Sometimes when I'm flying from one speaking engagement to another, I find myself sitting next to someone who's quite talkative. This is often a pleasant experience for me because I'm a people-watcher. I learn so much by watching and listening to the people I meet and see every day. I've heard stories of sadness and others of delight, fear and joy, and others that would rival those on “Oprah” and "Geraldo”.

    Sad to say，there are times when I'm sitting next to someone who just wants to vent(发泄） his temper or inflict(强加）his political views on an audience for 600 miles. It was one of those days. I settled in, as my seatmate began his speech on the terrible state of the world with the time worn, “You know, kids today are...” He went on and on, sharing vague notions of the terrible state of teens and young adults, based on watching the six o'clock news rather selectively.

    When I gratefully got off that plane and finally made it to my hotel in Indianapolis, I bought the local paper and went to have dinner in the hotel. There, on an inside page, was an article I believe ought to have been the front-page headline news.

In a little Indiana town, there was a 15-year-old boy with a brain tumor. He was undergoing radiation and chemotherapy(化疗）treatments，As a result of those treatments, he had lost all of his hair. I don't know about you, but I remember how I would have felt about that at his age —I would have felt awkward and ashamed.

    This young man's classmates willingly came to the rescue: all the boys in his grade asked their mothers if they could shave their heads so that Brian wouldn't be the only bald boy in the high school. There, on that page was a photograph of a mother shaving all of her sons' hair with the family looking on approvingly. And in the background, a group of similar bald young men.

    No, I don't despair about kids today.

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    Ahead of so-called Singles' Day on the 11th of this month，2013, online sales have already begun peaking.

    The leading e-business platform, tmall.com, has promoted(促销) its fifty-percent-off discount to attract consumers. They are also trying to attract buyers through social media. Vice President of tmall.com Wang Yulei says more than 20 thousand online stores have joined the Double 11 Day sales. But this number has doubled. The final number of how many products going to be on sale has not been known yet. But so far, many more products planned to be put on shelves with discounts.

    During last year's Singles' Day, tmall.com, together with taobao.com, reached a record of 19.1 billion yuan in sales, which considered a milestone in the e-business history of China.

    Singles' Day was first started by Chinese college students in the 1990s as the opposite of Valentine's Day, a celebration for people without romantic partners. The timing was based on the date: Nov. 11—or double 11—for singles. Single young people would treat each other to dinner or give gifts to show love to someone and end their single status.

    But now, the Singles' Day has been promoted as a kind of grand craze just for the shopping season, thanks to thousands of discounted products being promoted online.

    Taobao.com was the first big e-retail platform which used the double 11 idea to promote sales. Taobao.com reached one million yuan worth of sales on that day in 2009, when they first promoted the Singles' Day idea. In 2010, the sales increased to 936 million yuan. The figure climbed up to 5.3 billion yuan in 2011, putting huge demand on shipping services. The figure doubled in 2012.

    E-commerce is considered to be replacing the traditional retailing industry, but the reality is both sides are learning from each other.

    Most students, when asked about their best graduation(毕业) gift, would probably reply, “ A car”, or “Money for a house”. Cai Kaiyuan, 21, made a difference choice. As a graduation gift to himself, he decided to work as a volunteer teacher in a distant village in Tibet.

    Cai, a student at Huan Railway Professional Technology College, at first planned to cycle from Sichuan to Tibet. It turned out cycling on a plateau(高原) was quite difficult. And it has kept changing his opinion on life. Cai's hands even became painful while cycling up a 5008-meter-high mountain, where temperatures often dropped to 18 below zero. At night, the ice covered the road and he fell off his bike three times. Little oxygen made him feel sick and weak. “At the most serious moment, I felt that was on the line,” said Cai.

    However, he also gained something unexpected. At Ya' an, a city in Sichuan, he met a group of tourists who are also university students. A girl called Wu Ling told him that she planned to work as a in a primary school in Tibet after her journey. He was impressed by the idea as she looked weak.

    It was not until he reached a family-run hotel in Shigatse that Cai's spirits began to rise. The hotel manager's two daughters enjoyed talking with him. The kids asked about his experiences on his trip, and showed him the beautiful local lakes. “They told me that they always liked to talk to guests, as they wanted to improve their Mandarin,” he said, “Their parents and many locals can only speak Tibetan.”

