Uncle Li and Uncle Wang are good friends．They live next to each other and their farms are both at the foot of the mountain．So they can help each other．But neither of them likes to use his head．They're both poor though they work hard．Most villagers have built new houses，but they still live in the low and broken houses．They never find out why．

    Once Uncle Li went to town to buy some medicine for his wife．In the town he heard the apples in a city were expensive．He told Uncle Wang about it as soon as he went back．They decided to carry some apples to the city．They borrowed some money from their friends and bought nearly 1，000kilograms of apples in the villages and carried them to the city on a tractor．Bad luck!A lot of apples has already been carried there when they arrived．A few days later they had to sell them at a low price （价格）．They felt unhappy and returned to their village．

    "I can't understand why we sustained （蒙受） losses in business while others always profit （盈利）"Uncle Li asked one day．

    "The tractor was too small"Uncle Wang said without thinking．"We'll carry more apples on a truck next time!"

    "I agree!"said Uncle Li．"How foolish （傻的） we were!"

Many people do not like to stay at home on holiday. They want to go on a trip to some exciting places. They want to see something different and do something exciting. So people from the country come to the city and people from the city go to the country for their holidays. During the holidays, trains, buses and planes are all very busy. It is very hard to buy train tickets. Many people take cars for a trip. Last week my family went to the country by car for our holidays. There was too much traffic on the road, so we had to drive very slowly. It took us about an hour to get out of the town. Then we came to a hill. It was green and beautiful. We thought this was a good place for a picnic, so we stopped and took the food, fruit and drinks out of the car. We sat down and began to eat. Suddenly a strong wind blew and soon it started to rain. We had to run back to our car and had our picnic in the car. Then we drove back home. What a bad trip!

Do you know which social app is popular with Chinese young people now? "Short videos"are certainly the most popular. A large number of young people use Tik Tok(抖音) and Kuaishou. They think it is fun to share their lives by short videos, while others have other purposes as well.

A 12－year－old user named Elsa has about 2.7 million fans on Tik Tok. The girl has shared her dancing studies on Tik Tok since last July. One of the videos won her about one million fans."I feel really glad to share happiness with people by short videos, " said Elsa.

To some other young people, they use short videos to have a quick look at the hot programmes. "Because I don't like to spend many hours watching a whole programme, I hate waiting for a programme to end, and I prefer to watch short videos of wonderful parts of hot programmes, " said Wang Zhihao.

However, some young people feel bored with short videos."Killing time is the main reason for me to watch short videos, and many short videos are almost the same, so I think they are not so useful or interesting. What's more, I really don't like the videos about odd and dangerous things, " said Wen Nan, another college student.

Recently, something else has appeared. Some videos tell people what products are worth buying. Some short videos even sell bad products, and it is hard for customers to get their money back. So we should think twice before we want to buy the products by short videos.

The mascots（吉祥物）for the 2024 Paris Olympics and Paralympics（残奥会）have shown up in front of us. They are the Phryges, two Phrygian caps.

The red Phrygian cap is also known as liberty（自由）cap. In old times, it was worn in Phrygia, a place in Türkiye（Turkey's official name）now. That was how it got its name. During the French revolution（革命）, it became a symbol of liberty. Today it is a common symbol for French people. In the Smurfs（《蓝精灵》）, a popular French cartoon, every smurf wears a Phrygian cap. An officer of the 2024 Paris Olympics and Paralympics said they didn't want to choose an animal or other characters. They wanted something that could stand for an "ideal".

The Paralympic Phryge has a prosthetic leg（假肢）that goes to the knee. Michael Jeremiasz, a gold winner at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics, says the prosthetic leg sends an encouraging message to disabled people around the world.

The two mascots share a saying of "Alone we go faster, but together we go further." They will help people from all over the world know more about the 2024 Paris Olympics and Paralympics.