As kids, my friends and I spent a lot of time out in the woods,"The woods" was our part-time address, destination,purpose,and excuse.If I went to a friend's house and found him not at home,his mother might say, "Oh,he's out in the woods,"with a tone of airy acceptance.It's similar to the tone people sometimes use nowadays to tell me that someone I'm looking for is on the golf course or at the gym,or even "away from his desk."For us ten-year-olds,"being out in the woods" was just an excuse to do whatever we feel like for a while.

    We sometimes told ourselves that what we were doing in the woods was exploring.Exploring was a more popular idea back then than it is today.History seemed to be mostly about explorers.Our explorations,though,seemed to have less system than the historic kind: something usually came up along the way.Say we stayed in the woods, throwing rocks,shooting frogs,picking blackberries,digging in what we were briefly persuaded was an Italian burial mound.

    Often we got "lost" and had to climb a tree to find out where we were.If you read a story in which someone does that successfully,be skeptical: the topmost branches are usually too skinny to hold weight,and we could never climb high enough to see anything except other trees.There were four or five trees that we visited regularly—tall beeches,easy to climb and comfortable to sit in.

    It was in a tree,too,that our days of fooling around in the woods came to an end.By then some of us had reached seventh grade and had begun the rough ride of adolescence.In March,the month when we usually took to the woods again after winter,two friends and I set out to go exploring.We climbed a tree,and all of a sudden it occurred to all three of us at the same time that we really were rather big to be up in a tree.Soon there would be the spring dances on Friday evenings in the high school cafeteria.

    Living in a modern society has its advantages and disadvantages. One disadvantage is that you often have to live closer to other people than you would like to. Sometimes, your neighbors make a noise that you are not comfortable with.

    The best way to solve this problem is to talk with your neighbor first. You should be very polite and ask your neighbor if he knows how thin the walls of your homes are. This way doesn't criticize (批评) his behavior; it simply points out that he may not realize how far his sound travels. Tell him that you know that sometimes you make noise as well, but that you do your best to keep it down. Often this will solve the problem right away, but sometimes the neighbor may become angry.

    If your neighbor becomes angry with you, there are some more steps you can take. You might write a letter to the neighborhood committee（居委会）. Make sure you write down the source of the noise and the time in the letter. They will review the situation and decide whether your neighbor is out of line. Some noise is considered to be reasonable, even if it bothers you. So you may prepare a good pair of earplugs (耳塞).

    Even if your neighbor makes too much noise, you don't have to live your life in discomfort. It's always a good idea to be friendly with your neighbors. You may clean the rubbish in front of his door. He's sure to appreciate behavior like this and be more open to your suggestions about noise level.

    Thousands of taxi drivers in Shenyang, Liaoning province, reportedly blocked streets with their vehicles on Sunday in protest against unlicensed vehicles using taxi-hiring apps and apps-based car rental companies providing passenger services, including high-end cars. Although the drivers also complained about the withdrawal of the fuel subsidy (补贴)by the government, their main complaint was the loss of business because of the rising number of Internet-based car services companies.

    On Wednesday, news reports came that Beijing transport authorities will take measures to stop the illegal “taxi business” of private cars through the newly rising Internet apps, following the footsteps of Shenyang and Nanjing.

    It is not yet clear how the Shenyang city government will handle the issue and whether it will declare the services offered by market leaders such as Didi Dache, a taxi-hiring app provider backed by Tencent Holdings, and Kuaidi Dache illegal. But Shanghai transport regulators (交通管理结构)have set a rule, by banning Didi Zhuanche, or car services offered by Didi Dache in December.

    Such regulations will cause a setback to the car-hiring companies and investors that are waiting to cash in on the potentially booming business. Just last month, Didi Dache got $700 million in funding from global investors, including Singapore state investment company Temasek Holdings, Russian investment company DST Global and Tencent. Besides, the market is uncertain that Kuaidi Dache is about to finalize its latest round of funding after getting $800 million from global investors.

