I tried not to be biased, but I had my doubts about hiring Stevie. His social worker assured me that he would be a good, reliable busboy. But I had never had a mentally handicapped employee. He was short, a little fat, with the smooth facial features and thick-togued speech of Down's Syndrome（唐氏综合症）. I thought most of my customers would be uncomfortable around Stevie, so I closely watched him for the first few weeks.

    I shouldn't have worried. After the first week, Stevie had my staff wrapped around his stubby little finger, and within a month my regular trucker customers had adopted him as their official truck stop mascot. After that, I really didn't care what the rest of the customers thought of him. He was like a 21-year-old in blue jeans and Nikes, eager to laugh and eager to please, but fierce in his attention to his duties. Every salt and pepper shaker was exactly in its place, not a bread crumb or coffee spill was visible when Stevie got done with the table. Our only problem was persuading him to wait to clean a table until after the customers were finished.

    Over time, we learned that he lived with his mother, a widow who was disabled. Money was tight, and what I paid him was probably the difference between them being able to live together and Stevie being sent to a group home.

    That's why the restaurant was a gloomy place that morning last August, the first morning in three years that Stevie missed work. He was at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester getting a heart surgery. His social worker said that people with Downs Syndrome often had heart problems at an early age and there was a good chance he would come through the surgery in good shape and be back at work in a few months.

    A ripple of excitement ran through the staff later that morning when word came that he was out of surgery, in recovery, and doing fine. Frannie, my head waitress, did a little dance when she heard the good news. Belle Ringer, one of our regular trucker customers, stared at her and asked, “Okay, Frannie, what was that all about?”

    "We just got word that Stevie is out of surgery and going to be okay."

    "I was wondering where he was. I had a new joke to tell him. What was the surgery about?"

    Frannie quickly told Belle Ringer and the other two drivers sitting at his booth about Stevie's surgery, then sighed: "Yeah, I"m glad he is going to be OK," she said. "But I don't know how he and his Mom are going to handle all the bills. From what I hear, they"re barely getting by as it is."

    Belle Ringer nodded thoughtfully, and Frannie hurried off to wait on the rest of her tables.

    After the morning rush, Frannie walked into my office. She had a couple of paper napkins in her hand.

    "What's up?" I asked.

    "I cleared off that table where Belle Ringer and his friends were sitting after they left, and I found this. This was folded and tucked under a coffee cup."

    She handed the napkin to me, and three $20 bills fell onto my desk when I opened it. On the outside, in big, bold letters, was printed "something For Stevie".

    That was three months ago. Today is New Year's day, the first day Stevie is supposed to be back to work. His placement worker said he had been counting the days until the doctor said he could work, I arranged to have his mother bring him to work, met them in the parking lot and invited them both to celebrate his day back. I took him and his mother by their arms. "To celebrate you coming back, breakfast for you and your mother is on me.”

    I led them toward a large corner booth. I could feel and hear truck customers and the rest of the staff following behind as we marched through the dining room. We stopped in front of the big table. Its surface was covered with coffee cups and dinner plates, all sitting slightly on dozens of folded paper napkins.

    "First thing you have to do, Stevie, is clean up this mess," I said.

    Stevie looked at me, and then pulled out one of the napkins. It had 'something for Stevie" printed on the outside. As he picked it up, two $10 bills fell onto the table. Stevie stared at the money, then at all the napkins peeking from beneath the tableware, each with his name printed on it.

    I turned to his mother. "There's more than $10,000 in cash and checks on that table, all from truckers and trucking companies that heard about your problems. Happy Thanksgiving!"

    While everybody else was busy shaking hands and hugging each other, Stevie, with a big, big smile on his face, was busy clearing all the cups and dishes from the table.

    Chinese audiences seemed not to have been satisfied with the third season of the highly anticipated food documentary A Bite of China.

    Even though the series has maintained high viewership ratings since its comeback last week, much higher than other programs aired at the same time, the ranking on Douban, a social networking website featuring films, literature and events, slipped to 4.2 out of 10, as of Tuesday, compared with 9.3 and 8.4, respectively, for the first two seasons.

    Picky viewers complain that some of the narration is not accurate, while others pinpoint misleading content. At the same time, food blogger @barbara questioned whether it is appropriate to give a close-up shot of the poisonous plant Nandina（南天竺）in a food program.

    A Bite of China, which debuted in 2012, became hugely popular nationwide for its quality introduction of some rarely-known and mouth-watering domestic cuisine. In the new show, however, watchers are not satisfied with “irrelevant” food references, such as lipsticks made of Chinese traditional medicine and martial arts master.

    The first episode introduced a hand-made iron frying pan from east China's Shandong province, which prompted thousands of Chinese Internet users to buy one from China's leading e-commerce website Tmall in the next few days. Sales of the pan at “Zhensanhuan” surged 6,000 times compared with a year ago, according to Beijing Youth Daily.

