“Can I have a glass of hot water?” This is a very common question for Chinese customers in a restaurant. But {#blank#}1{#/blank#} you go abroad, you may find that meals in the West tend to come with tall glasses of ice water.

    For most Chinese people,{#blank#}2{#/blank#} (drink) hot water is part of everyday life. It is believed that water of a warm temperature (25-30 C) is good for people's health,{#blank#}3{#/blank#} (especial) for the stomach.

    But for many Western people, they drink cold water even in winter. One possible reason is {#blank#}4{#/blank#} in Western countries people can drink water directly from the tap, rather than having to boil {#blank#}5{#/blank#}. And it's also normal to jump into a cold shower after exercise,{#blank#}6{#/blank#} (bring) the heart rate down.

    However, there is one common thing {#blank#}7{#/blank#}(encourage) in both the East and the West: One {#blank#}8{#/blank#} cool down by drinking a hot drink in summer. Because sweating is a good way to cool off in summer, hot drinks make you hotter and you begin to sweat.

    Of course, it doesn't matter if you drink hot {#blank#}9{#/blank#} cold water. The more comfortable your body feels, the {#blank#}10{#/blank#}(good) it is.

    Global warming has caused a rise in sea levels,{#blank#}1{#/blank#}has increased the amount of salt in fresh water used on seaside farms. As a result, farmers are{#blank#}2{#/blank#} (increase) unable to use fields close to the sea.{#blank#}3{#/blank#}a farmer in the Netherlands is now using a mixture of sea and fresh water {#blank#}4{#/blank#} (grow) tasty vegetables.

    It is in his eight areas {#blank#}5{#/blank#}he teamed up with scientists such as George Hambley to make the first attempt. Separate {#blank#}6{#/blank#} (pipe) pumped mixed water. And a computer program controlled the levels of salinity and water{#blank#}7{#/blank#} (call) “Sensor”. The researchers said they were able to harvest vegetables from most of{#blank#}8{#/blank#}eight test areas. They said the vegetables were smaller than{#blank#}9{#/blank#}grown in fresh water. However, due to more sugar and salt in the water, they taste{#blank#}10{#/blank#}(good).

    As Alison Gopnik described in her recent book, there are two kinds of parents in modern America: The Carpenter and the Gardener. The "carpenter" thinks that his or her child can{#blank#}1{#/blank#}(shape). "The idea is that if you just do the right things, get the right skills and read the right books, you're going to be able to turn your child {#blank#}2{#/blank#}a particular kind of adult，" she said

    The "gardener", however  is seldom concerned about {#blank#}3{#/blank#} (control) what the child will become and instead provides a protected space {#blank#}4{#/blank#}explore). The style is all about:" creating a rich, nutritious but also variable, diverse, active ecosystem".

    Gopnik, a psychology and philosophy professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said." Many parents are carpenters, and {#blank#}5{#/blank#}is really necessary for them to bring up their children." She spent decades researching children's development and finally {#blank#}6{#/blank#}(find) that parents often focused too much on what their children would be as adults. The harm is that parents and their children may become{#blank#}7{#/blank#} (anxiety), tense or unhappy.

    "We're so concerned about our children {#blank#}8{#/blank#} we think have difficulty mastering their own future that we're unwilling to allow them to {#blank#}9{#/blank#} (free) explore the world." she says. The truth is that the {#blank#}10{#/blank#} (little) that parents worry about outcomes, the better their children may live in life.

    Today, home-ownership has reached extremely high levels. Modern generations tend to believe there is something wrong with them {#blank#}1{#/blank#} they rent. However, is high home-ownership really as people imagine？{#blank#}2{#/blank#} (stare) at data first, we realize that the most successful, stable, attractive country in the Western world is Switzerland. It has tiny unemployment; wealth; high happiness and mental-health scores. Does it have high home-ownership rates? Absolutely not. In Switzerland, about seven in ten of the population are renters. Yet, with Europe's {#blank#}3{#/blank#} (low) home-ownership rate, the nation thrives. Now go to the other end of the misery distribution. Spain has approximately the highest home-ownership rate in Europe (at more than 80%). But one-quarter of its population are unemployed.

    A likely reason is that high levels of home-ownership mess up the labour market. In a sensibly functioning economy it is easy for people to move around to drop into the vibrant job slots {#blank#}4{#/blank#} (throw) up by technological change. With a high degree of owner-occupation, everything slows. Folk get stuck. Renters can go to new jobs. In that way they do the economy a favours. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} Friedman said, the rate of unemployment depends on the flexibility of the housing market.

Next we come to economic breakdown. Most analysts accept that at heart it was the housing market-obsessive pursuit of homes, the engendered mortgage（房贷） lending and an unavoidable house-price crash— {#blank#}6{#/blank#} sank the Western world. Germany, say, with its more efficient rental market, had a far smoother ride through trouble.

    As for the monetary system, in the past few decades, in the hope of getting untaxed capital gains way above their true labour earnings, many people threw their spare cash into buying larger houses or building extra bedrooms. TV programmes about how to make easy money, beautiful rising house prices, and most importantly, our faulty tax system encouraged that. When {#blank#}7{#/blank#} some point market broke down, everyone suffered. Our countries ought, instead, to design tax systems that encourage people to invest in productive real activities and in innovation. Renting leaves money free for better purposes. That also points to the role of sensible budgeting over a person's lifetime. Why should we think that when we die it is necessary {#blank#}8{#/blank#} (pay) off an entire house？

    Our children do not deserve it. Let them pay for themselves. We {#blank#}9{#/blank#} rent-and enjoy our lives with the money saved.

    Finally, moderation usually pays off. Our scientific understanding of how economies function is horribly limited. This suggests that the golden rule should be to avoid extremes. A50-50mix of home-ownership and renting, not the 70-30split that is now observed in so many Western nations, {#blank#}10{#/blank#} (make) sense.