When I was going home to India last year, I called up my mother to ask if she wanted anything from China.

    When India had not opened up its markets to the world, I carried suitcase loads of dark glasses and jeans. Thankfully, we can get all these anywhere in India now.

    Still, her answer surprised me, “Green tea.”

    As long as I can remember she didn't even drink Indian tea.

    I dutifully bought a big packet of Longjing and headed home to hear the story. My mother and her brother, both regular newspaper readers, believed that Chinese green tea was the wonder drug for all illnesses.

    At the turn of the century，China was not really familiar to the average Indians. It was a strange country.

    How things change! And how soon!

    Now every town of any size seems to have a “China Market”. And everyone is talking about China.

    The government of India has planned to send a team to China to see how things are done. A minister once said that India must open the doors for more foreign investments(投资) and such a step would “work wonders as it did for China”．

    But it's a two way street. I just heard about a thousand Shenzhen office workers who have gone to Bangalore to train in software. Meanwhile, all the Indian IT majors are setting up a strong presence in China.

    No wonder that trade, which was only in the millions just ten years ago，was expected to hit about $15 billion for last year and $20 billion by 2008, a goal set by both governments.

    No wonder，my colleague wrote some weeks ago about this being the Sino－Indian(中印) century as the two countries started on January 1 the Sino－Indian Friendship Year.

    But what is still a wonder to me is my mother drinking Chinese tea.

    Home Laundry Automatic Dryer Product

    Full Two Year Warranty（保修）

    Limited Five Year Warranty on Cabinet（机箱）

    Warranty Provides for：

    FIRST TWO YEARS Amana will repair or replace any faulty part free of charge.

    THIRD THRU FIFTH YEARS Amana will provide a free replacement part for any cabinet which proves faulty due to rust（生锈）.

    Warranty Limitations：

    Warranty begins at date of original purchase.

    Applies only to product used within the United States or in Canada if product is approved by Canadian Standards Association when shipped from factory.

    Products used on a commercial or rental basis not covered by this warranty.

    Service must be performed by an Amana servicer.

    Adjustments covered during first year only.

Warranty Does Not Cover It If：

    Product has damage due to product change，connection to an improper electrical supply> shipping and handling, accident, fire, floods, lightning or other conditions beyond the control of Amana.

    Product is improperly installed（安装）or applied.

    Owner's Responsibilities：

    Provide sales receipt.

    Normal care and repair.

    Having the product reasonably accessible for service.

    Pay for service calls related to product installation or usage instructions.

    Pay for extra service costs, over normal service charges, if servicer is requested to perform service outside servicer^ normal business hours.

    In no event shall Amana be responsible for consequential damages（间接损坏）.

    This warranty gives you specific legal rights, and you may have others which vary from state to state For example, some states do not allow the exclusion（排除）or limitation of consequential damages, so this exclusion may not apply to you.

    Little New Year (Chinese: Xiaonian), usually a week before the lunar New Year, falls on Feb 8 this year. It is also known as the Festival of the Kitchen God, the deity(神) who oversees the moral character of each household. Here are six things you should know about the Little New Year, another sign of the start of spring.

    ⒈Offer sacrifices to Kitchen God

    One of the most distinctive traditions of the Little New Year is the burning of a paper image of the Kitchen God, who will report on the family's conduct over the past year. The offerings to the Kitchen God include pig's head, fish, sweet bean paste, melons, fruit, boiled dumplings, barley sugar, and Guandong candy, a sticky treat made out of glutinous millet and sprouted wheat. Most of the offerings are sweets of various varieties. It is thought that this will seal the Kitchen God's mouth and encourage him to only say good things about the family when he ascends to heaven to make his report.

    ⒉House cleaning

    According to Chinese folk beliefs, during the last month of the year ghosts and deities must choose either to return to Heaven or to stay on Earth. It is believed that in order to ensure the ghosts and deities' timely departure people must thoroughly clean both their persons and their houses, down to every last drawer and cupboard.

    ⒊Eat Guandong candy

    Guandong candy, a sticky treat made out of glutinous millet and sprouted wheat, is a traditional snack that Chinese people eat on the Festival of the Kitchen God.

    ⒋Paste paper-cuts to windows

    In the Little New Year, old couplets and paper-cuts from the previous Spring Festival are taken down, and new window decorations, New Year's posters, and auspicious(吉利的) decorations are pasted up.

    ⒌Bath and hair-cut

    As the old Chinese saying goes, whether they're rich or poor, people often have a haircut before the Spring Festival. The activity of taking bath and haircut is often taken on the Little New Year.

