There was once a captain who loved money so much that he cheated his sailors at the end of every voyage and took their wages.

    On the last day of one voyage, the ship was in a small port. It was winter time, and the sea was very cold, so the captain said to his sailors, “If one of you stays in the water during the whole night, I will give him my ship. But if he comes out before the sun appears, I shall get his wages.”

    The sailors had heard about the captain's cheating, so they didn't trust him. But then one of them, who thought that he was cleverer than the captain, said that he would do it. He got into the water, and, though it was very cold, he stayed in it. When it was nearly morning, some fishermen lit a fire on the shore about half a mile away.

    “You are cheating,” the captain said to the sailor. “The fire's warming you.”

    “But it's half a mile away! ”said the sailor.

    “A fire's fire,” answered the captain. “I have won.”

    The sailor came out of the water, and said, “Perhaps you think that you are clever because you have won my wages, but you can't cook a chicken.”

    “I can, ”answered the captain.

    “If you cook this chicken,” said the sailor, “I shall work for you without wages for seven years, but if you can't, you will give me your ship.”

    The captain agreed, took the chicken and said, “Where's the fire?”

    “There it is,” answered the sailor. “On the shore.”

    “But it's half a mile away,” said the captain angrily.

    “ 'A fire's fire' you said,” answered the sailor. “If it is enough to warm me in the water, it is enough to cook your chicken.”

    Little New Year (Chinese: Xiaonian), usually a week before the lunar New Year, falls on Feb 8 this year. It is also known as the Festival of the Kitchen God, the deity(神) who oversees the moral character of each household. Here are six things you should know about the Little New Year, another sign of the start of spring.

    ⒈Offer sacrifices to Kitchen God

    One of the most distinctive traditions of the Little New Year is the burning of a paper image of the Kitchen God, who will report on the family's conduct over the past year. The offerings to the Kitchen God include pig's head, fish, sweet bean paste, melons, fruit, boiled dumplings, barley sugar, and Guandong candy, a sticky treat made out of glutinous millet and sprouted wheat. Most of the offerings are sweets of various varieties. It is thought that this will seal the Kitchen God's mouth and encourage him to only say good things about the family when he ascends to heaven to make his report.

    ⒉House cleaning

    According to Chinese folk beliefs, during the last month of the year ghosts and deities must choose either to return to Heaven or to stay on Earth. It is believed that in order to ensure the ghosts and deities' timely departure people must thoroughly clean both their persons and their houses, down to every last drawer and cupboard.

    ⒊Eat Guandong candy

    Guandong candy, a sticky treat made out of glutinous millet and sprouted wheat, is a traditional snack that Chinese people eat on the Festival of the Kitchen God.

    ⒋Paste paper-cuts to windows

    In the Little New Year, old couplets and paper-cuts from the previous Spring Festival are taken down, and new window decorations, New Year's posters, and auspicious(吉利的) decorations are pasted up.

    ⒌Bath and hair-cut

    As the old Chinese saying goes, whether they're rich or poor, people often have a haircut before the Spring Festival. The activity of taking bath and haircut is often taken on the Little New Year.

    ⒍Preparations for Spring Festival

    People start to stock up necessary provisions for the Spring Festival since the Little New Year. Everything needed to make offerings to the ancestors, entertain guests, and feed the family over the long holiday must be purchased in advance.

    Children grow quickly, especially their feet. But many families cannot buy new shoes each time a child needs them. As a result, about 300 million children around the world go barefoot. Those children risk picking up diseases and parasites from the soil.

    Kenton Lee, an American man invented The Shoe That Grows. He explains, “It grows in three places: the front, on the side and on the back. It can last up to five years. The bottom is rubber like tire rubber. The top is just high-quality leather. ”

    Lee says he got the idea for the shoe while working as a volunteer in an orphanage in Kenya. “I just remember a little girl who wore a pair of small shoes. The shoes were so small that she had to cut open the front of her shoes to let her toes stick out. And I just remember thinking, wouldn't it be nice if there were a pair of shoes that could grow with her feet？”

    However, Lee says it was not easy to turn his idea into a reality. Finally, in 2009 Lee founded a non-profit organization called Because International. In the office of Because International, Lee keeps a pair of his own shoes to help him remember his promise.

