Master painter Zhang Daqian (1899-1983) was well known for having a large number of friends and students. Among them, painter Li Qiujun was special.

    They got to know each other through Li's elder brother, who was one of Zhang's best friends.

    They admired each other's artistic talent and became confidants, which resulted in a romantic relationship.

    In 1948, Zhang produced Spring Clouds Amid Autumn Landscape, a mountain-and-water ink painting featuring gongbi (meticulous brushwork), as a gift for Li's 50th birthday.

    A year later, Zhang permanently departed from the mainland, and traveled and exhibited around the world before settling down in Taipei in 1976.

    After leaving the mainland, he often said that he missed Li, who died in Shanghai in 1973.

    Spring Clouds Amid Autumn Landscape will be auctioned in Hong Kong on Oct 4.

    The painting not only marks a friendship between the two painters, but it deserves special attention because it shows Zhang at the top of his game as he sought to master the mountain-and-water style, according to C.K. Cheung, head of Sotheby's Chinese painting department.

    Sotheby's will auction the work at its major autumn sale, which runs from Oct 1 to 5.

    Cheung says the painting's composition and Zhang's attention to details reflect his incorporation of traditional touches, especially from Song Dynasty (960-1279) paintings, while also developing his own style.

The Exterminating Angel

Director: Luis Bunuel

Country/Date: Mexico/1962(black and white)

Introduction: A party is organized in a high class society house. Many people are drinking and eating. It's getting late, but nobody is leaving. Even though the door is open, people seem to be locked in the house. They can't leave either the day or on the following days. So a rescue began.

The Net

Director: Irwin Winkler

Country/Date: USA/1995

Introduction: Angela Bennettt is a computer programmer who has devoted her life to computers and the Internet. She spends hours and hours in front of the screen. She does everything over the Internet, and she has some close friends in a chat room, though she has never talked to her neighbors.

Kung Fu Panda

Director: Mark Osborne & John Stevenson

Country/Date: Mexico/2008

Introduction: The leading character is a panda whose name is Po. He is lazy first but he has a great dream--to be a kung fu master. To make his dream come true, he goes to a faraway temple to learn kung fu from a master. However, one of his brothers, Tai Long wants to become the kung fu master, killing many of his brothers even the master. So Po fights against Tai Long and defeats him. The film is good especially for kids.

Life is Beautiful

Director: Roberto Benigni

Country/Date: Italy/1998

Introduction: In 1939, during World War II in Italy, Guido, a hopeful man, the main character fell in love with Dora, and they got married. Five years later, their lives changed. Guido and Joshua were taken by Nazis(纳粹) to a concentration camp and Dora also went there with her husband and son. At that place, Guido tried his best to save his son's life in a special way.

    Don't you hate it when someone snubs（冷落）you by looking at their phone instead of paying  attention? The word “Phubbing”, which comes from “phone” and “snub”, describes such behavior. With popularization of smart phones, we see a new "Phubbing" group everywhere in public places: in subway, restaurants, roads, people are checking the mobile phone, ignoring the people around completely. What is worrying us is that not only young people, but also the elderly and kids are getting addicted（上瘾）to Phubbing.

    On Dec 29th, a 28-year-old woman—a mother of two in Wenzhou, drowned after she fell into a river while looking at her mobile phone. A Pakistani man was killed on Dec 15th, 2015, after being hit by a fast moving train while trying to take a selfie (自拍)with it on the track. Last month, Justin, a college student was shot in subway in San Francisco, the U.S. The surveillance(监控)video showed that before Justin was killed, the killer pulled out the gun several times, and even wiped his nose with it. However, nobody noticed that. The surrounding passengers all focused on their cell phones.

    Phone is the tool for communication, but now it distances people and makes them separated from each other. Therefore, someone jokes “the furthest distance in the world is not the distance between life and death, but that you don't know I stand in front of you while you focus on the mobile.”

    Phubbing appears harmless; however, it does affect our life. 23-year-old Alex from Melbourne wrote in his blog: "I can no longer focus on what I am eating since I started twittering. My skill of food photography has improved very fast, while my interest in food drops a lot as a result."

    Crown shyness(树冠羞避) is a mysterious natural phenomenon in which the crowns of some tree species do not touch each other, but get separated by a gap clearly visible from ground level. The effect usually occurs between trees of the same species, but has also been observed between trees of different species.

    There are many theories going around, most of which make sense, but no one has been able to prove without the shadow of a doubt why some trees avoid touching each other.

