On Christmas Eve, 1944, my grandmother urged my uncle, then 12 years old, to slip out of the concentration camp where they were imprisoned near 15 miles east of Vienna to go to Deutsch-Wagram. “People are charitable around Christmastime,” Grandma Lili said to her son, Gyuri. “Ask for some food. Anything they can spare. Tell them that we're on the edge of starvation. Tell them that your 3-year-old sister can not get off the bed because she's outgrown her shoes.”

    In the dark of that night, Gyuri secretly left the camp and walked nearly four miles to Deutsch-Wagram, the closest town. He happened upon a house and knocked on the front door. A woman opened that door. She was probably alone, her man far away, fighting in the war, her children asleep in their beds. The 12-year-old pieced together in German exactly what his mother had told him to say.

     “Come back tomorrow," whispered the woman. The next day, my uncle returned. The woman opened the door with a smile. She piled his hands with bread, clothing, a pair of shoes that her child had outgrown and a pair of socks. The woman had knitted warm socks for my mother. After putting on the socks and shoes that fit, my mother got off the bed in delight. Her ragged shoes were passed on to a younger child who was also living in the camp. They shared their unexpected harvest with the entire camp. It was a quiet celebration of human kindness around Christmastime.

    In April 1945, my mother, uncle and grandmother were liberated. And it was those very socks and shoes that my mother wore as she walked some 28 miles over two days to Bratislava on her walk to a new life.

    To the unknown giver, I thank you. In the desperation of a cold and snowy land, when many hearts were closed and death was more likely than life, especially for Jews, you gave them hope and comfort.

    According to Guglielmo Cavallo and Roger Chartier, reading aloud was a common practice in the ancient world, the Middle Ages, and as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Readers were “listeners attentive to a reading voice,” and “the text addressed to the ear as much as to the eye.” The significance of reading aloud continued well into the nineteenth century.

    Using Charles Dickens's nineteenth century as a point of departure, it would be useful to look at the familial and social uses of reading aloud and reflect on the functional change of the practice. Dickens habitually read his work to a domestic audience or friends. In his later years he also read to a broader public crowd Chapters of reading aloud also abound in Dickens's own literary works. More importantly, he took into consideration the Victorian practice when composing his prose, so much so that his writing is meant to be heard, not only read on the page.

    Performing a literary text orally in a Victorian family is well documented. Apart from promoting a pleasant family relationship, reading aloud was also a means of protecting young people from the danger of solitary (孤独的) reading. Reading aloud was a tool for parental guidance. By means of reading aloud, parents could also introduce literature to their children, and as such the practice combined leisure and more serious purposes such as religious cultivation in the youths. Within the family, it was commonplace for the father to read aloud Dickens read to his children: one of his surviving and often-reprinted photographs features him posing on a chair, reading to his two daughters.

    Reading aloud in the nineteenth century was as much a class phenomenon as a family affair, which points to a widespread belief that Victorian readership primarily meant a middle-class readership, Those who fell outside this group tended to be overlooked by Victorian publishers。Despite this, Dickens, with his publishers Chapman and Hall, managed to distribute literary reading materials to people from different social classes by reducing the price of novels. This was also made possible with the technological and mechanical advances in printing and the spread of railway networks at the time.

    Since the literacy level of this section of the population was still low before school attendance was made compulsory in 1870 by the Education Act, a considerable number of people from lower classes would listen to recitals of texts. Dickens's readers, who were from such social backgrounds, might have heard Dickens in this manner. Several biographers of Dickens also draw attention to the fact that it was typical for his texts to be read aloud in Victorian England, and thus illiteracy was not an obstacle for reading Dickens. Reading was no longer a chiefly closeted form of entertainment practiced by the middle class at home.

    A working-class home was in many ways not convenient for reading: there were too many distractions, the lighting was bad, and the home was also often half a workhouse. As a result, the Victorians from the non-middle classes tended to find relaxation outside the home such as in parks and squares, which were ideal places for the public to go while away their limited leisure time. Reading aloud, in particular public reading, to some extent blurred the distinctions between classes. The Victorian middle class defined its identity through differences with other classes. Dickens's popularity among readers from the non-middle classes contributed to the creation of a new class of readers who read through listening.

    Different readers of Dickens were not reading solitarily and “jealously,” to use Walter Benjamin's term. Instead, they often enjoyed a more communal experience, an experience that is generally lacking in today's world. Modem audiobooks can be considered a contemporary version of the practice. However, while the twentieth- and twentieth-first-century trend for individuals to listen to audiobooks keeps some eharacteristics of traditional reading aloud-such as “listeners attentive to a reading voice” and the ear being the focus—it is a far more solitary activity.

    I can proudly say that last year I broke the record for the oldest person in the world to ride a roller-coaster. I'm 105, but I feel younger. Even the doctor agrees I'm in good condition. I'm a bit deaf and my legs feel weak, but they are the only issue.

    I rode the Twistosaurus at Flamingo Land, which spins you round quite fast. I didn't choose to go on that. I'd have preferred a really fast one that went upside down. But I was told I couldn't ride something like that, because my blood pressure could drop and I might have some danger.