    A pair of shoes, he says, gives more than protection. It gives a child self-worth and more chances to succeed. “Because it's a small thing that really does make a big difference to keep them healthy and happy and having more chances to succeed.”

    Kenton Lee adds that his goal is to help get The Shoe That Grows to as many children as he can around the world.

    One silly question I simply can't stand is "How do you feel? Usually the question is asked of a man in action — a man on the go, walking along the street, or busily working at his desk. So what do you expect him to say? He'll probably say, "Fine, I'm all right," but "you've put a bug in his ear" — maybe now he's not sure. If you're a good friend, you may have seen something in his face, or his walk, that he overlooked that morning. It starts him worrying a little. First thing you know, he looks in a mirror to see if everything is all right, while you go merrily on your way asking someone else, "How do you feel?" Every question has its time and place. It's perfectly acceptable, for instance, to ask "How do you feel?" if you're visiting a close friend in the hospital. But if the fellow is walking on both legs, hurrying to catch a train, or sitting at his desk working, it's no time to ask him that silly question. When George Bernard Shaw, the famous writer of plays, was in his eighties, someone asked him, "How do you feel?" Shaw put him in his place. "When you reach my age," Shaw said, "either you feel all right or you're dead."

    Many of us love July because it's the month when nature's berries and stone fruits are in abundance. These colourful and sweet jewels form British Columbia's fields are little powerhouses of nutritional protection.

    Of the common berries, strawberries are highest in vitamin C, although, because of their seeds, raspberries contain a little more protein (蛋白质), iron and zinc (not that fruits have much protein). Blueberries are particularly high in antioxidants (抗氧化物质). The yellow and orange stone fruits such as peaches are high in the carotenoids we turn into vitamin A and which are antioxidants. As for cherries (樱桃), they are so delicious who cares? However, they are rich in vitamin C.

    When combined with berries of slices of other fruits, frozen bananas make an excellent base for thick, cooling fruit shakes and low fat "ice cream". For this purpose, select ripe bananas for freezing as they are much sweeter. Remove the skin and place them in plastic bags or containers and freeze. If you like, a squeeze of fresh lemon juice on the bananas will prevent them turning brown. Frozen bananas will last several weeks, depending on their ripeness and the temperature of the freezer.

    If you have a juicer, you can simply feed in frozen bananas and some berries or sliced fruit. Out comes a "soft-serve" creamy dessert, to be eaten right away. This makes a fun activity for a children's party; they love feeding the fruit and frozen bananas into the top of the machine and watching the ice cream come out below.

Few people enjoyed getting shots at the doctor's office. But many of these shots are important vaccines (疫苗) that help prevent us from getting certain diseases or types of infection.

Vaccines got their start in Europe in the 1720s, when a British woman named Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was visiting Turkey. She saw Turkish doctors purposefully inoculating (接种) people with small amounts of smallpox. Smallpox is a painful, deadly disease that had no cure at the time. But Lady Montagu was amazed that the patients not only recovered, but then proved to be immune (免疫的) to the disease!

Lady Montagu quickly returned to England, excited to share this new procedure. But inoculation took many years to catch on. One problem was that no one had a correct way of inoculating people safely. Occasionally, patients would become fully infected and then begin spreading the disease. However, inoculation eventually saved enough people for it to become the common practice for preventing smallpox.

Some years later, a scientist named Edward Jenner discovered that people who had been infected with a disease called cowpox became resistant to smallpox. Cowpox was less much harmful than smallpox. Jenner convinced doctors to inoculate people with cowpox, which led to a very safe vaccine and far fewer outbreaks of smallpox. Finally, a French scientist named Louis Pasteur realized that Jenner's idea could be used to treat other diseases. Since then, vaccines have been made for many other diseases, such as polio, tetanus, and rabies.

Today, scientists and doctors continue to create new vaccines that could potentially save millions of lives worldwide.