In our everyday lives we meet situations in which we take many things for granted（不去重视）.We only treasure things when they are gone.This is a sad truth of human nature.One day,I found myself as a witness to a similar situation.

    One evening,I left work and boarded the train.After entering,I noticed something unusual.The center of the car had a few empty seats while both ends were crowded with people standing.I didn't pay much attention and sat down on one of the empty seats.I sensed a funny smell.It wasn't long before I noticed a homeless person sleeping on three seats in front of me.He was bleeding from his nose.Why wasn't anyone helping him?

    His clothes were torn and he was giving off a strange smell.Along with the smell,his eyes were dull,watery and red.Occasionally he scratched himself and people looked at him as if he had committed a crime.As the train stopped at stations and more people came in they covered their noses and faced away from him.All the seats around him were empty.

    Suddenly,he began to swear at the people around him.A plain clothes policeman who looked like a construction worker took out his certificate and showed it to the homeless man.The officer,not wanting to touch the homeless man, told him his rights and directed him to exit the train.As the officer walked the man out of the train,the homeless man turned around and said "MY HOME!" and started crying.

    A man doesn't value things until they are gone.If he didn't have a home,at least he had freedom.Now he has neither.No one wants to help someone who won't help himself.

The First Hello

    The man from the telephone department got off the bus, and made his way to the tea stall, wiping the sweat off his head, face, then slipping his handkerchief under his shirt to wipe his neck and back. It was a year ago that the phone line had been installed, six months later men from the public works department had come to put up the phone booth—a neat box-like structure, with a glass window, and wooden ledges, yellow in colour. And days after that, a painter had taken an entire day to colour in broad, black brushstrokes, the words: STD Booth, local and STD allowed.

    No one could tell that the last word had been misspelled. Besides, he had taken the entire day. After he had a cup of tea, he left, waving cheerfully. And now months later, someone else was here again.

    Everyone watched the man as he sat on the bench. No one said a word, and soon the sound of him slurping his tea filled the hot afternoon. A few leaves fell, heavy in the heat, and sometimes a car passed, on its way to the main city farther away.

    When the man had finished, he tried to pay but the tea shop owner who sat behind his steaming kettle and the washed upturned cups, waved him away.

    “You are our guest here.”

    So the man took his handkerchief out again and wiped his face.

    They crowded around him as he shut himself up in the phone booth. When the children pressed their nose against the glass, he shooed them away, as he took out a shiny black soon changed to an excited yell as they saw him dial a number, pressing a finger into the ringed dialer of the phone and letting it go all the way in a half-circle. A while later, they hear him say into the mouthpiece, “Hello.”

    “Hello,”the children around the booth took up the cry, the teashop owner broke into a smile and the men waiting for a bus smiled and said hello to each other. The sadhu(印度的僧人)who sat under the banyan tree nodded wisely. As the sound carried, more hellos were heard. The women winnowing grain giggled as they tried the word tentatively, the shepherds feeding their flocks called out to their sheep, laughing as they used the word.

    “It's a big occasion, ”said the headman, in an awed(敬畏的) voice.

    “It is.” agreed those around him. The telephone man emerged and handed over a small chit of paper to the headman. “This is the telephone number.”

    The headman looked at it respectfully as if it were a mantra(符咒). The others around him read out the numbers slowly, digit-by-digit.

    The telephone man was now too tired to notice the cheering around him. He knew he had to wait long before the bus to take him back arrived. As he sipped his second cup of tea, he remembered something else.

    “Oh, you can't start using the phone now. The minister will come next month and inaugurate it. ”

    No one said a word. No one was surprise. They had waited so long; a month more did not really matter.

    Two young giant-panda twins born in the United States have returned home to China, but are straggling to adapt to the language and food.

    The 3-year-old sisters, Mei Lun and Mei Huan, wens the first surviving panda twins to be born in the United States, and were returned to China from Zoo Atlanta on Nov. 5. But the pair still understand English belter than Chinese, and prefer American biscuits to Chinese bread.

    A zoo-keeper said that his main concern is that the pair are so addicted to American biscuits that everything they eat — from bamboos to apples — has to be mixed with biscuits. They even want to snack on (零食) biscuits when drinking water.

    The zoo -keeper is trying to wean them off their biscuit habit, gradually replacing the American food with Chinese bread. Mei Huan is adapting, but Mei Lun doesn't want to touch the unfamiliar bread.

