s, “stewardesses” have been called flight attendants. They are well paid and work fewer hours than in the past.