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    The Mandarin version of The Sound of Music will return to Beijing from Aug 18 to Sept 3,after its first tour of the country last year.Performed first in July 2016,the musical,produced by Seven Ages,a Beijing-based company devoting to adapting classical Western musicals into Chinese versions,has been staged more than 100 times and attracted over 100,000 people.

    The Broadway show,based on the book The Trapp Family Singers,which was written by Maria Von Trapp about her real-life experiences and published in 1949,made its debut in 1959.With music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II,it won five Tony Awards,including Best Musical.When the Oscar-winning film with the same title was screened in China in the 1970s,the movie,which was released by Twentieth Century Fox in 1964,was very popular,especially its songs,such as Do-Re-Mi and Edelweiss.The Broadway production and the production by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber both toured China in 2008 and 2014,which expanded its Chinese fan base.

    The upcoming tour will see actors,including 11-year-old Beijinger Qiu Jiahao and 5-year-old Liang Xiaoxian, play the seven children in the family.Fu Zhenhua,a graduate of the Shanghai Theater Academy,and Dang Wenwei,a graduate of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music,will play the roles of Captain Georg von Trapp and Maria Rainer.

    "My favorite aspect of this musical is the way it takes a look at various kinds of love we experience as human beings and even the love of things spiritual and unexplainable.And that is what I like most about The Sound of Music－it really is the sound of love," says Graves,a veteran Broadway director,who has lived and worked in China since 2002.

    After Beijing,the musical will be staged in Shenzhen in December and Shanghai next January.

If you go

    7:30 pm,Aug 18-Sept 3.Poly Theater,14 Dongzhimen Nandajie,Dongcheng district,Beijing,400-028-2577.

    I was never very neat, while my roommate Kate was extremely organized. Each of her objects had its place, but mine always hid somewhere. She even labeled（贴标签）everything. I always looked for everything. Over time, Kate got neater and I got messier. She would push my dirty clothing over, and I would lay my books on her tidy desk. We both got tired of each other.

    War broke out one evening. Kate came into the room. Soon, I heard her screaming. “Take your shoes away! Why under my bed!” Deafened, I saw my shoes flying at me. I jumped to my feet and started yelling. She yelled back louder.

    The room was filled with anger. We could not have stayed together for a single minute but for a phone call. Kate answered it. From her end of the conversation, I could tell right away her grandma was seriously ill. When she hung up, she quickly crawled（爬）under her covers, sobbing.

    Obviously, that was not something she should not go through alone. All of a sudden, a warm feeling of sympathy rose up in my heart.

    Slowly, I collected the pencils, took back the books, made my bed, cleaned the socks and swept the floor, even on her side. I got so into my work that I even didn't notice Kate had sat up. She was watching, her tears dried and her expression one of disbelief. Then, she reached out her hands to grasp mine. I looked up into her eyes. She smiled at me, “Thanks.”

    Kate and I stayed roommates for the rest of the year. We didn't always agree, but we learned the key to living together: giving in, cleaning up and holding on.

    Have you got teenage children between 12 and 17? Will they jump at the idea to go to South Africa too? Well, let me help you here. I will give you some great ideas about what teenagers can do in Cape Town and give you reasons why a stay in Cape Town will be cool for them too.

    You will read where to find really interesting activities and how much money you will have to pay for them and also how your children can gain as many great experiences as possible when holidaying or even living in Cape Town.

    Mad about Football — not only for Soccer Fans

Where: Cape Town Stadium (体育场), 15 mins from Cape Town's central business district (CBD). The new visitor center offers several tours. How much does it cost? R45.6 for adults or kids over 12, R17.1 for kids up to 12 and R11.4 per student for school groups. The Biodiversity Garden next to the stadium is interesting as well and can be added into tour at an additional cost.

    Theme Park with more than 23 rides and roller coasters (过山车)

Where: Ratanga Junction, Century City, 20 mins north of Cape Town CBD. Costs: R75 for kids under 1.3m and R152 for kids over 1.3m or adults, open only on school holidays and public holidays.

    Sandboarding

    Where: Atlantis, 45 mins north of Cape Town CBD. Costs: R595 for a half day of fun in the sand.

    Ice skating

    Where: Grand West Casino Complex, Goodwood, 20 mins east of Cape     Town CBD Costs:R35 (including skates)

    Enjoy mini golf

    Where: Several places around Cape Town CBD. Muizenberg Beach Promenade, Green Point Promenade, Durbanville Vodacom Golf Driving Range or try Cave Golf at the V&A Waterfront next to Scratch Patch. Costs: R8.

    Go bowling

    Where: Several places around Cape Town CBD. Costs: R25.

