You're in a department store and you see a couple of attractive young women looking at a sweater. You listen to their conversation: “I can't believe it—Lorenzo Bertolla! They are almost impossible to find. Isn't it beautiful? And it's a lot cheaper than the one Sara bought in Rome.”

    They leave and you go over to see this incredible sweater. It's nice and the price is right. You've never heard of the brand of Lorenzo Bertolla, but those girls looked really stylish. Their clothes follow the fashion. They must know. So, you buy it. You never realize that those young women are employees of an advertising agency. They are actually paid to go from store to store, talking loudly about Lorenzo Bertolla clothes to be heard by others.

    Every day we notice what people are wearing, driving and eating. If the person looks cool, the product seems cool, too. This is the secret of undercover marketing. Companies from Ford to Nike are starting to use it.

    Undercover marketing is important because it reaches people that don't pay attention to traditional advertising. This is particularly true of the MTV generation-consumers between the age of 18 and 34.It's a golden group. They have a lot of money to spend, but they don't trust ads.

    So advertising agencies hire young actors to “perform” in bars and other places where young adults go. Some people might call this practice misleading, but marketing executive Jonathan Ressler calls it creative. “Look at traditional advertising. Its effectiveness is decreasing.” It is true, because everyone knows an ad is trying to persuade you to buy something. However, you don't know when a conversation you overhear is just a performance.

    Upcoming Events of New York Chinese Cultural Center

    Ancient Chinese Arts Today: Fan Dance

    Sunday, October17, 2:00pm—3:00 pm, $15 per child

    New-York Historical Society Museum & Library

    Learn Chinese fan dancing with an instructor from NYCCC! This program is a part of Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion, an exhibition which examines the history of trade and immigration between China and the United States.

    Dragon Boat Festival

    Monday, October 18, 2:00pm —2:30pm

    Fresh Meadows Park

    Come and celebrate with us in the thousand-year-old tradition of Dragon Boat racing! Be part of the audience and the excitement of this celebration. FREE ADMISSION! Click here for more information. Dragon Boat Festival will be held in Fresh Meadows Park.

    Dance to China

    Sunday, October 24, 2 pm

    Spruce Street School Auditorium, 12 Spruce St, New York, NY 10038

    Join us in celebrating 43 years of preserving and continuing Chinese traditional dance. Students from NYCCC School of the Arts will be performing traditional Chinese dance, martial arts, and Beijing opera acrobatics. Cost is $15 for adults, $12 for teenagers and senior citizens, $10 for children under 12.

    NYCCC School of the Arts Open House

    Saturday, October 30, from 1:00pm —3:00 pm, $12 per child

    PS 124, Yung Wing School, 40 Division Street, New York, NY 10002

    Join us and see Chinese dance, kung fu, and acrobatic performances performed by our current students. Come and see our students' beautiful artwork on display and make some artwork yourselves during our hour of arts and crafts and face painting from 1—2 pm. The show will be from 2—3pm.

    Chinese people are, quite rightly, proud of their food. However, when foreigners like Britons and Americans think of Chinese food, their impression of it is different to what you might think.

    Growing up in the UK, the Chinese food I was used to eating was food I now recognize as being from Guangdong. For example, a typical dish I would order would be pork in sweet and sour sauce, probably with some rice and spring rolls on the side. This is the type of food we generally eat because most Chinese immigrants(移民) to the UK have come from Guangdong. You can tell, because when most British people try to copy the sound of Chinese, they actually copy the sound of Guangdong people—hearing the real Putonghua is sometimes a shock to British people who have grown up thinking it sounds completely different!

    British attitudes to Chinese food may be changing, though. Chinese-American chef Ken Hom has been on British TV for 30 years, and he told BBC Food: "Chinese food at the beginning of the 80s (in the UK) was sweet and sour pork, mainly. Most Brits had the unchangeable view of Chinese food. Now you are seeing more local Chinese food from Sichuan, Hunan and other areas of China. It is no longer just Guangdong food." Similarly, to most Americans, Chinese food doesn't go too far past orange chicken and fortune cookies, but more Chinese local dishes are becoming successful, especially in big cities like New York.

    Attitudes have not quite changed completely, though. Many foreigners who live in China will be familiar with this question from a relative back at home: "Have they given you dog yet?" Yes, perhaps because people still know too little about Chinese culture, many people believe that Chinese people love to eat dog meat. And of course, some people do eat dogs, which to Americans is like "eating a member of one's family" according to Vision Times. Also, Chinese people eat many other things people in the West do not—chicken claws, duck heads and some animals' organs.

    But what do foreigners think when they come to China and taste real Chinese food? You'll be glad to know that in my experience, the impressions have been very good.

    PARIS—A scaffolding(脚手架) firm that has worked on the roof of Notre Dame said some of its workers had smoked on the site, but ruled out that a cigarette butt(烟蒂) might have started the fire that destroyed the cathedral's oak－framed roof last week.

    A spokesman for family－owned Le Bras Freres, confirming a report in French weekly Le CanardEnchaine, told Reuters that some workers of its Europe Echafaudage scaffolding unit had informed police that they had "sometimes" smoked on the scaffolding, despite a smoking ban on the site.

    "We blame it. But the fire started inside the building...so for company Le Bras Frères this is not a hypothesis(假设), it was not a cigarette butt that set Notre Dame de Paris on fire, " Le Bras Frères spokesman Marc Eskenazi said. TheCanardEnchaine reported that police had found the remains of seven cigarette butts in the burnt－out cathedral."This is not wrong, " said a source close to the investigation, who declined all other comment. Eskenazi said it was impossible to set a log on fire with a cigarette butt and questioned how cigarette butts could have been found on the site."If cigarette butts have survived the fire, I do not know what material they were made of." he said.

    Europe Echaffaudage also ruled out the possibility that the fire might have been started by an electricity incident at one of the two lifts on the site."The lifts' electricity was perfectly within specifications and well maintained, " he said. He added that the two lifts were on the outside of the building, situated at 45 and 65 metres from the base of the spire(尖顶), where the first smoke and flames had been spotted and that the workers had cut the power to the lifts at 17:50 when they had left the site for the day.

    TheCanardEnchaine also reported that electrical wiring ran through the roof of the cathedral, but the church administration denied that safety norms had not been respected."Nothing was ever done without the approval of the state...There were no wires dangling, everything was properly installed," Notre Dame spokesman Andre Finot said.In 2012, electrical engines had been installed to sound the bells in the spire.

    Many years ago, Norman Cousins was seriously ill. He was given six months to live. His chance for recovery was 1 in 500.

    He could see the worry, depression and anger in his life contributed to his disease. He wondered, "If illness can be caused by negativity (消极性), can health be created by positivity (积极性)?" He decided to make an experiment of himself.

    Laughing was one of the most positive activities he knew. He watched all the funny movies he could find. He read funny stories. He asked his friends to call him whenever they said, heard or did something interesting.

    His pain was so great that he could not sleep. Laughing for 10 solid minutes, he found, relieved the pain for several hours so he could sleep. He fully recovered from his illness and lived another 20 happy and healthy years.

    Laughing is necessary to our health. If we're not well, laughing helps us get well; if we are well, laughing helps us stay that way. So, if you like laughing, do it as often as you can.

    Use whatever makes you laugh­movies, books, jokes or friends. The people around you may think you're strange, but sooner or later they'll join in even if they don't know what you're laughing about.