You might think that Olympic athletes are the healthiest people in the world. It's true that many are. However, it's also true that many Olympic athletes had to overcome (克服) illness early in their lives.

    One excellent example is Wilma Rudolph. She competed in track-and-field (田径) events in the 1960s Olympics. She didn't win just one gold medal (奖章).She won three. At the time, people called her ”the fastest woman in the world”.

    Actually, as a young child, Wilma could not take part in sports. She had serious illnesses, and then, at the age of 4, she got polio (小儿麻痹症).She lost the function of her left leg, and the doctor said she could never walk again.

Wilma's family did everything they could to help her walk again. Wilma and her mother used to travel 100 miles to get treatments for her leg. Her brothers and sisters took turns to give her leg a daily massage (按摩).Four times a day, they helped her do special exercises for her leg. Amazingly, by the time Wilma was 9 years old, she was able to walk again. Before long, she started playing basketball and running. In high school, she was a track star and then she went to the Olympics.

    Wilma stopped being a runner when she was 22 years old. She then became a teacher and a track coach. Her story encouraged many people to work hard and to overcome difficulties.

    Ali, who was working a long way from home wanted to send a letter to his wife, but he could neither read nor write, and he had to work all day, so he could only look for somebody to write his letter late at night. At last he found the house of a letter writer whose name was Nasreddin.

    Nasreddin was already in bed. "It is late," he said. "What do you want?" "I want you to write a letter to my wife," said Ali, Nasreddin was not pleased. He thought for a few seconds and then said, "Has the letter got to go far?" "What does that matter?" answered Ali.

  "Well, my writing is so strange that only I can read it, and if I have to travel a long way to read your letter to your wife, it will cost you a lot of money." Ali went away quickly.

    A company wanted to get the best employee(雇员). After the competition, only three people were left.

    In the last competition, the three people entered a room with a monitor(监视器). Inside the room, there was everything they needed but no telephone and they couldn't surf the Internet. The three people just waited patiently for the exam questions.

    The first day, three people were very excited, watching TV, reading books and listening to music.

    The next day, because they still didn't know the exam questions, two of them were worried and often changed TV channels.

    Five days later, the winner was the one who could keep a happy life. The leader of the company thinks happiness is a kind of ability(能力). If you keep a happy heart, you will succeed finally!

    Once upon a time, a hippo (河马) lived in a river next to a big tree.

One day, a bird came and nested (筑巢) in the tree. The songs of the bird filled the hippo with so much envy (羡慕) that he couldn't think of anything else. Every day he would think why he wasn't born to be a bird even though the bird told him many times he was so lucky to be so big and such a good swimmer.

    Finally, the hippo made up his mind that he would come out of the river, climb the tree, and start singing. However, when he tried to climb the tree, it was very clear that the hippo didn't have wings, nor claws to climb with.

    Realizing that he would never climb up the tree, he angrily hit the tree until it came down to the ground. Then he stepped onto the leaves of the fallen tree, and began singing.

    Unfortunately, hippo can't sing, either. All that came from his mouth were terrible noise, and when the other animals heard this, they all came around to make fun of the hippo.

    He was so ashamed (羞愧的) by this. He also felt bad about having knocked the tree over. He used all his strength to raise the tree back up again, and look after it until it completely recovered. (康复)

The other day, my husband called me to the balcony(阳台). "Come, dear, look at that car!" 

"What's up?" I asked, looking down at the square in front of our apartment building. A driver was trying to park between two cars. 

"That must be a woman," my husband said.

"How do you know?"

"I've watched the car move back and forth twenty times. Men can't be so bad at driving!"

"What if the driver is a man?" I asked.

"I bet you 50 yuan that the driver is a woman!"

We stood on the balcony and watched the car. It felt a little silly. Five minutes later, the car was finally parked perfectly, and a man slowly got out.

"Fifty yuan please," I said to my husband as he silently walked away.

My husband is not alone in looking down on female drivers. On weekends, my friend Lily likes traveling around the city by bus. But she always hesitates to get on a bus if the driver is a woman. "I can't trust a female driver," she told me one day. "Women are not born to drive, you know."

"Sorry, but I don't know," I said. I go to work by bus every day, and I never think female drivers are any worse. In fact, they are often more careful than men. Research also shows that female drivers are 8.8 times less likely to cause accidents than male drivers.

There are not many female bus drivers, though. And in the history of Formula One(一级方程式赛车), only 0.26 percent of drivers have been women. Without role models, many girls may think they are not meant to be good drivers. But the ability to drive has nothing to do with gender. Women can drive well, too. It's time to stop making jokes about female drivers.

There are lots of fun- filled ethnic(少数民族的) festivals in our country. Let's take a look at some of them.

Interested in these Chinese festivals? Go and experience them yourself.