“Can't hold a candle to” is a popular expression. When there wasn't electricity, someone would have a servant light his way by holding a candle. The expression meant that the person who cannot hold a candle to you is not fit even to be your servant. Now, it means such a person cannot compare or compete.

    Another expression is “hold your tongue.” It means to be still and not talk. “Hold your tongue” is not something you would tell a friend. But a parent or teacher might use the expression to quiet a noisy child.

    “Hold out” is an expression one hears often in sports reports and labor news. It means to refuse to play or work. Professional football and baseball players ''hold out” if their team refuses to pay them what they think they are worth.

    The expression “hold up” has several different meanings. One is a robbery. A man with a gun may say, “This is a hold-up. Give me your money.” Another meaning is to delay. A driver who was held up by heavy traffic might be late for work. Another meaning is for a story to be considered true after an investigation. A story can hold up if it is proved true.

    “Hold on” is another expression, which means waiting or stopping. As you leave for school, your brother may say, “Hold on, you forgot your book.” It is used to ask a telephone caller to wait and not hang up his telephone.

    Our final expression is “hold the line”. That means to keep a problem or situation from getting worse—to hold steady. For example, the president may say he will “hold the line on taxes”. He means there will be no increase in taxes.

    Some of the best things in life don't happen until you grow old enough to recognize them. I can say that about tea.

    I didn't start to drink tea until I was 35. What happened before that? The first time I felt a genuine urge to drink tea was in 2003, when I stayed briefly in the United Kingdom. After a time of consuming local food, I started to really like strong black tea. Although it was too strong to my tongue, I felt it was a necessity because it was comforting to my body.

    I took packs of green teas with me as gifts but was disappointed to find my British friends preferred much stronger black teas from Sri Lanka. Later I learned that although people know China for its teas, it ranks only third among the world's black tea exporters, after Sri Lanka and Kenya.

    After I came back to China and started to cover food stories, I met friends in the tea-drinking circle and learned more. Although the majority of the rest of the world drinks black tea, which the Chinese call“red tea”, China produces and drinks mostly green teas.

    I feel lucky to be Chinese because of the great variety of teas available in the country. It is estimated that there are more than 2,000 teas in China if you divide them geographically, including more than 600 locally famous brews. A more simple way to categorize (分类) is by color and extent of fermentation (发酵). That comes down to six main categories—green, white, yellow, dark-greenish (oolong), red and black teas.

    Tasting teas can be compared to our lives. They can be plain and predictable but sometimes they are full of pleasant surprises. Occasionally they can even seem too good to be true. The best thing is, you know there's always more to explore.

                                                                                 Is There Life on Earth

    There was great excitement on the planet of Venus this week. For the first time Venusian scientists managed to land a satellite on the planet Earth, and it has been sending back signals as well as photographs ever since.

    The satellite was directed into an area known as Manhattan(named after the great Venusian astronomer Prof. Manhattan, who first discovered it with his telescope 20,000 light years ago). Because of excellent weather conditions and extremely strong signals, Venusian scientists were able to get valuable information as to the feasibility(可行性)of a manned flying saucer(飞碟)landing on Earth. A press conference was held at the Venus Institute of Technology.

    “We have come to the conclusion, based on last week's satellite landing,” Pro. Zog said, “that there is no life on the Earth.”

    “How do you know this?” the science reporter of the Venus Evening Star asked.

    “For on thing, Earth's surface in the area of Manhattan is composed of solid concrete and nothing can grow there. For another, the atmosphere is filled with carbon monoxide and other deadly gases and nobody could possibly breathe this air and survive.”

    “What does this mean as far as our flying saucer program is concerned?”

    “We shall have to take our own oxygen with us, which means heavier flying saucer than we originally planned.”

    “Are there any other risks that you discovered in your studies?”

    “Take a look at his photo. You see this dark black cloud floating over the surface of Earth?” We call this the Consolidated Edison Belt. We don't know what it is made of, but it could give us a lot of trouble and we shall have to make further tests before we send a Venus Being there.”

    “If what you say is true, won't this set back the flying saucer program several years?”

    “Yes, but we shall proceed as soon as the Grubstart gives us the added funds.”

    “Pro. Zog, why are we spending billions and billions of zilches to land a flying saucer on Earth when there is no life there?

    “Because if we Venusians can learn to breathe in an Earth atmosphere, then. We can live anywhere.”