    Mei Lun is the livelier of the two, often jumping onto the roof and hanging upside down from a rail, but her slightly younger sister Mei Huan is calmer, preferring to sit still, observe her new environment and occasionally snack on bamboo.

    A language barrier is also reported. While the pair respond to their own names, and understand some English phrases such as “come here,” they don't understand the Sichuan dialect of Chinese.

    The news caused some laughter on Chinese social media, with some users commenting that the pandas would soon get used to Sichuan's famously spicy cuisine.

    Over the past century, an alarming number of animals have become endangered or even extinct. Below are some animals whose numbers have been rapidly dropping in recent years.

    Panda Bear

    One of the biggest reasons contributing to the decline in the panda species is the destruction of its natural habitat. Farmers in China have gradually been claiming more and more of the land. As a result, pandas are forced to move away to places where it is hard to find bamboo for food.

    Green Turtle

    The green sea turtle species has survived for several millions of years, so you might wonder why it's only becoming endangered now. A major cause is the change in climate and temperature, which both affect the hatching rates of turtle eggs. Climate changes also cause violent weather and rising water levels to flood areas where turtles usually go to lay their eggs. Apart from this, oil spills and other poisonous pollution, as well as increased fishing activities can cause sickness, or even death to the green turtles.

    Cheetah

    Cheetahs are famous for being the fastest animal on land but even they can't run from some of the larger threats that have harmed them. Like the panda bears, cheetahs have gradually been losing their natural homes due to humans claiming land and developing in those areas. To make matters even worse, smaller animals move away when these areas are occupied, which means that the cheetah has less food! Don't forget that other large animals, such as lions, are also fighting for any food that they can find, so occasionally young cheetahs end up as prey too.

    Indian Elephant

    Elephants are extremely intelligent animals and also the largest mammals that live on land. Sadly, in Asia many elephants were killed so that people could remove their tusks to use as decorative objects. While this practice has been banned now, some people still illegally continue. Forests in India have also been steadily destroyed and elephants are sometimes killed when they end up on human territory.

    I remember the first time I got on a horse. When I was a little boy aged two, my mom agreed to let me take a short ride and that was it! From then on, I drove my parents crazy begging for a horse.

    When I was four, I had mutism, in which children stop speaking in certain social situations. I went days, weeks, months without a sound at school. At most, I might quietly whisper to a friend. I suffered silently through school until I was ten when a psychologist (心理学家) had an idea. He asked me what I wanted more than anything else in the world. He explained I was going to be given a chance to work for that. And I was permitted to whisper the answer in my mother's ear, "A horse."

    I was to get a pony, but I had to live up to my end of the bargain (讲价). I had a list of weekly tasks I had to finish. I had to answer the phone five times per week, something I had never done before. I had to say one word to my teacher at school and the list went on. For a child with mutism, saying one word to someone can be like climbing Mount Qomolangma. I did everything that was asked of me and the day came. His name was Sequoia, whom I fell in love with immediately. When I was in Sequoia's presence, I forgot all about my problems and felt strong and secure.

    I am a fully participating member of society these days. My horse and I made it through a master's degree. I may have made it otherwise, but I'm not sure. I feel I owe my life to the horse and I try to give it back to him. He has given me the best gift I could ever imagine, my life.

    I became a magician by accident. When I was nine years old, I learned how to make a coin disappear. I'd read The Lord of the Rings and risked coming into the adult section of the library to search for a book of spells (魔法) — nine being that curious age at which you're old enough to work through more than 1, 200 pages of mysterious fantasy literature but young enough to still hold out hope that you might find a book of real, actual magic in the library. The book I found instead taught basic sleight-of-hand (戏法) technique, and I devoted the next months to practice.

    Initially, the magic wasn't any good. At first it wasn't even magic; it was just a trick — a bad trick. I spent hours each day in the bathroom running through the secret moves in front of the mirror. I dropped the coin over and over, a thousand times in a day, and after two weeks of this my mom got a carpet sample from the store and placed it under the mirror to eradicate the sound of the coin falling again and again.

    I had heard my dad work through passages of new music on the piano, so I knew how to practice — slowly, deliberately, going for precision rather than speed. And then I tried the illusion (错觉) in the mirror and an unbelievable scene took place. It did not look like a magic trick. It looked like a miracle. I knew that I had got what I wanted.

    One day I made the performance on the playground. We had been playing football and were standing by the backstop in the field behind the school. A dozen people were watching. I showed the coin to everyone. Then it disappeared. The kids screamed. They yelled, laughed, scrambled away. Everyone went crazy. This was brilliant.