My summer holiday began on July 5th. I didn't want to stay at home and did nothing in the hot summer. I called my grandma, and she asked me to go to her village. I was very happy with it. After four hours, I got to my grandma's house by bus. There are many trees around her house. I liked to play games with other children during the day. At night, people in the neighborhood often came and sat together to chat. My grandma liked telling stories. My new friends and I enjoyed her stories very much.

    There is a pool in the village. My friends and I often went there with some food and caught fish in the pool. Then we cooked the fish and had dinner there. It was not easy to catch fish, but it was interesting and exciting. I stayed there for about a month, and then I went back home.

    In 1996, Joe Richman had been working as a radio reporter on US national radio for several years and was looking for a new idea for a radio programme. He met a teenager called John Cutler. John had Tourette's Syndrome—a brain illness. This meant that Josh did not always have control of his movements and speech.

    John was just beginning high school when he agreed to work with Joy on a story about his illness. Joe wanted John to keep a radio diary of his daily life. He gave John a tape recorder and asked him to record what happened to him every day. John and Joe agreed that an important part of his story would be talking to his school friends about Tourette's Syndrome. John was embarrassed(尴尬) to record at school—his friends might laugh.

    One day, John took the tape recorder to school, but he kept it inside his bag all day. He was too afraid to bring it out. After months of feeling afraid, he took the tape recorder out on lunch time. What happened next was a total surprise. John tells it best:“Everyone jumped at the chance. Everyone started asking me questions about that, I had never really talking about it to anyone—except my mom and dad. ”

    That was an important day in John's life because he learned to be more open about his condition. Now John says he wants to do radio diaries until he's 80 years old. He learnt a lot about himself by doing the radio diary. It made a great radio programme, too. Being a reporter is like having a passport. You can ask questions, be curious and explore new worlds. Radio is the perfect way to be on the radio and everyone likes to listen!

    Zhao Yishen, the 33-year-old artist, is carving a woodblock (雕刻木板) carefully, with a chisel in his right hand. To carve the woodblocks, he has to hold this position for six hours. He has been carving woodblocks since 2012. “It feels good and looks beautiful when a Chinese character slowly appears on the woodblock under your chisel," says Zhao.

    Zhao is now the only full-time carver working at a workshop that creates woodblock-printed books in Beijing. As a teenager he loved to read ancient Chinese books in the library, and the curiosity of how the books were made led him to get a job at an ancient books woodblock printing studio in Yangzhou in 2011 after graduating as a law major from university.

    Block printing was listed as a UNESCO World Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2009. Zhao started to learn the skill from Chen Yishi, one of the skill's masters, in 2012.

    "The first step is to learn how to sharpen your chisel, "says Zhao. “After using it for a while, you need to sharpen it again." After that, the woodblock must be put at a certain angle that is deep enough to show up the characters and also to make sure the cuts are deep enough-but not too deep. Then Zhao puts the paper, face down, onto the wood after brushing oil on the paper. This helps to transfer the characters onto the block. Once the carving is finished, the woodblock is brushed with ink and paper pressed onto it. It is ready to print.

    In Zhao's mind, the inked woodblock is a work of art. After a year of learning from Chen, Zhao found a job at Zhuyu Shanfang in 2013. His carved woodblocks have been used for several books over the past six years. "I just learned the basic skills, but to master it, I still need years of practice,” says Zhao. “A good craftsman can carve an entire book with every single character aligned in order."

    Mary is an American schoolgirl. She is now in Beijing with her parents. She doesn't know Chinese, but she is trying (努力) to study and speak it. She often tries to speak Chinese to her Chinese friends. Sometimes they don't understand (理解) her, because she can't speak Chinese well.

    It's Saturday morning. Mary goes out. She is on her way to the park. She is going there to see a flower show (展览). But she doesn't know how to get there. She asks a Chinese boy. The boy can't understand her. Then she takes out a pen and some paper. She draws flowers on it, gives the picture to the boy and says something about it. The boy smiles and then shows (指给) Mary the way to the park.