    In response to overwhelming criticism and questions, A Bite of China production crew responded on Weibo that they seek innovation despite the risks following the first two phenomenal seasons.

    “It is unavoidable to make comparisons with the first two, and some audiences may not accept the changes,” the crew said. “We explore the culture and civilization behind food, and give food a historic touch. That's why we feature culinary（烹饪的）tools, feast and rituals, as well as a healthy diet to show Chinese wisdom and philosophy, which has not been shown in any food programs before.”

    Feet help us walk, run, dance, and jump. The words feet and foot are also used in everyday speech.

    To be under someone's feet means to be troublesome. In other words, you are standing too close to someone and are getting in their way. Some adults criticize (批评) children for being under foot.

    Speaking of children, if someone says their home will soon have the pitter-patter of tiny feet, it means the family is expecting a baby!

    Now, people who are active do not let grass grow under their feet. They are never in one place for very long. People who can think and take action at the same time are said to be able to think on their feet.

    Some people appear to have it all. They have money, a good education, good looks, a great family and a large circle of friends. You could say they have the world at their feet. This means whatever they want seems to be there for them.

    People who have both feet firmly on the ground are realistic and practical. They are not dreamy. You might say such a person is well grounded. If you are a bad dancer, you might be described as having two left feet. To dance well, it is better to have a right foot and a left foot.

    Sam loves skiing. He thinks that it would be fun to own a ski resort (滑雪场) high in the mountains. But he knows nothing about running a business. So, he decides to get his feet wet. In other words, he wants to get used to a new situation.

    He joins an organization for resort owners and attends their meetings. He travels to ski areas all over the United States. This helps Sam get his foot in the door. Having a foot in the door is a starting point. This expression comes from people selling things door-to-door. They would block the door with their foot so people couldn't close the door on them.

    Suppose you want to go abroad and learn about the foreign exchange in culture in different countries. Here is some information you may need.

    The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge, the world's longest sea-based project, comprises four parts: a 22.9-kilometer steel bridge, two artificial islands, a submerged sea tunnel extending for 6.7 kilometers, as well as leading bridges that connect the bridge to the cities.

    For a bridge project, designers prefer to build all the structure on the ground, and only choose the tunnel when there is no alternative. However, for the HZMB, the most practical design is to integrate bridge, island and tunnel to form a complete cross-sea channel.

    "The Pearl River Estuary （河口）holds a world-level shipping channel. Smooth traffic should be guaranteed. And the location is near the Hong Kong International Airport. With about 2,000 flights taking off and landing at the airport, the bridge cannot be built too high for safety reasons, said Meng Fanchao, chief designer of the project. ^"But you cannot have a submerged sea tunnel without any support. That forced us to build the artificial islands."

    Chinese engineers declared a trail in installing deep-immersed tunnel tubes. There is no model for us to refer to as all the cases are shallow-buried tubes, said Meng.

    "For lack of experience, the installation of the first tube lasted for 96 hours," said Yin Haiqing, deputy manager of the Project Management Department. "Everyone was exhausted when we made it."

    The 6.7-kilometer tunnel is the world's longest submerged sea tunnel.

    Two artificial islands, covering an area of 200,000 square meters, help create a smooth transition between bridge sections and tunnels. Different from traditional island, the engineers put 120 steel cylinders （圆柱）with a 22-meter diameter （直径）into the seabed, make out the shape of an island, and fill the island with soil. It is an innovative way they adopted to build the artificial island, making it firmer, more efficient and friendly to the marine ecology.

    The HZMB provides a fixed link between the two Chinese economic centres Hong Kong and Macau and the mainland of China at Zhuhai.

    William Butler Yeats, a most famous Irish writer, was born in Dublin on June 13, 1865. His childhood lacked the harmony that was typical of a happy family. Later, Yeats shocked his family by saying that he remembered "little of childhood but its pain". In fact, he inherited (继承) excellent taste in art from his family—both his father and his brother were painters. But he finally settled on literature, particularly drama and poetry.

    Yeats had strong faith in coming of new artistic movements. He set himself the fresh task in founding an Irish national theatre in the late 1890s. His early theatrical experiments, however, were not received favorably at the beginning. He didn't lose heart, and finally enjoyed success in his poetical drama.

    Compared with his dramatic works, Yeats's poems attract much admiring notice. The subject matter includes love, nature, history, time and aging. Though Yeats generally relied on very traditional forms, he brought modern sensibility to them. As his literary life progressed, his poetry grew finer and richer, which led him to worldwide recognition.

    He had not enjoyed a major public life since winning the Nobel Price in 1923. Yet, he continued writing almost to the end of his life. Had Yeats stopped writing at age 40, he would who probably now be valued as a minor poet, for there is no other example in literary history of a poet Auden wrote, among others, the following liners:

    Earth, receive an honored guest:

    William Yeats is laid to rest.

    Let the Irish vessel (船) lie

    Emptied of its poetry.