    I wasn't nervous — I don't get frightened of anything. I was securely fastened, so I knew I wouldn't fall out. The roller-coaster ride went on for three or four minutes, and it couldn't be a better experience. And I raised a lot of money for the Derbyshire, Leicestershire & Rutland Air Ambulance fund, which was fantastic.

    People were saying I'd got a place in the Guinness World Records. Later, someone came to present me with the certificate. I had it on the wall in my living room, with another one that got a year earlier.

    My record-breaking ways really began a couple of years ago, with the ice-bucket challenge. It turned out that I was probably the oldest person in the world to do it, and the video was very popular. After that, I started to think about what else I could do to raise money for different charities.

    I'm not sure if anyone admires all the fun I'm having. They just say I'm daft and that's about it. But I've had many good days and many exciting times. I've had a really good life. I don't think I've wasted any of it.

    While many Chinese watched movies at cinemas during the weeklong Spring Festival holiday, Zheng Wei explained the film The Spring Festival to an audience of visually impaired(受损伤的) people at cinema in Northern China's Tianjin.

    "Fireworks light up the dark on New Year's Eve, and children are playing in an open place covered with white snow, said Zheng to the audience, describing the visual elements of the movie while holding a micro-phone and a script.

    As the founder of "cinema for the blind" in Tianjin, the 55-year--old has insisted on brightening the dark world of the visually impaired in his own way for 11 years.

    Shao Yuxiang and her husband, who are both blind, are regular visitors of the cinema. She wore an elegant yellow sweater to attend the couple's significant "movie day".

    Since October 2007, the free movies, which are described through audio, start at 9: 30 am on the third Saturday of each month. More than 150 movies have been screened to more than 20,000 visually impaired.

    "The theater is equipped with lights a sound system, projector, and a big screen to give the blind a people so far complete and equal movie experience," Zheng said.

    In 2007, after having learned that a "cinema for the blind" established by Wang Weili had benefited many visually impaired people in Beijing, Zheng rushed to Wang's establishment for advice. Under Wang's guidance, Zheng built a new cinema in Tianjin and screened The Dream Factory by Chinese director Feng Xi-aogang. It attracted more than 50 visually impaired people from different districts and even suburban areas in Tianjin.

    Zheng always treats movie selections with seriousness He usually chooses Mandarin language movies with positive themes that reflect modern society. Special movies for certain Chinese festivals are also part of Zheng's selection criteria. "For example, The Founding of Republic is specially for National Day. Now, films for Spring Festival are on my agenda," Zheng said.

At my first lesson in Chinese calligraphy, my teacher told me plainly: "Now I will teach you how to write your name. And to make it beautiful." I felt my breath catch. I was curious.

Growing up in Singapore, I had an unusual relationship with my Chinese name. My parents are ethnically Chinese, so they asked fortune tellers to decide my name, aiming for maximum luck. As a result, I ended up with a nonsense and embarrassing name: Chen Yiwen, meaning, roughly, "old", "barley （薏米） "and "warm".

When I arrived in America for college at 18, I put on an American accent and abandoned my Chinese name. When I moved to Hong Kong in 2021, after 14 years in the States, I decided to learn calligraphy. Why not get back in touch with my heritage? I thought.

In calligraphy, the idea is to copy the old masters' techniques, thereby refining your own. Every week, though, my teacher would give uncomfortably on-the-nose assessments of my person. "You need to be braver," he once observed. "Have confidence. Try to produce a bold stroke （笔画）." For years, I had prided myself on presenting an image of confidence, but my writing betrayed me.

I was trying to make sense of this practice. You must visualize the word as it is to be written and leave a trace of yourself in it. As a bodily practice, calligraphy could go beyond its own cultural restrictions. Could it help me go beyond mine? My teacher once said to me, "When you look at the word, you see the body. Though a word on the page is two-dimensional, it contains multitudes, conveying the force you've applied, the energy of your grip, the arch of your spine." I had been learning calligraphy to get in touch with my cultural roots, but what I was really seeking was a return to myself. Now I have sensed that the pleasure out of calligraphy allows me to know myself more fully.

During a recent lesson, my teacher pointed at the word I had just finished, telling me: "This word is much better. I can see the choices you made, your calculations, your flow. Trust yourself. This word is yours." He might as well have said, "This word is you."

All students have bad times. What do they usually do when they get into trouble?

My mom is like my friend. I talk about everything to her. Whenever I have some trouble, I can get good advice from her. I have another good friend — my diary. It knows all my secrets. Talking with my two friends always makes me feel better. 

 —— Linda

Laughing helps me when I'm upset. I usually watch funny movies and TV shows. I also love spending my hard time with my best friend Dave. He is humorous and always makes me laugh. 

 —— Peter

Every time I feel bad, I go climbing alone. The study says exercising can help cheer one up (精神振奋). And the beautiful view at the top of the mountain makes me forget all my troubles. Sometimes I shout at the mountain top. It feels fantastic. 

 —— John