One day, while I was walking on the street, I heard the piano music and singing rising above the noise of the people. I stopped and saw a young lady sitting at a piano.

    She was singing songs about love. The way she was singing made me a little comfortable. I stood there watching her playing on such a crowded New York square. I thought that she must be brave enough to perform in front of so many people.

    She noticed me. I walked over and told her how good her music sounded. “Thank you.” she said.

    “I have been going through a hard time recently, but you've made me hopeful again.” I said to her.

    “I'm glad that I could help,” she replied, “Why are you so sad?”

    “Well, my mom has lost her job, and I'm not sure what to do …”

    “Did you notice the way you were walking? Your head was down.” she said. “Don't be upset, because opportunity (机遇) comes in different ways and if your head is down, you might not see it. You should smile more… lift your head up.”

    I looked at her, surprised at how she was encouraging (鼓励) me. “Why are you playing the piano here?” I asked her with a smile.

    She explained that she saw a lot of unhappy people in the world and she tried to cheer them up by playing music.

    I smiled a little wilder, realizing that no difficulties could stop me from going on.

    A group of swans flew down to a beach where a crow(乌鸦) was jumping around. The crow watched them with disdain(鄙视).

    "You have no flying skills at all!" he said to the swans. "All you can do is to move your wings. Can you turn over in the air? No, that's beyond you. Let's have a flying competition. I'll show you what real flying is! "

One of the swans, a strong young male, took up the challenge. The crow flew up and began to show his skills. He flew in circles, performed other flying tricks, and then came down and looked proudly at the swan.

    Now it was the swan's turn. He flew up, and began flying over the sea. The crow flew after him, making all kinds of comments(评价) about his flying. They flew on and on till they couldn't see the land and there was nothing but water on all sides. The crow was making fewer and fewer comments. He was now so exhausted that he found it hard to stay in the air, and had to struggle to keep himself from falling into the water.

    The swan pretended(假装) not to notice, and said, "Why do you keep touching the water, brother? Is that another trick? "

    "No," said the crow. He knew he had lost the competition. "I'm in trouble because of my pride! If you don't help me, I'll lose my life…"

The swan took pity on him, and took him on his shoulders and flew back to the beach.

    How funny would it be to see memes(表情包) in our textbooks? Fourteen high school students from Sichuan Province have made this a reality.

    They wrote a set of creative textbooks that includes five subjects: Chinese, English, Maths, Chemistry and Physics. They share their notes and experiences to help you prepare for high school entrance exams. You can see funny memes almost everywhere in their textbooks. The language they use is not too serious.

    Each textbook has its own highlights(亮点), too. The English textbook introduces tongue twisters(绕口令), movies and TV series. The chemistry textbook has wuxia characters. There is a boy named Shangguan Huaxue(chemistry) in the book. He meets a girl and they learn chemistry together. It has ancient poems and wuxia-style descriptions.

    Yan Zuhuai, 15, a top student from Chengdu No.7 High School, is the textbooks' editor-in-chef. He got the idea to create the books in June. "Many underclassmen wanted me to share my notes with them. When I saw people sharing bikes, I thought, why not share knowledge as well?" Yan said.

    But when he put all of his notes together, he found that they were boring. Realizing that his classmates enjoy online novels and memes, he decided to add these things. He wrote guidelines and samples for each textbook and invited 13 students to join him in creating them.

    Their first drafts(草稿) came out in August. Students and teachers praised them. But Yan felt the books needed to be improved. In October, he and his team learned how to use the design software to improve the books. The final version(版本) will come out at the end of December. About 2,500 people have preordered (预订) them. Many publishing houses have shown great interest in them. 

    Betty and I are best friends. Our birthdays are on the same day, so every year we have a birthday party together. But this year, we had a costume party instead.

    While we were writing the invitations, my mum came in and asked, "Why not invite John?" John had been in our class for only a few months, but he was already getting better grades in Maths than anyone else in class. I wrinkled (皱起) my nose, "Mum, he wears the same pants to school every day. How could he even afford a costume?" Mum said nothing. The next day, mum gave me an envelope with a shopping certificate (凭证) in it. "I thought it would be nice for you to give this to John" Mum said. But how? We didn't want to make John embarrassed. We discussed it for a long time. Finally, Betty and I had a good idea.

    On the day of our party, kids arrived, dressed differently. John arrived, in an old sheet (床单), but still in the same brown pants as usual. We danced, ate snacks and played games in groups. Before eating the birthday cake, Betty said in a loud voice, "Now it is time for the great prize game. It is the following riddle…" It was a maths game. None of us was surprised when John came up with the right answer first and walked off with the envelope.

    Everything went on well as we planned. John wore a new pair of pants and a new shirt the next week. He felt happy. So did we.

    When we help others, we need to find a proper way, or we may hurt them in another way.