There are many idioms in English. An idiom is a phrase that we can't understand from the meaning of each word. The following are some of them.

As the crow flies

    When a bird flies from place to place, it takes the most direct route. But when people drive, they have to follow roads and often go farther. When people give a distance "as the crow flies", they mean the shortest distance between the two points, not the distance you would have to travel by following roads.

    As Dan and his mum drove along the river, they could see the beach on the opposite side. Dan asked "How far is it to the beach?"

    "It's only about a quarter of a mile as the crow flies" his mother said.

Blow hot and cold

    In one of Aesop's Fables, a man blows on his fingers to warm them up and then blows on his soup to cool it down. In both cases, the man is opening his mouth, but what comes out is different. If a person says one thing and later says the opposite, we say that the person is blowing hot and cold.

    "Is Felicia going to try out for the soccer team this year?" Stacy asked.

    "I don't know," Tricia replied." Last week she was saying yes, but this week she's saying no. She's really blowing hot and cold."

Break the ice

    Nowadays people use the phrase to refer to ending an awkward silence by beginning a conversation.

    It was the first day of summer camp. The four girls began to make their beds in silence. None of the girls knew each other, and no one knew what to say. Finally, one of them broke the ice by saying" Hey, where's everybody from?"

Bury the hatchet

    In native American culture, when two nations agreed to end their war, they buried the hatchet. So to bury the hatchet is to make peace with someone else.

Colin could not excuse his sister for breaking his tennis racket. Finally, his sister said, "Colin, can't we bury the hatchet?"

    At least 35 percent of Beijing households will be covered by family doctor service at the end of this year. All local households will enjoy the service as of 2020, according to the Municipal Health and Family Planning Commission.

    It is good that Chinese communities can expect more general practitioners(从业者)，who do not specialize in any particular area of medicine but who are able to treat the general health problems for people of all ages. By the end of last year over 8 million residents in Beijing had reportedly signed up for family doctor services, accounting for more than 40 percent of the city's permanent population.

    Since 2009 China has launched scores of programs nationwide to ensure citizens have fairer access to elementary public health services ，among which the introduction of family doctors has been one of the most successful. Some regions have issued guidelines on the promotion of the family doctor service. And four months ago, Premier Li Keqiang said in this year's Government Work Report that the service should cover at least 85 percent of the Chinese cities this year.

    The expanding coverage, however, may not guarantee more residents will be offered quality medical services.

    Family doctors in some places rarely visit the families they are assigned to, and some of them have been struggling to solve patients problems either because of their unfitness or because they have too many households to attend to. In some cases, a family doctor might be assigned to see hundreds of residents a day.

    That highlights the need to better the arrangement of medical resources and to offer proper encouragement to family doctors, who should get patients to make appointments rather than employ temporary arrangements.

    BKLYN House Hotel

    There are works by Brooklyn artists in this hotel. The 116 rooms are of great value and Manhattan is only 20 minutes away by taxi or subway. The immediate surroundings feel urban—the hotel is by a high-rise public housing project while the nearest commercial street is under elevated（高的）subway tracks—but Bushwick's best bars and cafes/restaurants are near-by.

    Doubles from $99, room only. Tel: 718 3884433

    Archer Hotel

    Visitors eager to stay in the heart of Manhattan should try one of the bargain-priced rooms at this hotel. Some start from as low as $179 a night (if prepaying in full). Rooms are small but tasteful, with nice touches such as exposed brick. Some have close-up views of the Empire State Building.

    Doubles from $199, room only. Tel: 212 7194100

    Pod 39 Hotel

    In an elegant brick building in Manhattan's Murray Hill, this excellent budget（预算）option opened following the success of its sister hotel, The Pod. The rooms are called pods given for their small size and may not suit everyone. But with prices among the most competitive in Manhattan, budgeters will be happy.

