Alibaba started taking the lead in China, simply enough, by connecting big Chinese, manufacturers(制造商)with big buyers across the world. Its business-to-business site, Alibaba.com allowed business to buy almost everything. Alibaba's advantage wasn't hard to identify: size.

    Alibaba is just big, even by Chinese standards. Its marketplaces attract 231 million active buyers, 8 million sellers, 11.3 billion orders a year—and Alibaba is just the middleman. It encourages people to use its markets—not charging small sellers a percentage of the sale.

    If you want a quick look into the influence of Alibaba on daily Chinese life, take my experience. I moved to Beijing almost a year ago and quickly got tired of visiting small stores across the crowded, polluted city of 20 million people in search of new electronics, bathroom furnishings. “You're looking for what exactly? Why not try it? ” my Chinese teacher asked me one day. With that, my wonderful new relationship with Alibaba began.

    Alibaba's original business-to-business model now is secondary to consumer buying. Chinese retail（零售）buying makes up 80% of Alibaba's profit, and leading that group is Taobao, with 800 million items for sale and the most unbelievable selection of things you'll ever find. TMall.com is Alibaba's other big site, where you can find brand name goods from Nike and Unilever near the lowest prices.

What I have a hard time explaining to friends and family back in the U. S. is how China has gone beyond traditional shopping—big-box retailers(零售商)especially—in favor of online purchases on Taobao and a few other sites. In smaller towns than Beijing, where big retailers have not yet traveled, shopping online is shopping, and shopping is Taobao.

    I have a list of some of my recent purchases on Taobao for a sense of how extensive(广泛的) the marketplace is. Almost everything arrived a day or two after ordering with free shipping. I'm not even a big buyer, because I need friends to help me search the Chinese-language site. When I was searching my purchase history on my Chinese teacher's iPad, which helps me buy goods, I looked through with great difficulty about 10 of her purchases for every one of mine.

    When Carson Palmer, a professional American football player, hurt his arm a few years ago, he took a week off from throwing the football. But in his head, Palmer practiced every day. The following weekend, Palmer had the best game of his life.

    For more than a century, scientists have been trying to understand how this mental training works. In the 1930s, researchers proved by experiment that when you're imagining an action, your brain sends signals to your muscles(肌肉) which are too weak to tighten the muscles but might help train the body to perform. In other words, mental practice might create a pattern in your head, like an inner how-to guide for a particular skill.

    Sports psychologists have conducted hundreds of studies comparing imagined and physical practice for actions. On the whole, the research shows that mental training works. A 2012 study, for example, compared 32 amateur golfers who practiced hitting the balls to another 32 who merely held a golf club in their hands and visualized（想象）their swings. Under the same training rules, both groups improved their skills by getting the ball about 4 inches closer to the hole.

    Visualization has advantages over the real thing: You can do it anywhere, even when injured. It is safe-a major plus for high-risk performers such as gymnasts and surgeons. And you can practice for longer periods of time because you're not restricted by physical tiredness, That's not to say it's easy, we've had Olympic-level athletes sitting in our lab, visualizing the movements for two hours," says Tadhg Macintyre, a sports psychologist at the University of Limerick in Ireland. “When we're done, they're absolutely tired.”

    It doesn't work for everyone, though. "If you're a novice, the effect can be harmful,” warns Macintyre. If you're trying to visualize a free throw, and you don't even know the proper movement, then you're probably going to mentally practice the wrong skill.”

    I have a neighbor who is a capable, fashionable, seventy-year-old, single woman. Her name is Grace. Grace was laid off from her job a little over two years ago and has been living off her savings ever since but not officially "retired". Grace called me up one day about this time last year and asked if I had a ladder. She needed to clean out her gutters (水槽) on the roof and wanted me to hold the ladder.

    She didn't want me to climb up and clean the gutters. She just wanted me to hold the ladder. As it happened I did have a ladder. I said: “The leaves are going to fall off the trees in a month, why don't we wait till they finish and do it then?” She agreed and naturally we didn't talk about it again until spring. Spring in Tennessee is wild and we talked about it over the course of three weeks in which it rained nearly every day, then I got busy and Grace went into seclusion (隐居).

    A couple of weeks ago, she told me she'd been spending too much money and decided to apply for a bar tending job at a local hotel. "Now I don't know about you all but I'd never considered what it would be like to apply for and begin a new job at the age of seventy. I'm fifty-three and the older I get, the more I think about how great it'll be if I can just get out of bed when I'm seventy." Anyway, she got the job, serving the bar and tending banquets at the hotel.

