Control your house from your hand. Download(下载)a film in just one second. Print a mobile phone at home. These are just a few technologies that we may see this year. Let's take a look at a few of them.

    Smart Screens

    This year, smart screens will be big news. They use AI technology and look like an iPad. Google Home Hub is a good example. It is a smart screen that people can use for everything from looking up video recipes(菜谱)to looking at family photos. You can also connect your other smart devices(设备)to Home Hub through the Internet. You can turn on lights or the TV simply by speaking to Home Hub or touching a button(按钮)on the screen.

    5G Internet

    How fast is your mobile phone network? After 3G and 4G, 5G is on the way. According to Science Daily, it is hoped that the US will test 5G this year, while the UK will do so in 2020. China has already tested 5G in some parts of Beijing and Hebei.

    5G is very fast. Its speed is about 10 to 20 times faster than networks now, the BBC noted. You can download a whole film in just one second with 5G. This used to take a few minutes with 4G networks.

    3DMetal Printing

    3D printing isn't new. It first came out in the 1990s. But it isn't commonly used in everyday l life. 3D printers are expensive, each costing thousands of dollars. In addition, they can only print plastics and other basic materials.

    But now, some 3D printers can print metal. HP can print some small metal parts for cars, such as key rings and gear sticks(操作杆). People can use 3D printing to make things like toys. But what if people could print these at home? This would help save time and money. More people might think about buying their own 3D printers.

    For Miller, an 80-year-old man, it's a chance of a lifetime. Miller is a part of a group of around 60 Germans who are on a bus journey along the ancient Silk Road.

    About this journey, he says:“I have been deeply interested in the Silk Road since I was a child. But now I finally have a chance to experience it.”

    The two-month bus journey will take the group through Germany, Russia and other 4 European countries. They will then enter China from the country's western part. It will be an unforgettable memory for them.

    Nearly half of the 13,000-kilometer trip will be inside China. From Xinjiang in the west to Shanghai in the east, the German visitors will see more than 20 Chinese cities. "We have managed the trip of the Silk Road for around 10 years. An increasing number of people, not only from German-speaking countries, have been joining us." Says Liu Guoqiang from China Tours.

    Almost 26 million foreigners traveled to China in 2015, and about 5 million of them were from Europe. Beijing, Xi'an, Shanghai and the Yangtze River are traditional Chinese travel destinations for European tourists. Speaking of where he wants to go, Miller says: "Compared with modern cities, the culture in western China attracts me more."

As Shi Xiang, head of China Tours says "Being a new brand to attract foreign visitors, the Silk Road is good for people to know more about China, especially the northwestern part of the country.”

    Zheng He was an amazing man. He was born in 1371. Ten years later, he was caught by the army of a rich young man called Zhu Di and made to work for him. Over time the rich man saw that Zheng He was very clever and strong and they became close friends. In 1403 Zhu Di became the king of China and he asked Zheng He to join his government.

    The king wanted to learn more about the world and show other countries his power. He ordered many new ships to be built and made Zheng He their leader. Between 1405 and 1433, Zheng He led some sea trips to different parts of the world. He certainly travelled to India, Africa and the Middle East. A few people think his ships have even reached South America and Australia.

    Each trip lasted more than one year and it is believed he sailed more than 50,000 kilometres during the years of his travels. Zheng He led a fleet with about 28, 000 men and over 250 ships, such as boats for food, water and even soldiers horses.

    On these trips he took many Chinese goods like silk and medicine with him to give to foreign kings or to sell for local goods. He returned from each trip with boats which were filled with expensive things such as gold and treasures, foreign guests and strange animals like a giraffe.

    It is a pity that we may never learn everything about Zheng He's travels. The Columbus of the East, Zheng He, died in 1433. After that. The new king had these trips stopped and he burned almost all the books about Zheng He's travels, because he believed the trips were unlucky and too expensive. It is only in the last 50 years that historians have begun to carefully study the adventures of great Zheng He.

    When you write a text message or an email, you might put a smiling face or other pictures at the end to make the message more fun. These pictures are emojis. The first emojis were on Japanese mobile phones in the 1990s. Later, they were used on Apple's iPhone and Android phones. Now they are everywhere!

Before emojis, there were emoticons. The word is a mixture(混合) of emotion(感情) and icon(图标). Emoticons are made of the signs you can find on your keyboard, for example:) for a smiley or @};—for a rose. The first use of :-)was in 1982 and it was called "joke marker". Emoji is a Japanese word which means pictograph: e(picture) +moji (character). Emojis are real pictures, for example ，or . There are 1851emojis that can be used on mobile phones and other devices. There are all kinds of emojis, from faces and weather to things in the kitchen and animal.

    In England, we have a saying: A picture paints a thousand words. For many people, an emoji is like a punctuation mark(标点). It's like the tone of voice when we speak on the phone, or hand movements(gestures) used in conversation. Emojis are also changing the way we write. The more we use emojis, the less we use slang(俚语), such as LOL or OMG.

    When someone speaks and looks serious, we try to look serious, too, and when someone smiles, we smile as well. This is how we show empathy(同感) and make friends(and enemies!). But when we're online, we can't see the person's face and there's no emotion. The invention of emojis changed that! Scientists in Australia have discovered that when we look at a smiley face online, the same parts of the brain start working as when we look at a real smiley face. Our mood changes, and we try to change our face to match the emoji. This is something we learn as we get older. Our brains have developed this ability over the last two or three years. This means that emojis have created a new brain pattern(模式)in us!

    XBOX 360 Kinetic, RoboSapien, WiiParty, these are just a few of the modern toys sold in recent years. But some of the most popular toys are actually quite old.

Games have been around for thousands of years. In 4000 B. C, Babylonians played a board game that was similar to chess. Yo-yos made of stone were first used in ancient Greece around 1000 B C. And kites appeared in China around the same time.

    Another famous game is Scrabble. It was invented by an architect in the 1930s, but it didn't get popular until 1953 And since then, more than 100 million sets have been sold worldwide.

    As you can imagine, toys and games are a multi-billion-dollar industry. Mr. Potato Head, the first toy advertised on TV, grossed more than $4 million in its first year. Play-Doh made its inventor Joseph McVicker a millionaire by his 27th birthday, while Mattel sells 1. 5 million Barbie dolls each week (that's two dolls each second!).

    Some toys go out of fashion, but then become popular again, such as Rubik's Cube. Research says parents are increasingly choosing to buy toys they remember from their own childhood.

    These days, toys are not just for fun. RoboSapien is a remote-controlled robot that was launched in 2004. He can walk, turn around and do other poses. RoboSapien was designed by Mark Tilden, who once created robots for NASA space missions. He expected the toy to be used mostly by and scientists, but almost 2 million RoboSapiens have been sold worldwide since its launch as a toy?

    Fancy a game anyone?