You are a new manager at the American branch of your German firm in Chicago. With a few minutes to spare between meetings, you go to get a quick cup of coffee.

    “Hey, David, how are you?” one of the senior partners at the firm asks you.

    “Good, thank you, Dr. Greer,” you reply. You've really been wanting to make a connection with the senior leadership at the firm, and this seems like a great opportunity. But as you start to think of something to say, your American colleague breaks in to steal your spotlight.

    “So Arnold”, your colleague says to your boss, in such a casual manner that it makes your German soul cringe(畏缩), “So what's your Super bowl prediction? I mean, you're a Niners fan, right?”

    The conversation moves on, and you walk silently back to your desk with your coffee. You know how important small talk is in the U.S., and you feel jealous of people who can do it well.

    There's nothing small about the role that small talk plays in American professional culture. People from other countries are often surprised at how important small talk is in the U.S. and how naturally and comfortably people seem to do it — with peers, men, women, and even with superiors. You can be the most technically skilled worker in the world, but your ability to progress in your job in the United States is highly dependent on your ability to build and maintain positive relationships with people at work. And guess what skill is critical for building and maintaining these relationships? Small talk.

    What can you do if you are from another culture and want to learn to use small talk in the U.S. to build relationships and establish trust? Work hard to hone(磨练) your own version of American-style small talk. Watch how others do it. You don't have to mimic what they do; in fact, that would likely backfire because people would see you as inauthentic. But if you can develop your own personal version, that can go a long way toward making you feel comfortable and competence．

    There was good news last week for people who struggle to get eight hours of sleep a night: they may not need so much shut-eye after all.

    Researchers from UCLA and elsewhere looked at sleep habits of remote hunter-gatherers in Tanzania, Namibia and Bolivia — groups with pre-industrial lifestyles whose sleep patterns are believed to reflect those of ancient humans. The researchers found that, on average, members of each group sleep a bit less than six and a half hours a night.

    The study, published in the academic journal Current Biology, indicates that “natural” sleep is less than eight hours a night and that modern society's numerous electronic distractions (分心) aren't necessarily to blame for people getting just six or seven hours of sleep.

    “The story that often gets out is that if you sleep for less than seven hours, you're going to die early,” he told me. “That's not true.”

    Yet Americans are addicted to getting more sleep — and on turning to medical shortcuts to help them.

    According to the Centers for Disease Control, as many as 70 million U.S. adults suffer from sleep disorders or sleeplessness. Only a third of Americans get the government's recommended seven to nine hours of sleep a night.

    About 9 million American adults use sleeping pills to help get a good night's rest, the CDC found. Siegel said the number of people relying on medicines “has gone up rather rapidly since then.”

    Industry consulting firm Global Data estimates that worldwide sales for sleeplessness medicines will run about $1.4 billion next year and reach $1.8 billion by 2023, recovering from lower sales in recent years because of cheaper generics(仿制药) hitting the market.

    Dr. Roy Artal, a sleep specialist in West Los Angeles, said it's understandable that busy people in today's go-go world would turn to medicines to speed up the sleep process. But all they're doing is building a reliance on powerful drugs for relatively little improvement.

    “There's no magic pill that makes us sleep when we want and wake up when we want,” Artal said. “The effects of sleeping pills tend to be modest.”

    He and other experts say the answer to sleeplessness isn't to be found in a pill bottle. It's in what's called “sleep hygiene (保健).”

    Every day when Glen Oliver orders his morning coffee at the drive-through window of a local cafe, he insists on paying for the order of the person behind him. He also asks the restaurant workers to tell the customer to have a great day, in case they're not already having one.

    Oliver has never made a big deal out of his own generous actions until a letter was published by a news website in November. He found out that he had not just bought someone his breakfast —he had saved a life.

    According to the website, someone had written a letter stating that on July 18th, he was planning on committing suicide. The writer said that while he was at the drive-through window, he was planning on going home, writing a note and ending his life. When he went to pay for his coffee and muffin, however, the cashier told him that the man in the SUV in front of him had picked up the tab and told him to have a great day.

    “I wondered why someone would buy coffee for a stranger for no reason,” said the writer. “Why me? Why today? If I were a religious man, I would take this as a sign. This random act of kindness was directed at me on this day for a purpose.”

    When the writer arrived home, he couldn't hold back his tears and started to think about the simple good deed that had affected him so deeply. “I decided at that moment to change my plans for the day and do something nice for someone. I ended up helping a neighbor take groceries out of her car and into the house.”

    The writer says that in the months following that fateful event, he does at least one kind thing for others every day. “To the nice man in the SUV, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Please know your kind gesture has truly saved a life,” he said. “On July 18, 2017, I had the greatest day.”

    “When your mother scolds you, you can look elsewhere and think about other things. Just ignore her words. But remember: such a tough attitude cannot be used often.” These words are from a series of cartoons which outline skills for children to fight against their mothers. The images have created heated debate among Chinese netizens（网民）.

