Luciano Baietti, a retired school headmaster from Italy, holds the Guinness record for the most university degrees. The 70­year­old currently has 15 bachelors(学士) or masters degrees from various universities across Italy, and is getting ready to get his 16th.

    Getting more than one college degree is not exactly unheard­of, but 15 is apparently quite impressive, since it's only been done by one man. Although he spends his days working around his house and garden, like most people his age, at night, Baietti turns into a student again. Every morning, at 3 a. m．， he wakes up and studies by the light of his desk lamp.

    “Thanks to books, I feel free. After all, the words share the same root，” he says, referring to the Italian words libro(book) and libero(free). He is inspired by the 19th century French essayist Louis­Francois Berlin, whose portrait(肖像)is also on display in his study, alongside his many framed university degrees, and whom he describes as “a man of culture and knowledge”．

    Baietti first made it into the Guinness Book of Records in 2002, after his eighth degree. Then he spent the next 15 years adding seven more bachelors and masters degrees to his collection.

    “Each time I set myself a new challenge to see how far my body and my brain can go.” At 70 years old, Baietti thinks he has enough energy for at least one more degree, this time in food science.

    Probably the most important thing about Baietti's achievement is that he managed to get most of his university degrees while working as headmaster of a secondary school, and volunteering with Italy's Red Cross. The secret was always getting up at 3 in the morning to make sure that his thirst for knowledge didn't affect his professional activity and his family life. He spent 3 hours studying every day, and that was apparently all he needed to pass his exams and write his theses (论文)．

    If Confucius (孔子) were still alive today and could celebrate his September 28 birthday with a big cake, there would be a lot of candles. He'd need a fan or a strong wind to help him put them out.

    While many people in China will remember Confucius on his special day, few people in the United States will give him a passing thought. It's nothing personal. Most Americans don't even remember the birthdays of their own national heroes.

    But this doesn't mean that Americans don't care about Confucius. In many ways he has become a bridge that foreigners must cross if they want to reach a deeper understanding of China.

    In the past two decades, the Chinese studies programs have gained huge popularity in Western universities. More recently, the Chinese government has set up Confucius Institutes in more than 80 countries. These schools teach both Chinese language and culture. The main courses of Chinese culture usually included Chinese art, history and philosophy (哲学). Some social scientists suggest that Westerners should take advantage of the ancient Chinese wisdom to make up for the drawbacks of Westerners philosophy. Students in the United States, at the same time, are racing to learn Chinese. So they will be ready for life in a world where China is an equal power with the United States. Businessmen who hope to make money in China are reading books about Confucius to understand their Chinese customers.

    So the old thinker's ideas are still alive and well.

    Today China attracts the West more than ever, and it will need more teachers to introduce Confucius and Chinese culture to the West.

    As for the old thinker, he will not soon be forgotten by people in the West, even if his birthday is.

    In Shanghai's Grand Theater, a fashionable, mainly young audience applauds enthusiastically as Guo Yong takes center stage. He holds a large bushy tree branch with leaves. Blowing on one of the leaves, he produces a sound like the singing of birds as he plays a traditional Buyi folk song. Some other musicians are also playing the traditional instruments from various ethnic groups in China.

    It's the first time such music has ever been performed in the Grand Theater. But all this is the efforts of Zhu Zheqin, a Cantonese-born singer; who has made it her mission to help preserve China's traditional ethnic music.

    Several years ago, after being appointed a United Nations Development Program ambassador, Zhu traveled through some of China's remotest regions in an attempt to document the traditional music of various minority groups. In the course other four- month trip, she recorded more than a thousand songs. But she noticed that many of the best musicians were old, and some of the music was at risk of dying out.

    "I was shocked the beauty of what I heard-it was so good," she says. "But it needed support. I hope to let people see the beauty of these things in the contemporary times."

    So Zhu decided to introduce some of the musicians to a wider audience. By doing this, she hopes to rekindle (再次点燃) the interest of the younger generation. "Young people don't like this music much; they prefer pop music and love songs. They think these songs are something their grandma sings. This kind of repackaging gives young people a new door into their heritage."

    Zhu believes China needs to look again at its own roots. "China today is basically all Western art; in our conservatories (音乐学院) Western classical music is the top," she says. "For China to really contribute to the world, we need to go on our own path. So what can represent China today?" The answer, she suggests, is to move from "made in China" to "created in China".