    Dutch beachcomber (海滩拾荒者) Wim Kruiswijk has accumulated a collection of 1,200 messages-in-bottles over the course of nearly 4 decades and has responded to almost all of them,

    68-year-old Kruiswijk says that his unusual hobby began in 1983 when he found three drift bottles (漂流瓶) on his local beach, each containing letters and return addresses. He wrote to all three addresses and was surprised to receive responses from each one. It was this experience that aroused his interest in hunting and collecting messages in bottles, and he hasn't stopped looking for them since.

"I find my messages in bottles on the beach of Zandvoort, where I live, and on the Dutch Islands," Kruiswijk recently told Great Big Story. "Messages in bottles is slow mail. It takes you days, or weeks, or months to find a bottle. "

In the early years, Kruiswijk would find as many as 50 bottles a year, but since 2000 that has slowed to around 20-30 finds, mainly due to beach cleaning efforts. He believes that the rise of the Internet has also played a role in the diminishing number of messages in bottles, telling Dutch newssite PZC, "I used to get a response at half the bottle messages that I answered. Now that's less; many people want 'instant satisfaction'."

    Throwing a message in a bottle out into the sea is a longstanding human tradition dating back to the time of the Greek philosopher Theophrastus, about 310 BC，who used the bottles to study water currents. Scientists still apply the method to this day, as a means to help researchers develop ocean circulation maps, and to crowdsource scientific studies of ocean currents.

    In the past bottles have also been used to send distress messages from sailors in trouble. They also have been used for memorial tributes, or to send loved ones' ashes on a final journey. One of the more common uses though is just to send invitations out to prospective pen pals, a quaint notion in these modern times, but, as Kruiswijk so clearly shows, an effective one.

    Nearly everyone has bad habits. That's because, try as we might, bad habits are hard to break. On the other side, good habits, such as eating more healthfully or exercising regularly, never seem to stick. As a result, most people throw up their hands and surrender.

    But now a new book, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives by best-selling author Gretchen Rubin, offers some useful solutions.

    Rubin, who became interested in habits during her research on happiness, which resulted in two popular books, The Happiness Project (2009) and Happier at Home (2012), found that our inability to master unwanted behaviors was a major downer (令人沮丧的因素). So, after guiding millions of readers down the path of true contentedness, Rubin turned her investigative skills toward habits.

    Her most important find? Change is possible if we do some soul searching and identify how we respond to expectations. And, just about everybody falls into one of four personality categories: Questioners, Obligers, Rebels and Upholders.

    Rubin believes herself to be a classic Upholder, someone who forms habits relatively easily because she responds well to both other people's deadlines and her own. As to the other types, Questioners will only form a habit if it makes sense to them; Obligers work hard to meet other people's expectations but often let themselves down. And Rebels resent (反感) habits.

    "Think about the habit that you want to form and then think: "What's everything I could do to set myself up for success?" says Rubin. For example, if you want to exercise more and you're an Obliger, call your friend who lives across the street and meet at 6：30 every morning for a walk.

    One common pitfall (陷阱), says Rubin, especially when it comes to changing your diet, is lack of clarity (清楚). "You can't make a habit out of eating more healthfully, "she says. Instead, your habit should be something like: "I'm going to pack a lunch every day and bring it to work instead of eating out."

    As for exercise, Rubin recommends a strategy called pairing—coupling two activities, one that you need or want to do and one that you don't particularly want to do. Rubin, for example, only allows herself to read magazines while on fitness equipment at the gym.

    February has long been a month of romance. With the sweet smell of roses in the air, romantic films hit cinemas and love stories fill newspapers and magazines.

    On the 14th day, it is customary for a boy to take his girlfriend out to dinner, buy her flowers and chocolates, write poems, sing to her or even spell out her name with rose petals!

    This is the scene that greets you on Valentine's Day, named after Valentine who was a priest in third century Rome. When the emperor decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives, he banned marriage.

    But Valentine continued to perform marriage ceremonies for young lovers in secret. When his actions were discovered, the emperor had him put to death.

    While in prison, it is said that Valentine fell in love with the daughter of his prison guard. Before his death, he wrote her a letter, which he signed "From your Valentine", an expression that is still in use today.

    Valentine died for what he believed in and so was made a Saint, as well as becoming one of history's most romantic figures.

    Nowadays, Valentine's Day wins the same popularity among Chinese young people. It is a time when students "don't want to be alone" according to Gao Shunjie, a student reporter for 21st Century Teens in Jinling High School, Nanjing. Some of her classmates are planning to make Valentine's cards for parents, teachers and friends. Others want to hold parties at which they will exchange small gifts and eat heart shaped cakes. The idea is to have fun and encourage people to share in the spirit of St Valentine.