    Cai was moved by the girls' story. Their situation is worse and the local people have little chance to learn Mandarin because the schools are short of teacher. “1 want to do something to improve the situation for kids like them,” said Cai. His parents finally gave their agreement and his teachers also supported him.

    Street art is a very popular form of art that is spreading quickly all over the world. You can find it on building, sidewalks, street sings and trash cans from Tokyo to Paris, and from Moscow to Cape Town. Street art has become a global culture and even art museums and galleries are collecting the works of street artists. Even advertising companies also use street art in their ads due to its popularity.

    Street art started out very secretly because it's illegal to paint on public and private property without permission. People often have different opinions about street art. Some people think it is a crime with others think it's a new form of culture.

    Art experts claim that the movement began in New York in the 1960s. Young adults sprayed words and images on walls and trains. This colorful and energetic style of writing became known as graffiti(涂鸦). Graffiti art showed that young people wanted to rebel against society. They didn't want to accept rules, and they travelled around cities to create paintings that everyone could see. In many cases, they had trouble with the police and the local government.

    Many street corners in Paris show the works of Space Invader. A French artist uses small pieces of glass to make images of space creatures. He has been doing this for some years and the police have arrested him a few times. On his website, you can see many other places where he has created this form of art.

    Street artists do their work for some reasons. Some of them do not like the artists who make so much money in galleries and museums. They choose street art because it is closer to common people. Some artists try to express their political opinion in their works. They often want to protest against big firms and corporations. Others like to do things that are forbidden and hope they don't get caught.

    In today's world, the Internet has a big influence on street art. Artists can show their pictures to people all over the world. Many city residents, however, say that seeing a picture on the Internet is never as good as seeing it alive. The street art movement lives with the energy and life of a big city. There it will continue to change and grow.

    We would like to wish all our readers a wonderful winter break. Our January magazine is now in the shops and available digitally. We're looking forward to sharing more adventures and discoveries with you in 2018, including:

    At a crossroads in the Atlantic

    As the population of Ascension Island rises up to mark the 200th anniversary of British rule, Fred Pearce wonders what the future might have in store for this strange part of land.

    Photostory: On the road again

    A selection of images from an exhibition opening this month at the Royal Geographical Society go hand in hand with M. Aurel Stein's early 20th century photographs of the Silk Road.

    Dossier: Going underground

    Mark Rowe discusses the role that carbon storage can play in the global effort to reduce carbon dioxide emission (排放).

    Net loss

    Kit Gillet reports from the Gulf of Thailand, whose fisheries (渔场) have been almost destroyed by the commercialization of the Thai fishing industry.

    And don't forget...a round-up of the latest geographical and climate science news; a hot spot focus on Turkey; advice on taking photographs in Antarctica; an interview with Lucien Castaing-Taylor, professor of visual arts at Harvard; plus lots, lots more...

    Buy your copy now, click here and save up to 35% or call+44

Joy Adamson (Jan, 20, 1910-Jan. 3, 1980) was a popular wildlife conservationist of the 1960s and an author, best known for her book, Born Free, which described her experiences in saving the life of a lioness, Elsa.

Mrs. Adamson was born as Friedericke Victoria Gessner in Troppau. Silesia, Austria-Hungary (now Opava, Czech Republic). In 1937 she moved to Kenya. then a British Colony. In 1944 she married George Adamson, a British game warden in Kenya. and adopted Kenya as her own country, living on the shores of Lake Naivasha. It was with George Adamson, her third husband, that her most crucial and well-known work was done. Their works were pivotal (关键的)for the foundation of modern conservation.

They acquired Elsa, a tame lion cub, in 1956, after George had killed the cub's mother in self-defense. For two years Joy and George trained the animal for a return to the wild, and the subsequent book about Elsa. Born Free (1960), was an international success. Adamson followed the book with Living Free (1961) and Forever Free (1962). These first two books were made into films. In addition to her books about lions, Adamson also wrote two books about Pippa. a cheetah (猎豹) she took on in 1964. as well as numerous other books about her life in Africa. She was also an accomplished artist and many of her paintings are displayed in a museum in Nairobi, Kenya.

Joy and George separated in the 1970s, though they never divorced. On January 3, 1980, Joy was found murdered in a remote region of Kenyn. George was murdered on August 20, 1989, in an isolated region of Nairobi. This was an ironic (讽刺的) end to the lives of two who had lived in such seemingly dangerous circumstances with wild animals; that their deaths were at, the hands of men.