    ⒍Preparations for Spring Festival

    People start to stock up necessary provisions for the Spring Festival since the Little New Year. Everything needed to make offerings to the ancestors, entertain guests, and feed the family over the long holiday must be purchased in advance.

    My husband and I wanted desperately the instant transformation from typical consumers to eco-conscious people. We switched our light bulbs to CFL(compact fluorescent light) bulbs to conserve energy. We went about the house turning off lights and unplugging appliances that weren't in use. But the rate of global warming exceeded our snail's pace conversion to greenhood. So I pressed onward.

    I decided to put veganism(素食主义) at the top of our agenda. Vegans refuse any animal flesh or commercial goods made from any animal byproducts such as milk or fats. All the family applauded this option except for my husband. Some kind of animal needed to sacrifice its dear life for his meal or it was his dinner. I cooked up a storm, struggling to prepare nutritious meals dominated by not-so-obvious vegan dishes like bean burritos and high-fiber vegetable stir-fry. It took a few days before he realized that he hadn't been eating any meat.

    "I feel like eating beef." he announced. So that night, I took full advantage of a zucchini (一种南瓜), cut it into chunky(粗大的) pieces and cooked them. Then I covered them with spices. My beef-starved husband had some and a curious look crossed his face.

    "Where's the beef?"

    "Living peacefully somewhere on an open plain where it belongs."

    "I knew it" he murmured. "You've surely made great contributions to the boom in cattle." His taste buds were developed completely around the flavor of every kind of animal: cattle, pigs, deer, lamb, chickens and ducks. Converting him was like feeding grass to a lion.

    I'm all for preserving our planet, but what good would it do to save the earth for tomorrow's generation if today's died of starvation? The next day, we went out for burgers. I was very careful to place the paper bag into our recycling bin.

    Medicine is the most noble of all the arts, but owing to the ignorance of those who practice it, and those who inconsiderately form a judgment of them, it is now far behind all the other arts. Their mistake appears to me to arise principally from the fact that there is no punishment for the practice of medicine except disgrace, and that does not hurt those who are familiar with it. Such persons are like the figures introduced in tragedies, for as they have the shape, and dress, and appearance of an actor, but are not actors, so also physicians are many in title but very few in reality.

    Whoever is to acquire a competent knowledge of medicine ought to process the following advantages: a natural character; instruction; a favorable position for the study; early tuition; love for labor; leisure. First of all, a natural talent is required, for Nature leads the way to what is most excellent; then instruction in the art takes place, which the student must try to adopt by reflection, becoming an early pupil in a place well adapted for instruction. He must also bring to the task a love of labor and perseverance to ensure the instruction takes root.

    Instruction in medicine is like the culture of the productions of the earth. For our natural character, is, as it were, the soil; the principals of our teacher are, as it were, the seed. Instruction in youth is like the planting of the seed in the ground at the proper season. Diligent study is like the cultivation of the fields; and it is time which passes on strength to all things and brings them to maturity

    Having brought all these essentials to the study of medicine, and having acquired a true knowledge of it, we shall thus, in travelling around, be respected physicians not only in name but in reality. Inexperience is a bad trait, and does harm to those who possess it, nurturing either timidity or audacity(胆大安为). For timidity reveals a want of powers, and audacity a lack of skill. Physicians who are eager for power or those who are undertrained are not a blessing to a community.

    Those things which are sacred or noble, are to be delivered only to sacred persons; and it is wrong to import them to the profane until they have been initiated in the mysteries of the science.

    One day a mime(哑剧演员) is visiting the zoo and tries to earn some money as a street performer. As soon as he starts to draw a crowd, a zookeeper pulls him into his office. The zookeeper explains that the zoo's most popular attraction, a gorilla(大猩猩), has died suddenly and the keeper fears that attendance(出席人数) at the zoo will fall off. He offers the mime a job to dress up as the gorilla. The mime accepts.

    The next morning the mime puts on the gorilla suit and enters the cage before the crowd comes. He soon discovers he can sleep, play and make fun of people and he draws bigger crowds than he ever did as a mime — the job he likes but loses.

    However, with days going by, he begins to notice that the people are paying more attention to the lion in the cage next to his. Not wanting to lose the attention of his audience, he climbs to the top of his cage, crawls across a partition(隔墙), and dangles(悬挂) from the top to the lion's cage. The lion gets angry at this. The scene is a fuel to the crowd.

    At the end of the day he is given a raise for being such a good attraction — well, this continues for some time. The crowds grow larger, and the mime's pay keeps going up.

    Then one day when he is dangling over the lion he slides and falls. The mime is terrified. He starts screaming “Help me!”, but the lion is quick. The mime soon finds himself flat on his back looking up at the angry lion and the lion says, “Shut up you fool! Do you want to get us both fired?”