    In his 1955 book Growth Habits of the Eucalypts, Australian forester M.R. Jacobs writes that the growing tips of the trees are sensitive to abrasion(擦伤), which results in crown shyness phenomenon. This theory was also supported by Dr. Miguel Franco. Some experiments have shown that if trees displaying crown shyness are artificially prevented from swinging in the wind and touching each other, they gradually fill up the gaps between them.

    But while the above theory is arguably the most widespread, it's certainly not the only one. Some scientists have suggested that crown shyness is a mechanism to stop the spreading of leaf-eating insects. These pests have been known to work together and create structures that extend up to 10 cm off of tree branches in order to reach other plants, so the gaps are the trees' natural defense method.

    One Malaysian scholar studied many trees, but found no traces of abrasions, despite their clear crown shyness. Instead, he suggests that the growing tips of the trees were sensitive to light levels and stopped growing when they got too close to other trees. Plants are able to sense how close they are to other plants and in order to get more light, they give off some chemical element to stop other trees from growing too close.

    Whatever the reason, one thing is for sure: plants are more intelligent than people used to think.

    “Helicopter parent” may not sound pleasant, but given the chance, most parents would probably prefer a vehicle to zoom (快速移动)little ones between school, football practice and piano lessons. Getting children where they need to go is a huge task and expense, especially in homes where both parents work. Hailing rides (专车服务)through firms like Uber and Lyft has made life more convenient for adults. But drivers are not supposed to pick up kids who travels without an adult aside (although some are known to bend the rules).

    Children represent a fresh-faced opportunity. Ride-hailing for kids could be a market worth at least $50bn in America, hopes Ritu Narayan, the founder of Zum, one of the startups in want of the prize. These services are similar to Uber's, except they allow parents to schedule rides for their children in advance. Children are given a code word to ensure they find the right driver, and parent sreceive warnings about the pick-up and ride, including the car's speed. These services promise more careful background checks finger printing and training than typical ride-hailing companies.

    Annette Yolas, who works in sales at AT&T, says that she spends around $200 a month on Hop Skip Drive, a service that operates in several markets in California, for her three kids to get to the school bus on time and to ballet practice. She says it has been a “life-saver” by allowing her to work longer hours. Meanwhile, kids avoid the embarrassment of a relative pulling up at school. But ride-hailing firms for kids may end up like the children in Neverland, and never fully grown. They face several challenges. One is finding enough drivers. All users need rides during the same limited set of hours: before and after school, which makes it hard to offer drivers enough work. It can also be challenging to persuade parents, who have drilled it into children never to get in a stranger's car.

    And while ride-sharing companies can annoy adult passengers by cancelling or being late, such behavior can be a disaster when children are involved. Shuddle, an early entrant in the taxis-for-kids business, which shut down in 2016, had only two out of five stars on Yelp (点网站)for that reason， and lots of negative reviews from parents. It had made money on rides mainly by raising prices ever higher.

    Shuddle's failure has not discouraged Uber itself, which is expected soon to launch a pilot programme for teenagers under 18. Parents may be happier to use services they are familiar with. But Uber's entrance is likely to add to the struggle of child-focused ride-hailing businesses as they compete for customers and new funds.

    American high school students are terrible writers, and one education reform group thinks it has an answer: robots. Or, more accurately, robot-readers—computers programmed to scan students' essays and spit out a grade.

    Mark Shermis, professor of the College of Education at the University of Akron, is helping to hold a contest, set up by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (WFHF), which promises $ 100,000 in prize money to programmers who write the best automated grading software. "If you're a high school teacher and you give a writing task, you're walking home with 150 essays," Shermis said. "You're going to need some help."

    Automated essay grading was first proposed in the 1960s, but computers back then were not up to the task. In the late 1990s, as technology improved, several textbooks and testing companies jumped into the field. Today, computers are used to grade essays on South Dakota's student writing assessments and a handful of other exams, including the TOEFL test of English fluency, taken by foreign students.

    The Hewlett contest aims to show that computers can grade as well as English teachers—only much more quickly and without all that depressing red ink. "Automated essay scoring is objective," Shermis said. "And it can be done immediately. If students finish an essay at 10 pm, they will get a result at 10: 01 pm."

    Take, for instance, the Intelligent Essay Assessor, a web-based tool marketed by Pearson Education, Inc. Within seconds, it can analyze an essay for spelling, grammar, organization, and help students to make revisions. The program scans for key words and analyzes semantic (语义的) patterns, and Pearson claims that it can understand the meaning of text much the same as a human reader.