    Every festival has its own meaning. Labor Day, for example, celebrates the value of hard work. Thanksgiving is about showing thanks to people around you. And Valentines' Day is a time when you express love to your loved ones, But somehow it now seems that all festivals we just about one thing-shopping. And that can be a big problem.

    "In a way, over -consumption(过度消费) is the mother of all our environmental problems" Kalle Lasn once told CNN. Lasn is the organizer of Buy Nothing Day, a day set up in Canada in 1992 to fight against unhealthy spending habits, and has now become an international event. It's hel on the day, which is known as Black Fridny -a famous shopping day in the US and Canada. You can see the irony(讽刺)here.

    Even though the idea of Buy Nothing Day was brought up 26 years ago, we seem to need it now more than ever, It's just as Lasn said, all the different kinds of pollution in our lives today bad air quality, the reduction of forest area, endangered animal species, and plastic bags found in the ocean-seem to be the same cause: over-consumption.

     The latest example is the Singles' Day shopping craze of Nov 11, which saw a new sales record, But as Nie Li, a campaigner at Greenpeace, told Reuters. "Record-setting over-consumption means record-setting waste." And it was reported that last year the Singles' Day packages left more than 160,000 tons of waste, including plastic and cardboard. The Collins dictionary has also just named "single-use" its Word of the Year, pointing out the problem that there're too many things we tow out after only using them once.

    So, Buy Nothing Day might only be here for one day a year, but it's not just to remind us to the a break from shopping on that day, but to change our lifestyle completely, focusing on fun "with people we care about" rather than wasting money on useless things.

    Over the past 40 years, China has helped more than 700 million rural residents out of being poor, and the poverty rate -- the proportion of people living below the Chinese poverty line -- had fallen among the rural population from 97.5 percent in 1978 to 3.1 percent at the end of 2017, official figures shows. China's achievements in poverty alleviation (扶贫) made the world look at China with admiration.

    "For me, it is unbelievable that over 40 years, that is, over the course of one working lifetime, China has gone from one of the poorest countries in the world to one that is about to eliminate(消除) absolute poverty," said Craig Allen, president of the US-China Business Council.

    Varaprasad Sekhar Dolla, a professor of Chinese studies at India's Jawaharlal Nehru University, also spoke highly of China's achievements in poverty reduction. "If global poverty came down greatly in the last three or four decades, it's partly because of the Chinese contribution to reducing poverty within its own national boundaries," said the Indian scholar.

    In the eyes of Khairy Tourk, a professor of economics with the Stuart School of Business at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, "many countries look up to China to learn from its experience." "The Chinese experience is based on building a modern infrastructure (基础设施) and then on setting up special economic zones that would help underdeveloped countries to become more industrial," he added.

    In the government work report delivered at the opening of the annual NPC session (全国人大会议) on March 5, China promises to reduce its population of rural poor by over 10 million this year.

Living a healthy lifestyle lies in forming the right eating habits. Here are some of the good habits you can develop when it comes to healthy eating.

Drink plenty of water, you must drink at least 8 glasses of water a day. You may need even more water if you are in a hot environment or if you are exercising.

Eat breakfast. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. A recent study has shown that those who eat breakfast will use an average of 100 calories less during the day than their colleagues who skip breakfast. They will also be able to concentrate better.

Don't skip lunch. If you do so, your blood sugar level will drop and your metabolism (新陈代谢) will slow down. When you get home you are starving and eat everything you can find.

We all need to snack from time to time, but please choose your snacks carefully. In fact, it's a good idea to eat two healthy snacks besides your three main meals. Choose healthy snacks like fruits, low fat yogurt, cottage cheese with apple sauce.

Eat your fruits and vegetables. We should eat at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. Take a piece of fruit for a snack, add some bananas and raisins to your favourite breakfast cereal (谷类食物), have a salad of lunch, and eat at least one vegetable at dinner each night.

Do not eat your dinner too late. Try to eat dinner at least 3 hours before you go to bed, this will give your body a chance to digest most of the food before you rest for the next 8 hours. Plan dinner for the week ahead of time and make sure you have everything you need in the house so other family members can get ahead start on dinner if you have a late meeting at the office.