While watching the Olympics the other night, I came across an unbelievable sight. It was not a gold medal, or a world record broken, but a show of courage.

    The event was swimming and started with only three men on the blocks. For one reason or another, two of them false started, so they were disqualified. That left only one to complete. It would have been difficult enough, not having anyone to race against, even though the time on the clock is important.

    I watched the man dive off the block and knew right away that something was wrong. I'm not an expert swimmer, but I can tell a good dive from a poor one, and this was not exactly medal quality. When he resurfaced, it was evident that the man was not out for gold—his arms were waving in an attempt at freestyle. The crowd started to laugh. Clearly this man was not a medal competitor.

    I listened to the crowd begin to laugh at this poor man who was clearly having a hard time. Finally he made his turn to start back. It was pitiful. He made a few desperate strokes and you could tell he was worn out.

    But in those few awful strokes, the crowd had changed.

    No longer were they laughing, but beginning to cheer. Some even began to stand and shout “Come on, you can do it!” and he did.

    A clear minute past the average swimmer, this young man finally finished his race. The crowd went wild. You would have thought that he had won the gold, and should have. Even though he recorded one of the slowest times in Olympic history, this man gave more heart than any of the other competitors.

    Just a short year ago, he had never even swum, let alone race. His country had been invited to Sydney.

    In a competition where athletes remove their silver medals feeling they have somehow been cheated out of gold, or when they act so proudly in front of their competitors, it is nice to watch an underdog.

    It is a tall tale（夸张的故事）that terrifies most young children. Swallow a piece of chewing gum and it will remain in your body for seven years before it is digested. An even worse tale is that swallowed（吞） gum can wrap itself around your heart.

    But what does happen if you should accidentally eat a stick of gum? Chewing gum is made out of gum base, sweeteners, coloring and flavoring. The gum base is pretty indigestible(难消化的)—it is a mixture of different ingredients (成分) that our body can't absorb.

    Most of the time, your stomach really cannot break down the gum the way it would break down other foods. However, your digestive system has another way to deal with things you swallow. After all, we eat lots of things that we are unable to fully digest. They keep moving along until they make it all the way through the gut (肠子) and come out at the other end one or two days later.

    The saliva (唾液) in our mouths will make an attempt at digesting chewing gum as soon as we put it in our mouths. It might get through the shell（壳） but many of gum's base ingredients are indigestible. It's then down to our stomach muscles—which contract(收缩) and relax, much like the way an earthworm moves—to slowly force the things that we swallow through our systems.

    Swallowing a huge piece of gum or swallowing many small pieces of gum in a short time can cause a blockage within the digestive system, most often in children, who have a thinner digestive tube than adults—but this is extremely rare.

    China's Singles Day, which falls on Nov. 11 every year, has far surpassed its U. S. counterparts of Black Friday and Cyber Monday—combined Last year, Americans spent a record $ 12.8 billion online between Thanksgiving Day and Cyber Monday. It's impressive until you compare it to the $ 17.6 billion in sales made by Chinese consumers in a single 24-hour period during 2016's Singles Day.

    Singles Day is known as “Bare Sticks Day” or “Bare Branches Day” in Chinese-because the date “11/11” looks like bare branches and “one” is the loneliest number. Singles Day began in the early 1990s in the dorm rooms of Nanjing University when a group of single friends were sorry about the lack of significant others and decided to mark the day by organizing activities as a group of singles and reducing their loneliness by buying themselves a gift.

    Then in 2009, sensing a break between the sales period of China's National Day on Oct. 1 and Chinese New Year in late January or early February, Alibaba's Jack Ma saw an opening: sell to comfort lonely hearts.

    The first year did only $7.5 million in sales, but just 8 years later, shoppers spent $ 25.3 billion, or 168.2 billion yuan, this year—a 40 percent jump from last year's $ 17.6 billion. For comparison, Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the U. S. only netted $ 6.79 billion in 2016. Amazon doesn't release sales figures for July's Prime Day, but it's pretty safe to believe the not-quite-national-holiday doesn't come close to $ 25 billion.

    “More than $ 25 billion in one day is not just a sales figure,” Alibaba Group CEO Daniel Zhang said in a statement. “It represents the desire for quality consumption of the Chinese consumer, and it reflects how merchants and consumers alike have now fully accepted the combination of online and offline sales.”

    Feet help us walk, run, dance, and jump. The words feet and foot are also used in everyday speech.

    To be under someone's feet means to be troublesome. In other words, you are standing too close to someone and are getting in their way. Some adults criticize (批评) children for being under foot.

    Speaking of children, if someone says their home will soon have the pitter-patter of tiny feet, it means the family is expecting a baby!