    Regarded as “a book for children aged 6 to 12 who are always scolded by their parents”， the cartoons, drawn by two 10-year-old Beijing girls, list over 20 skills which children can use to deal with their mothers' anger such as crying, pretending to be ashamed, fleeing into the toilet and pleasing her afterwards. Each skill is described with vivid pictures and humorous notes. The creativity of the young girls has amazed netizens, the Yangtse Evening Post reported on Thursday.

According to one of the girls' mothers, her daughter once received a poor mark in an exam, and the mother blamed her and compared her performance with another classmate. The daughter's feelings led to her creating the cartoons. The girl's father, who first posted the pictures on his Sohu Microblog on Monday, said he hopes parents pay close attention to the pictures, allow children to feel free to develop their own characteristics and try not to criticize them so often.

“The cartoons, although an individual case, reflect a modern phenomenon and some of the problems within Chinese family education,” said Yu Qinfang, an expert on family education. According to a survey of 104 children and their parents, Yu discovered that as many as 51.9 percent of primary school students hate being urged to do things by their mothers. “Not giving children enough time and hurrying them to do things seems to be a very tiny detail within family life, but it is potentially a huge problem which can easily be ignored by parents. A mother's blame may lead to negative feelings within her child's heart,” Yu said. “Parents should learn to blame less and be more patient.”

    As businesses and governments have struggled to understand the so-called millennials—born between roughly 1980 and 2000—one frequent conclusion has been that they have a unique love of cities. A deep-seated preference for night life and subways, the thinking goes, has driven the revitalization of urban cores across the U.S. over the last decade-plus.

    But there's mounting evidence that millennials' love of cities was a passing fling(放纵). Millennials don't love cities any more than previous generations.

    The latest argument comes from Dowell Myers, an urban planning professor at USC. As they age, says Myers, millennials' presence in cities, will "be evaporating(蒸发) through our fingers, if we don't make some plans now." That's because millennials' preference for cities will fade as they start families and become more established in their careers.

    It's about more than aging, though. Demographer William Frey has been arguing for years that millennials have become stuck in cities by the 2008 downturn and the following slow recovery, with poor job prospects and declining wages making it harder for them to afford to buy homes in suburbia.

    Myers, too, says observers have confused young people's presence in cities with a preference for cities. Survey data shows that more millennials would like to be living in the suburbs than actually are. But the normal career and family cycles moving young people from cities into suburban houses have become, in Myers' words, "a plugged up drain."

    But unemployment has finally returned to healthy lows (though participation rates and wages are still largely stagnant), which Myers says should finally increase mobility for millennials.

    Other trends among millennials, supposedly matters of lifestyle preference, have already turned out to have been driven mostly by economics. What was once deemed their broad preference for public transit may have always been a now-reversing inability to afford cars. Even decades-long trends towards marrying later have been accentuated as today's young people struggle for financial stability.

    Investors are already taking the idea that millennials will return to old behavior patterns seriously, putting more money into auto manufacturers and developers. But urban lifestyles, up to and including trendy bars, aren't just hip—they're a part of what powers a city's economic engines, bringing people together to explore new ideas, create companies, and build careers.

    From the 1960s to the 1990s, we saw that suburbanization(城市郊区化)also means an economic and social hollowing out for cities. Now that the economic shackles are coming off today's young city residents, cities that want to stay vibrant(充满生机的) have to figure out how to convince them—and their growing families—to stick around.

Last September an American started a trip through Southwest China on a standard bike she had bought at a local shop. In three months, Jennifer Holstein cycled 2,500 kilometers through three provinces with just two small bags.

Living in Beijing, her life was already great. But Holstein felt the urge to travel the world and look for adventure. It was mid-August of 2021 that the idea came to her to travel China by bicycle. At that time, Holstein had never cycled for more than 20 kilometers around her local city of Beijing.

Holstein shared an experience from the beginning of her trip when she found herself stuck in a tunnel (隧道) with a flat tire (轮胎). It was dark and hot, and she was so scared because she had never changed a tire before. Suddenly, a group of cyclists old enough to be her grandparents came and rescued her.

In addition to receiving the kindness of people across China, Holstein also experienced several unique cultural experiences by attending three local weddings. She spoke about one wedding in detail, "I was in the middle of a small village in Sichuan province, and I was taken into a local Tibetan family's home and they invited me to take part in a wedding. They gave me a dress and even did my makeup. I never thought I would ever have the chance to take part in a Tibetan wedding."

According to Holstein, "Many people want to travel the world and take huge risks, but never do. Don't just live your life hoping your wildest dreams will become a reality someday. Try first and the rest will work itself out." In addition to biking for her own passion and curiosity, Holstein also linked her ride to raise 22,000 yuan for the United Foundation for China's Health.