    Doubles from $95, room only. Tel: 212 8655700

    CitizenM New York Times Square

    This is the first US location for a Netherlands-based concept hotel chain—CitizenM. The hotel features self check-in at its 230 little but comfortable rooms via touch screen “Mood-Pads”. There's a rooftop bar, a 24-hour grab-and-go cafeteria and an area with public iMac workspaces. Although New Yorkers avoid nearby Times Square, all the lights, cameras and action can make it a fun tourist experience.

    Doubles from $170, room only. Tel: 212 319 7000

    China is using travel as an important tool to help strengthen its economy. At the recent First World Conference on Tourism a Chinese official spoke about the government's plan for using tourists and the money they spend. The head of China's National Tourism Administration, Li Jinzao, said that China plans to send 150 million travelers along what he called the “One Belt, One Road”. In the next five years, these tourists are expected to spend $200 billion, he said. This spending estimate is likely to raise expectations among countries along the ancient Silk Road, which links China to its neighbors.

    China has reasons to feel it can use tourism to influence the foreign policy. Governments across the world are changing their immigration(移民) rules to welcome the growing numbers of Chinese tourists. Chinese citizens are now going to places where in the past Chinese rarely went. Marketing expert Michel Gutsatz said that among Chinese travelers, South Korea and Thailand are popular destinations. Outside of Asia, he said, Chinese are more likely to visit Europe than North America. These changes, he said, are the results of young Chinese travelers, who spend more and travel independently.

    Spending by Chinese tourists has lifted the economies of several Asian countries, including Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam. It is expected that the number of Chinese traveling overseas to reach 242 million by 2024. In a single year, that number would be equal to the total number of tourists received by Germany, Iran, Indonesia and Egypt combined.

    China is now the biggest business travel market in the world. The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) recently announced that China has overtaken the United States in business travel. Chinese spent just over $290 billion. This year, GBTA predicts that the Chinese business travel market will grow over 10 percent, while the US business travel market will grow less than 2 percent.

    Not many years ago, a wealthy and rather strange old man named Johnson lived alone in a village in the south of England. He had made a lot of money in trading with foreign countries. When he was seventy-five, he gave 12,000$ to the village school to buy land and equipment for a children's playground.

    As a result of his kindness, many people came to visit him. Among them was a newspaperman. During their talk, Johnson said that he was seventy-five and expected to live to be a hundred. The newspaperman asked him how he managed to be healthy at seventy—five. Johnson had a sense of humor. He liked whisky(威士忌)and drank some each day. "I have an injection(注射)in my neck each evening." he told the newspaperman, thinking of his evening glass of whisky. The newspaperman did not understand what Johnson meant. In his newspaper he reported that Johnson was seventy-five and had a daily injection in his neck. Within a week Johnson received thousands of letters from all over Britain asking him for the secret of his daily injection.

    They are called "sea parrots", and sometimes "clowns (小丑) of the sea"!

    Atlantic puffins (海鹦) are small seabirds which are around 25 cm in length. They have black and white feathers and a large parrot-like beak (鸟喙). The beak changes color during the year. In winter, the beak has a dull gray color, but it turns orange in spring!

    Puffins spend most of their lives out at sea, resting on the waves when not swimming. They live on the eastern coast of Canada and the United States, and the western coast of Europe.

    Puffins live off small fish such as herring, hake and sand eels. Puffins flap (拍) their wings up to 400 times a minute and speeding through the air at up to 88 km an hour. Wow! What's more, puffins can dive down 60m under water in search of their favorite fish.

    In spring and summer, thousands of puffins stay together on the coasts and islands of the North Atlantic Ocean to start a puffin family. They usually pair up with the same partner as before some may have been together for 20 years! Puffins dig out a hole usually in a grassy bank. Both parents take it in turn to incubate (孵化) the egg for the next 36-45 days!

Although puffins are not classed as an endangered animal, their population in some places is becoming smaller. The main reasons are overfishing, which can lead to a shortage of food for puffins, and pollution—especially oil spills (溢出). Not only does the oil make these beautiful birds sick, it harms their feathers.