    Regulatory uncertainties, however, could cast a shadow on the future of the Internet-based car-hiring services, which have become popular in most of China's big cities. To be fair, these companies' business model is anything but bad. For example, Didi Zhuanche works side by side with established car rental companies to provide high-end car service mainly for businesspeople through the Internet and mobile phone apps.

    Every link in this business model chain has legal companies and services. Hence, it is hard to define it as illegal and ban it.

    Happy, angry, amazed—these are some of the emotions we like to express these days when we're sending a message on our smartphones! That's why many of us now add little pictures to our texts to brighten up someone's mobile screen but we're also using them as a quick way of telling someone how we're feeling. Yes, emojis (表情符号) have become a popular tool for communication.

    The emoji was first invented in Japan in the late 1990s and the word “emoji” comes from the Japanese words for “picture” and “character”. The number of different images has greatly increased since then and now we have a picture for nearly every mood or situation.

    Why are emojis widely used today? Professor Vyv Evans says, “Increasingly, what we're finding is that digital communication is replacing face-to-face talk in some ways. One of the reasons why emojis are so interesting is that they really do enable us to express our emotional selves much more effectively.”

    Another advantage of emojis is that they are an international language—they don't use words but tell a message with pictures so they can be easily understood whatever your native language is.

    But as linguist (语言学家) Neil Cohn says, “To many, emojis are an exciting evolution (进化) of the way we communicate; but to others, they are linguistic Armageddon.” It does show by using emojis, there is a lot more to our communication than words alone, but does this also mean that the traditional writing will die out one day?

    The Ministry of Construction has released the names of the first group of 20 national parks, including 9 Suzhou classical gardens: Zhuozheng Garden, Liu Garden, Wangshi Garden, Huanxiu Villa, Lion Grove, Yipu Garden, Ou Garden, Tuisi Garden and Canglang Pavilion.

    National parks refer to the famous city parks and gardens. Suzhou classical gardens are parts of China's precious cultural heritage (遗产) (all the 9 gardens are on the list of World Cultural Heritage) as well as a necessary part of the life of Suzhou citizens, not to mention they are also world-famous tourism resorts (胜地). In fact, their unique historical and cultural background serves to contribute to their ranking among national parks.

    The earliest classical gardens in Suzhou can date back to the Song Dynasty. However, the gardens impress their visitors not only with their age-old history but also with their delicate scenes, particularly Canglang Pavilion, Zhuozheng Garden, Lion Grove and Liu Garden, the most famous four that represent different styles of dynasties of Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing.

    In 1978, an imitation（仿造物） of a Suzhou classical garden was set up by Chen Congzhou (the author of the book Suzhou Classical Gardens) in the City Museum of Art in New York, US, which was the first time ever to directly introduce Chinese ancient architecture to Westerners.

How do you kill your time when you go to work? Most of us stare at our cell phones, and refuse to make eye contact with others. We just read, chat with others online or play games online. Or maybe we're using the time between stops to do our make-up, catch up on emails, or read a few chapters of a book. However, Dina Alfasi takes a very different approach.

Each day she has to travel hours on buses and trains to get to her engineering job at a hospital in Israel. Rather than look at her cell phone in silence, she uses one very special way to have connection with strangers. It is portraits of the people she meets on public transport every day that she is taking. The photographs catch those quiet and personal moments of people readying themselves for the day ahead. Some people lean their heads against the window and go to sleep, some stare into space and have a daydream, and others sit quietly to read their documents or books. Each picture captures one tiny moment in people's lives, ripe with potential for your imagination. It is wonderful for her to look at someone's commute(上下班) and make up an entire story about the rest of their daily existence, from the father travelling with a baby to the woman welcoming a change.

"What inspires me very much are the little moments that happen every day," Dina told My Modern Met. "My work is to tell stories through a single portrait, and it proves that all you need is just to look around and find those magic moments."