On September 19, Alibaba went public (上市) on the New York Stock Exchange(纽约证券交易所). It shows that Ma Yun has done his business successfully. A short Chinese man seems to be the tallest man in the world right now. Ma used to be an English teacher. So far, he has become the richest man on the Chinese mainland.

    Ma was born in Hangzhou and grew up as a happy kid. At the age of twelve, he found that English was very interesting. Every morning he got up at 5 a.m., and then ran to a hotel near the West Lake where he could communicate with foreign tourists in English. He did it for nine years. The experience made him become a fantastic English speaker and also opened his eyes to the wide world. In a 1995 trip to the US, Ma was shown to the Internet for the first time. Seeing the chance, Ma returned to China and set up a website without knowing much about computers. Four years later, Ma set up Alibaba in Hangzhou. People called him “Crazy Jack Ma”. But fifteen years later, Alibaba has developed into the world's largest e-commerce (电子商务) company.

    There was a very rich man named Mike. In his house, he had a very large room. "If anyone can fill my room in one day, I will give him 20,000 dollars." he said. Everyone in the town wanted to have a try.

    Mark tried to fill the room with stones. At the end of the day, he was very tired, but the room was still not full. Martin tried to fill the room with wood. He worked all day, but the room was not full. "That room is too big, no one can do this." he said. Alan said, "I can do it. It's easy." Everyone laughed. They thought he could not do it. Then, he went to the park and played all day. His friend asked him, "Why are you playing, you should be working." The man said, "Don't worry." At 8:00 at night, the man came to the room with a small bag. The rich man said, "That bag is too small. How will you fill the room?" The man took a candle out of the bag. He lit the candle and said, "You see, the whole room is filled with light!"

    Sammy looked out of the classroom window at a bird in a tree. He saw a worm (小虫) in the bird's mouth. "Wow!" he whispered as he looked at the bird eating the worm.

    "Sammy!" his teacher Mr. Maxwell said loudly.

    Sammy jumped and knocked his science book off his desk. Everyone in the class laughed and Sammy blushed. This was the third time today he had been caught not paying attention to the science lesson. It was just so easy to get distracted (分心的) when people read aloud from the science textbook!

    It wasn't that Sammy didn't like science. He loved to learn about machines, Earth and animals. He even thought bugs and plants were great. He wanted to go outside and see how a snake lived. He wanted to watch plants growing from the ground as they did last month. He just didn't want to read about these things.

    Sammy thought Mr. Maxwell would surely understand. "There was a bird with a worm in its mouth..." Sammy began. Then he saw the furious look on his teacher's face. Sammy decided that he had better stop talking before Mr. Maxwell became any angrier.

    My great-grandmother, Ethel, came from England to the United States in 1921. She brought almost nothing with her-just a few clothes and trinkets(小饰物). But she did bring some customs from "the old country" that she had learned as she grew up.

    One custom was that if you dropped a glass or a cup and it broke, you would throw a little salt over your left shoulder. It was funny that she did that-she wasn't superstitious(迷信的) in other ways. I think that she grew up doing that, so she continued to do it as a connection to her childhood.

    Ethel also taught us a New Year's Day custom that our family continues to follow today. To celebrate the new year, we would travel to a friend's house for a quick visit. My great-grandmother always took a pound of butter with her on our visits. We would enter the friend's house through the back door. The butter we brought was to give our friend a "gift of gold" to symbolize hope for prosperity in the new year.

    After my great-grandmother died, we still visited people on the first day of January, but eventually we stopped bringing the butter. We never did throw salt over our shoulders after breaking a glass or a cup. Some customs are continued when they cross from one country to another, but some customs fade away.