We've considered several ways of paying to cut in line: hiring line standers, buying tickets from scalpers (票贩子), or purchasing line-cutting privileges directly from, say, an airline or an amusement park. Each of these deals replaces the morals of the queue (waiting your turn) with the morals of the market (paying a price for faster service).

    Markets and queues—paying and waiting—are two different ways of allocating things, and each is appropriate to different activities. The morals of the queue, “First come, first served, have an egalitarian (平等主义的) appeal. They tell us to ignore privilege, power, and deep pockets.

    The principle seems right on playgrounds and at bus stops. But the morals of the queue do not govern all occasions. If I put my house up for sale, I have no duty to accept the first offer that comes along, simply because it's the first. Selling my house and waiting for a bus are different activities, properly governed by different standards.

    Sometimes standards change, and it is unclear which principle should apply. Think of the recorded message you hear, played over and over, as you wait on hold when calling your bank: “Your call will be answered in the order in which it was received.” This is essential for the morals of the queue. It's as if the company is trying to ease our impatience with fairness.

    But don't take the recorded message too seriously. Today, some people's calls are answered faster than others. Call center technology enables companies to “score” incoming calls and to give faster service to those that come from rich places. You might call this telephonic queue jumping.

    Of course, markets and queues are not the only ways of allocating things. Some goods we distribute by merit, others by need, still others by chance. However, the tendency of markets to replace queues, and other non-market ways of allocating goods is so common in modern life that we scarcely notice it anymore. It is striking that most of the paid queue-jumping schemes we've considered—at airports and amusement parks, in call centers, doctors' offices, and national parks—are recent developments, scarcely imaginable three decades ago. The disappearance of the queues in these places may seem an unusual concern, but these are not the only places that markets have entered.

    Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is gaining global popularity. According to a government white paper, TCM has been introduced in 183 countries and regions around the world.

    Westerners' understanding of TCM, however, may be limited to acupuncture, cupping and massage(针灸，拔罐和按摩). For instance, the purple, injury-like marks left on U. S. swimmer Michael Phelps，back from cupping for the purpose of relaxing his muscles and reducing pain became the center of attention during the Rio Olympics in 2016.

    As a matter of fact, Chinese herbs play a more important role in getting rid of diseases and keeping the body in good condition in the TCM treatment system than physical treatment. It is therefore disheartening to know that while 103 World Health Organization member countries have given approval to the practice of acupuncture, not many recognize Chinese herbal medicine. TCM falls far behind Western medicine owing partly to the slow development of Chinese herbs.

    Herbs are made into pills, powder and soup, and the kind of herbs used, their quality and quantity, and the processing of the ingredients (原材料) jointly determine the effectiveness of the prescription. Compared with Western medicine, which has standardized drug production processes and treatment methods, TCM lacks standardization, with the chemical composition and functions of its medicines being unclear and their effects being unstable. Fortunately, standardization has improved in recent decades, with an increasing number of factories producing patented TCM drugs.

    Another factor that has prevented the development of TCM prescription drugs is the lack of creativity. While Western medicine-making companies come up with new products every year, TCM drug producers tend to make medicines according to prescriptions handed down from the past. Chinese chemist Tu Youyou's winning the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her research into malaria (疟疾) treatment may drive creativity to some extent in China's TCM industry. However, the current state of affairs cannot be changed within a short time.

    A new technology is going to ripe, one that could transform our daily lives, help to form new industries, even remove world economic powers from their present positions. Unlike the wave of industrialization that began in the West and spread later to the rest of the world, the new developments are taking place in research labs all over the globe—and Asians are in the forefront. Physicists are creating a new class of materials that display an amazing property unforeseen even two years ago—superconductivity (超导体技术).

    Used today only in specialized equipment, super conductors have the potential to radically change most of the electrical and electronic appliances found in the home, making them smaller, more powerful and efficient. They could free our cities of pollution by replacing petrol and diesel (柴油) vehicles with electric cars, and cut the cost of electricity. The new materials do something that even the best of conductors such as copper and silver cannot—they do away with all electrical resistance. The significances for energy storage are great.

    The technology is in its early stage, still accessible to countries that decide to invest brains and money. For 75 years it had remained little more than a scientific curiosity with limited practical use because the phenomenon occurred only at extremely low temperatures. It was first observed in 1911 by a Dutch scientist named Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, who cooled mercury (水银) to temperatures below -269℃ with liquid helium (氦). Then in January last year, two IBM scientists, K. Alex Muller and J. George Bednorz, found a metal oxide ceramic (氧化陶瓷) that superconducted at -243℃. Their report went largely unnoticed until last December, when it was confirmed at a scientific meeting in Boston. Today Japan, India, China and other Asian countries all have their share of experts who spend their days and nights in labs, acting as midwives (助产士) to a new technology.