    The day when she left for her training at 6 am, I walked across the street with my ladder and cleaned out her gutters.

    Mid-afternoon on a particularly busy Tuesday, I took leave of my desk at work and walked into a local Starbucks only to find a space where neither my clients nor my children would ask me to do something.

    Inside, I ran into Kate, a co-worker of mine. The topic of parenthood came up. I complained about how packed my schedule was. From the minute I woke up to the minute I fell asleep, I was constantly in demand and always had someone knocking at the door. But a bit of sadness seemed to come over Kate's face.

    "Well, my daughter's in San Francisco and she doesn't seem to need me at all these days," Kate said. It was in that moment that I realized although I might often feel in high demand, there will come a day when I will actually miss that same stress I then complained about.

    And as our conversation continued, it turned to our children's younger years, with Kate smiling proudly, thinking of the little boy and girl she raised who are now a man and a woman. But I noticed her smile was marked with regret. She explained that she often wondered about what she could have done differently when her children were in their earlier years.

    This got me thinking. Is regret an unfortunate footnote (注脚) to parenthood? With that in mind, I asked six older parents one question: What is your biggest regret from your early days as a parent?

    It turned out that all of them thought they could have done it better. But, each of them also has a strong, healthy relationship with their kids. Whatever regrets their parents might have had about their upbringing, one thing is clear —— it didn't affect them in a meaningful way.

    The bottom line is, we all feel like we could be doing this parenting thing better. And quite clearly, years later, we're still going to look back and wish we tried things differently. But the past can't be changed, and neither should it.

    A unique experience awaits you at the Centre for Alternative Technology on the edge of the beautiful Snowdonia National Park.

    Over thirty years ago a group of people decided to try out alternative technologies. They chose a remote empty place, where rock used to be dug from the ground, as their base. Here experiments offering solutions to the world's energy problems were carried out, and nowadays many of these ideas have become common practice. You can experience all these for yourself in just one day with us, and then take away what you have learned and put it into practice at home. Be assured it will help you save on your household energy costs!

    Your visit to us begins with a ride up a steep 60-metre hillside on a railway which is worked by using the weight of water. At the top of the mountain you will enjoy beautiful views to the distant coastline. Then interactive displays show the power of wind, water and sun, while showing you what can be done in an ordinary household to reduce your influence on the planet.

    There was no soil when the project was started, so we created our organic gardens using our own home-made soil. You can enjoy woodland walks or even notice spring flowers growing on the roofs of environmentally-friendly buildings.

    In 2006 we opened our new eco-adventure playground for children, and we also run workshops where they can make models and become inventors of the future by putting wind, water or solar power into their own designs.

    The Centre for Alternative Technology is open all year round and has good rail, road and cycle links. In fact we offer a 50% reduction on the admission price if you arrive by bicycle. There is wheelchair access for disabled visitors—telephone us in advance if you would like assistance.

    Breakfast is not only the most important meal of the day, but also the most neglected. Common reasons for not eating breakfast include lack of time, not feeling hungry, traditional dislike for breakfast, and dieting.

    Breakfast simply means "break the fast". Your body spends at least 6 to 12 hours each night in a fasting state. In the morning your body needs energy for the day's work ahead.

    A good breakfast should provide up to 1/3 of your total calories needs for the day. On average(平均)we eat 400 less calories for breakfast than for dinner. If breakfast doesn't attract you in the morning, try eating a lighter for the breakfast in the morning.

    If you aren't hungry in the morning, start with something small like juice or toast or have a nutritious mid-morning snack alter when you are hungry.

    So, you say you're on a diet. Some people fear eating breakfast will make them hungrier during the day and they will eat more. It is true that eating breakfast is likely to make you eat more. That's because your body is working all day long, in fact, you are probably not.

    Not eating breakfast can also cause you to overeat, since a fall in blood sugar often makes you feel very hungry later. To make matters worse, since your body is in a slowed state it will not be able to burn those extra calories very quickly. If you feed your body healthy snacks and meals through the day, you are less likely to become hungry and fill yourself as soon as you begin to eat. Since breakfast is the first and most important meal of the day, choosing the right fuel is important. The best breakfast foods are fruits, juice, lean meat, and grain products such as bread, rice, noodles and cereals(谷物).