    Now, people who are active do not let grass grow under their feet. They are never in one place for very long. People who can think and take action at the same time are said to be able to think on their feet.

    Some people appear to have it all. They have money, a good education, good looks, a great family and a large circle of friends. You could say they have the world at their feet. This means whatever they want seems to be there for them.

    People who have both feet firmly on the ground are realistic and practical. They are not dreamy. You might say such a person is well grounded. If you are a bad dancer, you might be described as having two left feet. To dance well, it is better to have a right foot and a left foot.

    Sam loves skiing. He thinks that it would be fun to own a ski resort (滑雪场) high in the mountains. But he knows nothing about running a business. So, he decides to get his feet wet. In other words, he wants to get used to a new situation.

    He joins an organization for resort owners and attends their meetings. He travels to ski areas all over the United States. This helps Sam get his foot in the door. Having a foot in the door is a starting point. This expression comes from people selling things door-to-door. They would block the door with their foot so people couldn't close the door on them.

    Imagine putting a seed in a freezer, waiting 30,000 years, and then taking the seed out and planting it. Do you think a flower would grow?

    Amazingly, scientists have just managed to do something very similar. They found the fruit of an ancient plant that had been frozen underground in Siberia—a region covering central and eastern Russia—for about 31,800 years. Using pieces of the fruit, the scientists grew plants in a lab. The new blooms have delicate white petals. They are also the oldest flowering plants that researchers have ever revived from a deep freeze.

    “This is like regenerating a dinosaur from tissues of an ancient egg,'' said Jane Shen-Miller, a biologist of University of California, Los Angeles.

    The plant has a long history. Back when mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses walked on the land, an Arctic ground squirrel buried seeds and fruits in an underground chamber near the Kolyma River in northeastern Siberia. The ground became pennafrost, a layer of soil that stays frozen for a long time.

    Recently, Russian scientists dug out the old squirrel hole and found the plant remains 38 meters below the surface. Back at the lab, the team fed nutrients to tissue from three of the fruits to grow shoots. Then the scientists transferred the shoots to pots filled with soil. The plants produced seeds that could be used to grow even more of them.

    It's important for scientists to know that plant tissues can still be revived after being frozen for a long time. That's because many researchers are trying to preserve the seeds of modem plants by freezing them and then storing them in giant lockers at various spots around the globe. One such endeavor, an underground facility in Norway, is called the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. It stores hundreds of thousands of frozen seeds. If a plant ever goes extinct, scientists could bring it back by taking its seeds from the Svalbard or other storage lockers.

    "No one knows how long they are able to live for, but freezing is basically the format for many plant conservation attempts nowadays," Jane Shen-Miller said. It's a good thing that at least some plants are tough enough to survive in the experience.

    L.S. Lowry Exhibition

    Some 30 oil paintings and artworks on paper by British artist, L.S. Lowry (1887-1976), are on display at the Art Museum of Nanjing University of the Arts. It's the first-ever solo exhibition of the artist's work outside the UK. Lowry is one of Britain's most famous artists, and was a close observer of his country's social life in the era of industrialization and modernization. His works mainly depict (描绘) ordinary people on streets, in factories, parks and football fields. It has been said that the depiction of modern life by Lowry's works was permeated (洋溢) with an atmosphere of sadness and loneliness, but also with respect and a sense of humor.

    Date: November 15 to December 16, 9 am to 7 pm (closed on Mondays)

    Venue: Art Museum of Nanjing University of the Arts

    Address: 15 Huju Road North, Gulou District, Nanjing

    Admission: Free

    Call 025-8349-8693 for details

    Golden Songs of Teresa Teng Concert

    Teresa Teng (1953-1995) was an influential Chinese pop singer from Taiwan who was known for her folk songs and romantic ballads. Her voice and songs are instantly recognizable throughout the whole of Asia and in areas with large Asian populations. Chen Yajuan, a Japanese-Chinese female singer, will perform Teng's classic songs, including Moon Represents My Heart and When Will You Come Back Again?

    Date: December 20, 7:30 pm

    Venue: Shanghai Oriental Art Center

    Address: 425 Dingxiang Road

    Tickets: 80 yuan to 580 yuan

    Call 021-6132-6586 for details

    The 20^th Anniversary of Riverdance

    This year welcomes the 20th anniversary of Riverdance, which is being marked with a world tour. This 20th anniversary version will have a new stage setting, and when it tours in China it will add some local elements like taking traditional Chinese folk songs, Love Song of Kangding and My Motherland, as accompaniments.

    Date: January 13 to 18, 7:30 pm

    Venue: Shanghai Culture Square

    Address: 597 Fuxing Road Middle

    Tickets: 80 yuan to 800 yuan

    Call 021-6472-9000 for details