    Growing up, I wanted to be just like my mom. She was kind. People always seemed to feel comfortable in her presence. For years, she was a volunteer in our community. I loved going to the local nursing home with her where she taught a ceramic class.

    On one summer day, Mama told me to get changed and meet her at the car.

I had planned to spend the day at the lake with friends. Why did she have to ruin everything? I imagined the cool lake water. Irritated, I climbed into the car and slammed the door shut. We sat in silence. I was too upset to make conversation.

“Tasha, would you like to know where we are going?” Mama asked calmly.

    “No,” I said.

    “We are going to volunteer at a children's shelter today. I have been there before and I think it would benefit you,” she explained.

    When we reached the shelter, Mama rang the doorbell. Moments later, we were greeted by a woman. She led us to the front room where all of the children were playing. I noticed a baby whose body was scarred with iron marks. I was told it was because she wouldn't stop crying. The majority of the children had noticeable physical scars. Others hid their emotional wounds.

    As I took in my surroundings, I felt a gentle tug on my shirt. I looked down to see a little girl looking up at me. “Hi. You want to play dolls with me?” she asked. I looked over at Mama for reinforcement. She smiled and nodded. I turned back and said, “Sure.” Her tiny hand reached up and held mine, as if to comfort me.

     My mom taught me a valuable lesson that summer. I returned to the shelter with her several times. During those visits, some of the children shared their troubled pasts with me and I learned to be grateful for what I had. Today as I strive to instill (逐渐灌输) these values in my own child, I reflect back to that experience. It was a time that I will never forget.

    Give yourself a test. Which way is the wind blowing? How many kinds of wildflowers can be seen from your front door? If your awareness is as sharp as it could be, you'll have no trouble answering these questions.

    Most of us observed much more as children than we do as adults. A child's day is filled with fascination, newness and wonder. Curiosity gave us all a natural awareness. But distinctions that were sharp to us as children become unclear; we are numb(麻木的）to new stimulation(刺激), new ideas. Relearning the art of seeing the world around us is quite simple, although it takes practice and requires breaking some bad habits.

    The first step in awakening senses is to stop predicting what we are going to see and feel before it occurs. This blocks awareness. One chilly night when I was hiking in the Rocky Mountains with some students, I mentioned that we were going to cross a mountain stream. The students began complaining about how cold it would be. We reached the stream, and they unwillingly walked ahead. They were almost knee-deep when they realized it was a hot spring. Later they all admitted they'd felt cold water at first.

    Another block to awareness is the obsession(痴迷) many of us have with naming things. I saw bird watchers who spotted a bird, immediately looked it up in field guides, and said, a "ruby-crowned kinglet" and checked it off. They no longer paid attention to the bird and never learned what it was doing.

    The pressures of "time" and "destination" are further blocks to awareness. I encountered many hikers who were headed to a distant camp-ground with just enough time to get there before dark. It seldom occurred to them to wander a bit, to take a moment to see what's around them. I asked them what they'd seen. "Oh, a few birds," they said. They seemed bent on their destinations.

    Nature seems to unfold to people who watch and wait. Next time you take a walk, no matter where it is, take in all the sights, sounds and sensations. Wander in this frame of mind and you will open a new dimension to your life.

 Sino-Korean art exhibition kicks off in Shanghai

Born in 1992, an exhibition featuring artworks from 30 Chinese and Korean artists born in the year 1992, opened in Shanghai on Thursday.

Kim Seung-ho, Republic of Korea consul general（总领事）in Shanghai, said at the opening ceremony that the exhibition is meant {#blank#}1{#/blank#}( commemorate) the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and South Korea.

"As the Chinese idiom {#blank#}2{#/blank#}( go): A man should be independent in society at 30. In the past 30 years, a generation of Chinese and Korean people have worked hard and made excellent achievements in {#blank#}3{#/blank#}( develop) the bilateral（双边的）relations," said Kim.

Divided into three sections, the exhibition features 30 artworks that include paintings, photographs, installations（装置艺术）, {#blank#}4{#/blank#} videos.

Shanghai-based artist Zheng Yiran created the installation Living Room just for {#blank#}5{#/blank#} exhibition. One of the objects within this installation {#blank#}6{#/blank#} drew the attention of many visitors is a photo album. "As I {#blank#}7{#/blank#}( inspire) by the theme of this exhibition, I created this album by getting each of the participating artists to send me a childhood photo of themselves. I then put all these {#blank#}8{#/blank#}(image) in one album so that it looks like one person," said Zheng. "It seems as if we share a common memory of the past 30 years, and I invite everyone to come to sit in this {#blank#}9{#/blank#}(relax) living room and have a look at the growing-up process of this person," she added.

The exhibition is located {#blank#}10{#/blank#} Bund 18 Art Space and runs through Aug 28.

Tourists cautioned of flood dangers in wake of tragedy.