    How about climbing walls

    Where: Observatory, 20 mins south of Cape Towm CBD. Costs: R50.

    I traveled to London, England in the spring of 2016. Actually, I traveled with CAPA International Education on a study program. At that time, I did a full three­month program but I traveled on weekends and during breaks.

    I used to live in a small town outside New York. The idea of big cities has always excited me and I wanted to take advantage of that once­in­a­lifetime opportunity. It was a great opportunity for me to see how independent I could be in another country, because I hope to travel a lot more in the future.

    I lived in a flat in Ealing Broadway with several other students from different American schools. The biggest surprise I found there was the culture shock I experienced. I had expected traveling to London to be an easy transition (转变) for me because I thought their culture was close to that of America. But you know the language and the people were greatly different from what I had expected. They had different accents. In fact, they were noisy and more free­thinking than most Americans I knew.

    However, I tried to take part in their giant Chinese New Year celebration in Trafalgar Square. I went to several Jewish society holiday celebrations and actively participated in any cultural activities I knew at that time. It was great to be able to truly put myself in their culture. These are experiences I couldn't get anywhere else.

    I would suggest people hoping to follow in my footsteps not let anything hold them back from exploring the foreign cultures presented to them. Yes, you are there for school, but your number one priority (优先) is yourself. So make sure you go home with no regrets. Do not miss anything!

When Zhi Yueying,then 19,went to the remote Niyang village in Yichun City,Jiangxi Province,to work as a village teacher in 1980,villagers were doubtful if she was going to stay long.

Over the past four decades,Zhi has devoted herself to rural education.She is a recipient of Touching China awards that recognize the most inspiring role models in 2016.She was also awarded as a model poverty fighter by the government.Zhi has a profound understanding of the importance of education in the mountains.Over the years,she has taught the students and cared for them,since many of them were "left-behind" children whose parents migrated to other places to work.More than 1,000 students of hers have left the mountain area,and created a better life for themselves.

Located amid the mountains,the village was very poor and far from any town.Villagers had to hike in the mountains."I arrived at the school in an early evening,and was shocked.I had known the conditions were poor,but the reality was worse." Moreover,local people needed to go downhill to buy daily necessities,and transport them back in their hands or balanced across their shoulders."I had never walked uphill on a mountain road before,so I walked much more slowly than others;sometimes I walked slowly behind too much and was scared to tears," says Zhi.Sometimes she had to walk uphill by herself with a flashlight at night.The wild boars and rabbits sometimes frightened her and she enhanced her courage by singing loudly.

But she gradually got used to her life there.At the beginning,she found many local people valued their sons far more than their daughters,and would not like to let them attend school.Zhi went to their homes repeatedly and gradually persuaded them to send all their children to school.For those who could not afford the tuition,she spared her own money to help.

Zhi says seeing her students do well beyond the mountains is deeply rewarding."My dream,the same as before,is to stay by the side of more children.I know poverty will forever say goodbye to the mountainous villages,to my students,and to myself," says Zhi.

A new study examined scientists' peer reviews, or researchers' official statements on others' work, across multiple AI-related conferences. At one such conference, those peer reviews used the word "meticulous" — a buzzword often associated with generative A.I., like ChatGPT — almost 3,400 percent more than the previous year. Other major conferences showed similar patterns. In other words, many researchers were handing, at least, parts of their peer review over to A.I.

What's going on in science is a slice of a much bigger problem. Any viral post on social media now almost certainly includes A.I.-generated elements. There are synthetic videos for children on YouTube, like music videos about parrots where the birds have eyes within eyes, singing in an unnatural voice. The narratives make no sense, and characters appear and disappear randomly.

As a neuroscientist, this worries me. Isn't it possible that human culture contains within it cognitive micronutrients — things like reasonable sentences, narrations and character continuity — that developing brains need? Einstein supposedly said: "If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be very intelligent, read them more fairy tales." But what happens when a child is consuming mostly A.I.-generated waste? We find ourselves in the middle of a vast developmental experiment.

A.I.'s cultural pollution is driven by a desire to fill the Internet's appetite for content as cheaply as possible, which in turn pollutes our culture. And despite public appeals to act against it, A.I. companies are dragging their feet because it goes against the industry's bottom line to have detectable products, which they fear might weaken the model's performance, although there is no current evidence.

To deal with this general refusal to act, we need a Clean Internet Act. Perhaps the simplest solution would be to force built-in watermarking to A.I. generated outputs, like patterns not easily removable. Just as the 20th century required action to protect the shared environment, the 21st century is going to require actions to protect a different but equally critical resource: our shared human culture.