Hi, everybody! Welcome to our newly-opened Richards Cinema Bookstore!

    Now let me introduce to you some of the new film books in our store.

    Are you Chinese film fans? OK, here comes the latest 25 New Takes about Chinese films. It is a collection of 25 fresh readings of different Chinese films from the 1930s to the present. In recent years, Chinese films are very popular in the States, such as Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon, Hero, and Flowers of Shanghai.

    Do you like French films? Well, here is The French Cinema Book. It covers French films from the 1890s to the beginning of the 21st century. It is written for all lovers of French cinema: students and teachers, specialists and fans, and so on.

    Maybe you are Indian film fans and star-chasers. Then here is Encyclopedia (百科全书) of Indian Cinema. The book is a complete introduction to all the best Indian films. It also offers a full list of names of the famous and successful film stars in the past ten years. You know, the Indian film industry is the largest in the world after our Hollywood.

    If you like British films, we have The British Cinema Book. It is a good review of British cinema. This book contains a good many nice pictures.

    In our bookstore, you can also find books about Mexican, Japanese, Australian, German and Italian films.

    Well, please help yourselves to some coffee or tea, and have a good time here!

    NANJING, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) — Xi Jinping and Ma Ying-jeou will shake hands in their historic meeting scheduled in Singapore on Saturday, head of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council said on Wednesday.

    The two-part meeting includes one session open to the media and another behind closed doors, said Zhang Zhijun, who is also head of the Taiwan Work Office of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, when interviewed at the Zijinshan Summit for Entrepreneurs across the Taiwan Strait.

    According to Zhang, Xi and Ma, as "leaders of the two sides" of the Taiwan Strait, will exchange views during the closed-door meeting.

    After the meeting, press conferences will be held by both sides. Later, the two leaders are expected to attend a dinner, said Zhang.

    Zhang said the meeting will lift cross-Strait communication to a new high.

The landmark meeting is a breakthrough in face-to-face exchange and communication between the leaders across the Taiwan Strait after the relationship became strained following the events of 1949.

    Zhang said the meeting will improve mutual trust and allow for an exchange of opinions on handling the cross-Strait ties.

    In addition, the meeting will help strengthen the 1992 Consensus(共识), which was reached in talks between the two sides in 1992 and recognizes the one-China principle, and safeguards the peaceful development of cross-Strait ties, according to Zhang.

    Zhang added that the scheduled meeting will also benefit regional peace and stability.

    Also at Wednesday's summit, Chiang Pin-kung, former chairman of the Taiwan-based Straits Exchange Foundation, hailed the upcoming meeting between the two leaders as a milestone for cross-Strait ties.

    Chiang told the media that he believed the meeting will give a boost to the peaceful development of cross-Strait ties.

    With all the traditional media channels, including newspapers, magazines and television shows, shrinking, advertisers are worrying about how they can reach customers. Banners(横幅) ads on our devices are ugly and disturbing. To overcome various digital problems, the ad industry has been serving up a sneaky(不光明正大的) solution: make ads look less like ads and more like the articles, videos and posts around them.

    This trend, called native advertising, has taken over the Internet; even the websites such as NYTimes.com and Wall-Street.com are using it. On Facebook and Twitter, every 10th item or so is an ad; only the small subtitle “Sponsored（赞助）” appearing in light gray type tells you which posts are ads.

    Won't dressing up ads to make them look like reported articles mislead people? Sometimes, yes. An Interactive Advertising Bureau study found that only 41 percent of general news readers could tell such ads apart from real news stories. And it's getting worse. Advertisers worry that the “Sponsored” label discourages readers from clicking, so some websites are making the labels smaller and less noticeable. Sometimes the labels disappear entirely.

    At a recent talk about the difficulty of advertising in the new, small-screen world, I heard an ad manager tell an impressive story. She had gotten a musical performance – paid for by her soft drink client- perfectly inserted（插入）into a TV awards show, without any moment of blackness before or after. “It looked just like part of the real broadcast!” she recounted happily.

    Look, it is great that native advertising works. But if advertisers truly believe in their material, they should have no problem labeling it as advertising.

    For now native ads continue to be a fashion- with no laws governing them and no labeling standard. But that could change; the Federal Trade Commission has begun considering regulation. If the new generation of digital advertisers clean up their act according to the regulation, native ads might become more acceptable.

    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.

    NEW HAVEN, Connecticut—A surprise awaited students in Yale who showed up for Professor Laurie Santos's class. They got slips of paper that said, "No class today." There was only one rule for the students' unexpected free time—They were not allowed to study, but to relax. Since exams and papers were coming up, everyone was tired and stressed. At this moment they were touched. With around applause, nine students hugged Santos, and two burst into tears.

    Yet, cancelling class was not just a break. It was also a challenge, as she was asking them to stop worrying about their grades, even if it was just an hour. One student went to the Yale University Art Gallery for the first time in her four years at Yale. A group of students went to a recording studio and played a new song. More people were outside, and more were smiling. That's why about 1, 200 students were taking Santos's class, called "Psychology and the Good Life," the largest class in Yale's 317-year history. Even non-Yale students had the chance to take Santos's class. It was offered as an online course and she immediately became an Internet hit.

    Skyler Robinson, one of her students, was at a loss for a while about what to do during his break, and then decided to take a nap. "It was a great nap," he commented. Santos designed the class after she realized that her students kept busy through long days that seemed far more depressing and joyless than her own college years. "They feel they're in this crazy rat race. They're working so hard that they can't take a single hour off. That's awful."

    The ideas behind the class are simple. Santos said, "It is the hope that science can help students find peace among all the stresses and difficulties they face at college." The lessons include showing more gratitude, performing acts of kindness and increasing social connections. The students really wanted to learn to lead a happy life in a science -driven way. Santos also noted the psychological happening of "mis-wanting", which led people to work towards the wrong goals in life.

    One week, Santo asked students to exercise. Another week, she wanted them to get more sleep. They worked hard to keep some new habits. Social science research led to many new understandings of how people find happiness. She thinks her class can change Yale, or rather, not just Yale.

We're often told "laughter is the best medicine".Laughter is ancient and instinctual,and a fundamental part of everyday life—something most of us enjoy naturally.There are comedy channels on TV,comedy festivals and our favorite funny friend who's sure to get our giggle on.

So why do we need laughter experts?Surely they're for people who can't laugh for whatever reason.However,while the ability to laugh is innate,the decision to activate and use it to its full ability is a choice.

When life gets stressful;illness creeps in;relationships are put to the test or we're struggling financially,there's rarely much to laugh about.So,we don't.Yet turning into the lighter,more humorous side of life,and activating one's "laughter self" is critical to mental health.Rather than waiting for something funny to happen or for life to be a bed of roses,we can transform our emotional state by tapping into our laughter and humor resources.This helps create distance between us and our pain and improve our moods and resilience(恢复力) to stress.It provides relief and release from some of the stress that has embedded in our bodies and minds,freeing ourselves to power forward,even a little.

Ironically,because laughter is an innate and largely unconscious behavior,it's rarely given much thought.As it's seldom thought about,it can't be that important.

Wrong.If laughing is a more complex behavior,my belief is people will pay greater honor to it,rather than something to laugh off.It's actually one of the most complicated things our bodies process.It is a vocal means of communication before language forms and the brain has fully developed.The vast majority of us maintain the ability to laugh until our final curtain falls,even amid declining cognitive function.

Turning toward the healing power of humor and laughter assists with personal and professional resilience,performance and overall well-being.No joke.