On Feb. 26th, 2020, when an Italian went to work with a mask to prevent COVID-19, his workmates thought he was "causing panic(恐慌)". You might wonder why the East and the West have different ideas about wearing masks.

In the West, people wear masks only when they get sick. People see masks as a tool(工具) to protect sick people and prevent the disease from spreading, so healthy people don't need to wear masks. Wearing masks in public easily makes them feel "worried" and "shy". They are "afraid of being looked at differently."

However, it's common in Asia. During the 2003 SARS epidemic, masks were widely used in China and East Asia. Many Chinese also like to wear masks to stay warm in winter or protect against air pollution.

In Japan, wearing masks shows your politeness when you get a cold or the flu. Some masks even have different colors and drawings. Young women may wear masks when they don't have their makeup on. Many pop stars in Asia also use masks to protect their privacy(隐私). This makes people in the East wear masks more often when epidemics break out(爆发).

But as the number of COVID-19 cases keeps on growing around the world, people in the West are changing. Many healthy people are starting to wear masks now to protect themselves.

Every person has his birthday. People in different countries spend their birthdays in different ways. Here are four people from different countries. They are talking about how they usually spend their birthdays in their countries.

Jack comes from Spain. "My twenty-first birthday is on a Saturday , " he says. " I'm going out with my friends. To wish me a happy birthday, they will pull on my ear twenty-one times, once for each year. It's an old habit. Some people pull on the ear just once, but my friends are very strict! "

Mr. Sato is from Japan. He's going to be sixty tomorrow." In my country, people call the sixtieth birthday Kanreki, " he says. " It's the start of a new life. The color red is for a new life, so they always have something red for the sixtieth birthday. "

Phillip, from France, smiles and says, "I'm going to be thirty next week, so I want to ask three very good friends out to have dinner. In France, when you have birthday, you often ask people out with you. In some countries, I know it's opposite- people usually take you out. "

Li Xiao is a Chinese girl from Beijing. She is happy and tells us, " Tomorrow is my sixteenth birthday. It's a special day. So we're going to have a family party. l can get some money in lucky envelopes(信封)from my family. My mother will cook noodles that are for a long life. "

Did you find or lose anything? Here are some lost and found notices.