China's Winter Olympians have been welcomed home as national heroes from Vancouver, Canada. The country enjoyed its best Winter Games results, collecting 11 medals in Vancouver—including(包括) 5 gold medals.
     With flowers and national flags in hands, many people waited at Beijing Airport for hours. Every member was received by a crowd of family members and friends. Hundreds of workers and fans welcomed the athletes and coaches back with color balloons and ribbons.
     Wang Meng who won three gold medals in Vancouver Winter Olympics said, “We have shown the Olympic spirit and our Chinese sports spirit at the Vancouver Olympics. We Chinese athletes didn't fear to meet the strong opponents (对手) and had good team work.”

    Today we can use the Internet for many things: shopping, business, writing letters, talking to people, getting information and so on. In recent years, a new kind of English has grown on the Internet. There's no real word for it yet, so we call it e-talk.
    People don't like typing too much. To save time, they turn phrases into a few letters， acronyms(首字母缩略词). Acronyms are often used in chat rooms. Some are as follows:
    BRB (be right back), BTW (by the way), LOL (laughing out loud), IMO (in my opinion)
    People also use many abbreviations. They are shortened forms of words. Some common abbreviations include info (information), pic (picture), puter (computer), sec (second), etc.
    We usually don't see people when we communicate on the Net, so people have new ways to show feelings. Most people use their keyboards to draw "feelings", such as:
:-)  (happy)     ;-)  (joking)       :-(  (sad)        :-O  (surprised)
These days, many public discussions have picture feelings, for example:
    
(happy)           (sad)            (angry)           ( (cool)
    There are even whole new words, like "newbies"(someone who is new on a chat board or forum). When you write something bad about someone else, it's called "burning" the person.
    It takes time for people to get used to e-talk. Also, different groups on the Net have their own special ways of communicating. Newbies sometimes have to ask other people what they mean. As the Internet grows, e-talk will continue to grow and change.

    Ancient China produced many types of beautiful works of art. Among them，calligraphy(书法)，poetry(诗歌)and painting were the most famous. Often they would be put together in art. These became important starting with the Song dynasty.

Calligraphy is the art of handwriting. In the old times the Chinese considered writing as an important form of art. Calligraphers(书法家)would practice for years to learn to write perfectly，but with style. Each of over 40,000 characters needed to be written correctly. And each stroke(笔画)in a character had to be written in a certain order.

Poetry was also an important form of art. Great poets were famous all over the country，but all educated people were expected to write poetry. During the Tang dynasty poetry was so important that writing poetry was part of the examinations to become a civil servant (文官)and work for the government.

    Chinese painting was often connected with calligraphy. It is one of the oldest artistic traditions in the world. The most traditional way of Chinese painting is known as "national "or" native painting(国画)", which is quite different from Western painting. People can draw mountains, homes, birds, trees and water on it.

    How funny would it be to see memes(表情包) in our textbooks? Fourteen high school students from Sichuan Province have made this a reality.

    They wrote a set of creative textbooks that includes five subjects: Chinese, English, Maths, Chemistry and Physics. They share their notes and experiences to help you prepare for high school entrance exams. You can see funny memes almost everywhere in their textbooks. The language they use is not too serious.

    Each textbook has its own highlights(亮点), too. The English textbook introduces tongue twisters(绕口令), movies and TV series. The chemistry textbook has wuxia characters. There is a boy named Shangguan Huaxue(chemistry) in the book. He meets a girl and they learn chemistry together. It has ancient poems and wuxia-style descriptions.

    Yan Zuhuai, 15, a top student from Chengdu No.7 High School, is the textbooks' editor-in-chef. He got the idea to create the books in June. "Many underclassmen wanted me to share my notes with them. When I saw people sharing bikes, I thought, why not share knowledge as well?" Yan said.

    But when he put all of his notes together, he found that they were boring. Realizing that his classmates enjoy online novels and memes, he decided to add these things. He wrote guidelines and samples for each textbook and invited 13 students to join him in creating them.

    Their first drafts(草稿) came out in August. Students and teachers praised them. But Yan felt the books needed to be improve. In October, he and his team learned how to use the design software to improve the books. The final version(版本) will come out at the end of December. About 2,500 people have preordered them. Many publishing houses have shown great interest in them.

Give water, save lives

A bottle of water may not seem like much to you, but thousands of bottles will be of great help for people who live in drought-hit(遭受旱灾) areas in China.

Since last autumn, there has been very little rain in Southwest China. Some places, especially in Yunnan, Guangxi, Sichuan, Guizhou, have experienced a serious drought. Crops (庄稼) died, the land cracked(裂开), and wells (井) and rivers dried up. More than 20 million people are having difficulty in finding safe drinking water.

After learning about the drought, many people around the country helped by giving water, money and other things.

Last week, every member of the Communist Youth League (共青团员) and Young Pioneers(少先队员) were encouraged to give one bottle of water to the drought-hit areas. Students in primary schools and middle schools quickly joined the activity. In Yuhua Primary School in Xi' an, 900 students bought over 1,000 bottles of water with their pocket money. They also wrote their wishes on the bottles.

The serious drought has also made students realize the importance of saving water. Students from Nanshan Middle School in Huizhou, Guangdong went on the street to tell people to take part in water-saving activities.

"I've heard that some children in drought-hit areas don't have enough drinking water. They have to drink muddy ( 含有泥土的 ) water. I feel really sad about that," said one student. "I decide to take a shower twice a week instead of every day to save water," he said.