I've loved my mother's desk since I was just tall enough to see above the top of it when Mother sat doing letters. Looking at the ink bottle, pens and white paper, I decided that the act of writing must be the most wonderful thing in the world.

    Years later, during her final illness, Mother kept different things for my sister and brother, “But the desk,” she said again, “is for Elizabeth.”

    I never saw her get angry, and never saw her cry. I knew she loved me, and she showed it in action. But as a young girl, I wanted heart-to-heart talks between mother and daughter. They never happened and a gulf opened between us. I was “ too emotional (易动感情的) ”, but she lived “on the surface”.

    As years went by, I had my own family. I loved my mother and thanked her for our happy family. I wrote to her in careful words and asked her to let me know that she did forgive (原谅) me.

    I posted the letter and waited for her answer, but it didn't come. I wondered if the letter had even got to her. I only knew that I had written it, and I could stop trying to make her into someone she was not.

    Now the present of her desk told me that she was pleased that writing was my chosen work, though she had never been able to. I cleaned the desk carefully and found some papers inside … a photo of my father and a one-paper letter, folded (折叠) and refolded many times.

    Give me an answer, my letter asks, in any way you choose. Mother, you always chose the act that speaks louder than words.

    Hello, Listeners. Welcome to Henton Hospital Radio. Before our music program at four, I'm going to repeat some of our hospital rules.

    The hospital can sleep 800 patients. There're 8 beds in each ward (病房). The visiting hours are in the afternoon from 2:30 to 3:30 and in the evening from 7:00 to 8:00. But remember only two people can see you at the same time. Sorry about that, but you can see what would happen if we didn't have these rules.

The other rules are about our hours. We start quite early—you might not be used to that. We wake you at 6 o'clock, and breakfast is at 8 o'clock, lunch is at noon.

    There's tea at 3:30 and supper is at 6 o'clock.

    You can see the non-smoking sign –-- we don't allow smoking in the wards. I'm sure you understand why. However, if you do need to smoke, there are some smoking rooms where it is allowed.

    You will find the radio switch (开关) on the wall near your bed, with your own headphones, if you want to listen. It's our own hospital radio wishing you a quick recovery (康复).

    If you can speak English，you know a lot of English words. You can read，speak and understand. But there is another kind of language you need to know——the language of the body，a part of what is called non-verbal communication. All over the world，people “talk” with their eyes. When Japanese people meet，they put their hands together. What do American and British do?

    Americans are more informal than the British. They like to be friendly. They use first name，they ask questions and they talk easily about themselves. When they sit down，they like to relax in their chairs and make themselves comfortable.

    British people are more quiet. They take more time to make friends. They like to know you before they ask you home.

    When British and American people meet someone for the first time，they shake hands. They do not usually shake hands with people they know well. Women sometimes kiss their women friends，and men kiss women friends （on one cheek only）.When a man meets a man friend，he just smiles，and says “Hello”. Men do not kiss each other. Even fathers and sons do not often kiss each other.

    Jane Austen has often been considered a woman who led a narrow, inhibited life and who rarely traveled. These assertions are far from the truth. Jane Austen traveled more than most women of her time and was quite involved in the lives of her brother, so much that it often interfered with her writing. Like most writers, Jane drew on her experiences and her dreams for the future and incorporated them into her writing. Her characters reflect the people around her; the main characters reflect parts of herself. In Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, Elinor Dashwood and Elizabeth Bennet reflect aspects of Jane Austen and dreams she had that were never fulfilled.

    The biographies about Jane Austen describe the facts of her life in a step-by-step manner. They tend to be repetitive since she did not leave behind a rich fabric of day-to-day life. Yet Jane Austen is known not because of the factual details of her life; she is not remembered two hundred years after her death because she had six siblings and was a wonderful aunt to her nieces and nephews. Rather, Jane Austen is remembered because of what she wrote. Only through reading her literature does one get a taste of the real Jane Austen, the Jane Austen who dreamed and made plans for the future that failed to materialize. Only by analyzing June Austen's characters do we get an understanding of the true author.

    Sense and Sensibility's Elinor Dashwood mirrors Jane Austen's strait-laced sense of propriety (礼节) and her concern and care about family members. For example, after her father died, Jane managed to gather herself together and send her father's pocket compass and pair of scissors to her brother Frank as a memento of their father. Elinor in Sense and Sensibility is the sister who holds down the family and discusses the practicality of situations. She too distributes cherished mementos of her father when he dies. Elinor is the sister who is concerned with the welfare of her relations and takes it upon herself to look after their well-being.

    Jane can also be considered the backbone of her family. After she dies, the family is not as close as they were during her lifetime. Jane became very close with two of her nieces, Fanny Austen and Anna Austen. She counseled them on men and marriage when they reached the age of choosing a suitor. She often helped with delivering her sister-in-law's babies. During her thirties, she lived with her brother Frank for several weeks. She cooked the meals for his family and cared for his children while his wife was confined to her bed. Like the character she creates in Elinor, she sticks by her family and helps them when they need her.

