Twenty years ago, I drove a taxi for a living. One night, I went to pick up a passenger at 2:30 a. m. When I arrived at the place, I saw a small woman in her eighties standing before me. I took the woman's suitcase to the car and then returned to help her. She took my arm and we talked slowly toward the car.

    She kept thanking me for my kindness. "It's nothing," I told her. "I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated."

    "Oh, you're such a good man," she said. When we got into the taxi, she gave me an address, and then asked." Could you drive me throughout the downtown?"

    "It's not the shortest way," I answered quickly.

    "Oh, I'm in no hurry," she said," I'm on my way to the hospice(收容所). I don't have any family left. The doctor says I don't have very long time." I quickly shut off the meter(计价器). For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked, and the neighbourhood where she had lived. Sometimes she asked me to slow down in front of a special building and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.

    As the day broke, she suddenly said," I'm tired. Let's go now."

    We drove in silence to the address she had given me.

    "How much shall I give you?" she asked.

    "Nothing," I said.

    "You have to make a living, "she answered," Oh, it doesn't matter! I have other passengers to pick up." I answered.

    Almost without thinking, I bent sown and gave her a hug. She held onto me tightly and said," You gave an old woman a little moment of happiness."

    One morning I met a man in my shop. He wanted to buy some new clothes. First I gave him a pair of trousers. He put them on to try, then ________ and gave them back to me and said, "No, give me a coat instead of them." I gave him a coat and told him, "This one is worth as much as the trousers." To my surprise he took the coat without saying a word and walked out of the shop with it. I ran quickly after him and said, "You haven't paid for that coat!" "But I gave you the trousers for the coat," he said. "They are worth (相当于……的价值) the same as the coat, aren't they?" "Yes," I said. "You didn't pay for the trousers, either!" "Of course I didn't!" answered the man, "I didn't take them. I am not foolish! Nobody gives things back and then pays for them."

    Hello, everyone! I'm your new Chinese teacher. I am twenty three years old. My given name is Li and my family name is Lin. I have a cat. Its name is Mimi. It's black and white. White is my favourite colour. I go to work from Monday to Friday. I am free on Saturday and Sunday. I like playing table tennis. Would you like to play table tennis with me after class?

    I'm from Beijing. Do you know Beijing? It's the capital of China. It's a very big city. It's cold in winter and hot in summer. But it's good to go to Beijing in spring or in autumn. Welcome to Beijing.

"They'll understand when they're older, " Hearing this, as a parent, you may feel better. But the fact is that even when kids become adults, it doesn't mean they'll agree with your decisions. 

Recently, I have had lots of conversations with my 19-year-old daughter about decisions I made in her childhood. She says she disagrees with some of them and some have even caused harm to her. That hurts. I think I must have failed as a parent. 

It turns out that my daughter's questioning(质疑) is very normal. It happens to almost every teenager when they are in their late teens. 

"In their late teens, teenagers start to find out who they are and what they stand for（支持），"says Mary Fleming, a college professor. "The search for identity (身份) is not always smooth. " The first task for teenagers is to dismantle the old life structure (结构) and to build a new one in its place. In other words, parents created that old life structure of childhood, so they are often at the heart of that dismantling process. 

Hearing critical（批评的）words is hard. But if your teenager comes to you wanting to talk about it，pay attention to him or her. For both of you, it's the beginning of understanding each other. And as they grow up, teenagers will realize they can't live their lives over again, and neither can their parents. They will understand that their parents did the best they could with what they knew at the time.