    Austen's life closely parallels that of Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Austen begins the novel with the line, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife”. This statement reflects the opinion of the time that a woman had to be married or else she had no social standing. Just as Elizabeth and her sisters feel immense pressure to get married and procure a good match, so too did Jane. Until she was twenty-five she still retained a small spark of hope that she would one day marry and have children.

    The most significant similarity between Jane and Lizzy is their close relationships with their sisters. Jane and her sister Cassandra were extremely close. When they moved into a house in Chawton, they shared a bedroom. They were dependent upon each other and supported each other in all aspects of their lives. They supported each other's decisions and wrote to each other when apart. Lizzy and her older sister Jane were extremely close. They too supported each other's decisions and were always there for the other. They discussed suitors and marriage just as Jane and her sister must have done.

    All of Jane's female characters end up happily married, a state Jane herself never felt. A woman was defined in terms of her husband; if she did not marry, she had nothing. Well into her twenties, Jane still had dreams of getting married. When she was twenty-five, Harris Bigg-Wither, a brother of her good friends, proposed marriage to Jane. At first she accepted: she would become mistress of a large estate, and be able to ensure the comfort of her parents to the end of their days. Most importantly, she would have children and raise a family of her own. The next day, however, Jane reneged the proposal. She did not love him and did not want a marriage based on nothing but money. After this proposal, Jane gave up all hopes of ever having a family of her own. Instead, she fulfilled her dreams through her characters and found “passion” through them. All her characters marry for love (which happens to also be financially advantageous). They make Jane's dreams become a reality within her imagination. _____ . As children reflect upon the parents and often mirror aspects of their parents, so too did many of Jane's characters mirror herself and the people around her.

    Sally Dawly is a woman from Auburn, California. Over the last three and a half years, the anti-littering woman has spent most of her free time picking up cigarette butts (烟头) from the streets of her home city.

    Called the "Butt Lady" by her local community, Dawly began her mission to rid the streets of her city of cigarette butts in October, 2014. The woman looked for cigarette butts, picked them up and threw them in the trash. To keep a count of how many butts she picks up, the Butt Lady has been using a tablet, and earlier this month, she hit a historic milestone—one million cigarette butts.

    "I got tired of going on my walks and seeing cigarette butts everywhere," Sally Dawly said. "I'm just shocked that I had to pick up so many. I've ever picked up 3,000 butts in one day," she said. "Don't throw away your butts; better yet, stop smoking."

    With so many cigarette butts littering the streets, can one person's efforts really make a difference? Surprisingly, the answer seems to be yes. Soon after the Butt Lady of Auburn started her mission and word of her efforts spread, cigarette cans started appearing around bars and restaurants in the city. Members of the local community even came out to cheer her on as she approached her one-million-butt milestone.

    Sally knows her city's cigarette butt littering problem won't be solved anytime soon, but she hopes her work will inspire people to at least think twice before dropping cigarette butts in the streets. She has decided to continue cleaning up after irresponsible smokers, and already has a new milestone in her sights—two million cigarette butts.

    Word of the Butt Lady's efforts to keep the streets cigarette butt-free has reached neighboring communities as well, and CBS Sacramento reports that other cities have started seeking her help as well.

A video of dolphins playing in the wake of the waves near a man-made island, east of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, has caught the attention from netizens across China.

The 55-km Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge is the world's longest cross-sea bridge, connecting the mainland province of Guangdong with the country's two special administrative regions, Hong Kong and Macao.

During the nine-year bridge construction period, researchers have identified and registered a total of 2,367 dolphins, with no injuries of any dolphins reported.

According to local authorities, the Pearl River Estuary Chinese White Dolphin Reserve has supported more than 100 researchers in studying and protecting the mammal and trained thousands of dolphin watchers. Luo Guocai, a certificated dolphin watcher, said his duty was to conduct a 10-minute observation of the sea each time before construction started. The dolphins have to breathe every few minutes above the water, and in order to prevent potential harm, the watchers would knock on their boat a few times to scare them away.

The preservation efforts never stopped even after the construction was completed. "Managerial personnel will continue to monitor the nearby environment and the dolphins via intelligent equipment including the bridge video surveillance(监控) system, the underwater tunnel's environmental monitoring as well as specially established research and observation stations on the man-made islands," said Yu Lie, deputy director of the bridge management bureau.

"Currently, Hong Kong, Macao, the country's two special administrative regions, and Guangdong plan to establish a conservation alliance for the dolphins, involving non-governmental organisations in the routine rescue, information sharing, and scientific research," said Chen Hailiang, head of the administration of the reserve. "We are constructing a bigger rescue and conservation base as well as increasing tissue samples and gene banks in a bid to better preserve the dolphins for generations to come," Chen said.