社会现象类 知识点题库

Will you be playing some music at work?

    Music is particularly popular in the medical profession, especially among surgeons（外科医生）. A recent survey shows that 90% of surgeons in the UK put music on the sound system in the theatre during operations. Plastic surgeons（整形外科医生）play the most music; it appears that ear, nose, and throat specialists the least.

    But it isn't only in surgeries(外科手术) where music is popular. In another recent survey, one-third of the 1,613 people said they listen to music while working. And 79% of them said that humming（哼歌）along improves their job satisfaction or productivity.

    Is listening to music at work a good idea? Yes, say the experts. Many surgeons say that music helps to create a “calm atmosphere”, and a third of them added that it avoids getting bored! Also, listening to music raises the levels of a brain chemical that can help people focus. Office workers say it improves job satisfaction. Several studies suggest that it's also good for hospital patients. Those listening to music through headphones during surgery require less anesthetic（麻醉剂）, up to 50% less in some cases, and recover more quickly afterwards. “Sure, music reduces anxiety before surgery,” says Zeev Kain, an anesthetist at Yale University.

    So, what type of music should we be listening to? Surgeons from the previous survey preferred rock, pop music and classical. And hip-hop is popular too. However, whatever the kind, it appears that self-selected music is the best choice. Pennsylvania State University research showed that when people chose their own music there was more stress reduction(下降). And other researchers found that when listening to self-selected music, surgeons did the maths faster and more accurately than when they were listening to music chosen for them.

    Have you ever run into a careless cell phone user on the street? Perhaps they were busy talking, testing or checking updates on WeChat without looking at what was going on around them. As the number of this new “species” of human has kept rising, they have been given a new name — phubbers (低头族).

    Recently, a cartoon created by students from China Central Academy of Fine Arts put this group of people under the spotlight. In the short film, phubbers with various social identities bury themselves in their phones. A doctor plays with his cell phone while letting his patient die, a pretty woman takes selfie in front of a car accident site and a father loses his child without knowing about it while using his mobile phone. A chain of similar events eventually leads to the destruction of the world.

    Although the ending sounds overstated, the damage phubbing can bring is real. Your health is the first to bear the effect and result of it. “Constantly bending your head to check your cell phone could damage your neck,” Guangming Daily quoted doctors as saying. “The neck is like a rope that breaks after long-term stretching.” Also, staring at cell phones for long periods of time will damage your eyesight gradually, according to the report.

    But that's not all. Being a phubber could also damage your social skills and drive you away from your friends and family. At reunions with family or friends, many people tend to stick to their cell phones while others are chatting happily with each other and this creates a strange atmosphere, Qilu Evening News reported.

    It can also cost you your life. There have been lots of reports on phubbers who fell to their death, suffered accidents, and were robbed of their cell phones in broad daylight.

    China is starting to blacklist poorly-behaved tourists as it seeks to rescue the image of its citizens as holidaymakers.

    According to a regulation by the China National Tourism Administration (NTA) that entered effect this week, tourists will be blacklisted for offences including acting antisocially on public transport, damaging private or public property, disrespecting local customs, damaging historical exhibits on purpose or engaging in gambling or pornographic activities. Records will be kept in a two-tired system: provincial-level tourism authorities are responsible for cases under their jurisdiction（管辖区域）while the NTA will be in charge of a nationwide register. People will be .blacklisted for two years after they offend, according to the regulation.            

    The NTA said tourism authorities will inform blacklisted tourists and “propose correction measures in order to mitigate the negative impact”. It also said that tourism authorities reserve the right to report such violations to public security, customs and transport authorities as well as the central bank's individual credit department.

    The regulation comes amid (在……之中) growing concern about the ill manners of Chinese tourists both at home and abroad. In 2013, a Chinese tourist wrote his name on a relief carving in Luxor, Egypt. In December, a Chinese passenger threw a cup of hot instant noodles at a flight attendant on an international flight. Chinese tourists have been fined or put into prison for carrying prohibited items or purchasing wild animal products.

    Garbage or trash is a major kind of environmental pollution.Each person produces about 2kg of trash a day.We are making waste products faster than nature can break them down.And we are using up resources（资源）faster than they can be replaced（取代）.

    This adds up to trouble for the environment.Where does all that garbage go?What can be done to help dispose of（处理）garbage?How call we make less garbage?

    Garbage isn't just the smelly rotting fruits,vegetables or meat that we throw away in our homes.Those are only a small pan of all the stuff we throw away.We create other kinds of waste,in construction,mining and in our factories.

    Did you ever wonder what happens to your garbage?Most is burned or buried in landfills（垃圾填埋场）Less than a quarter of our waste is recycled.

    With a population of 1.3 billion（十亿）,garbage is a big problem for China.Chinese cities create around 148 million tons of garbage every year.The amount is growing at around 10 percent each year.

    Once we used about 3 billion plastic shopping bags every day in China.The result was a great waste of resources and serious pollution.So we did something about that.Now we use more cloth bags and shopping baskets when we shop.

    In the coming years China will build waste-to-energy plants in cities to clean up the garbage.But there's a lot more that needs to be done.And you can play a part.

    Feifei,an 11-year-old boy from Xuzhou,Jiangsu Province,suffered from a sudden acute eye disease which has almost led to blindness.The disease was caused by excessive（过度的）eye fatigue（疲劳）during the winter vacation, during which he played computer games for continuous 10 days and nights.

    Many youngsters in China nowadays are increasingly addicted to computer games and other electronic products. This is followed by a series of health problems,with the most typical case being myopia,or nearsightedness.

    According to the latest research report released by the World Health Organization (WHO),the myopia rate among Chinese teenagers ranks first in the world—70 percent of high school and college students.The rate is nearly 40 percent in primary school students,while it is only 10 percent for their peers in the United States.

    There are at least 10 million people in China with severe myopia,and they are likely to get pathological（病理性的）myopia in middle age.Pathological myopia can't be treated with glasses or surgery,and it is one of the biggest factors that lead to blindness,Xu Xun,director of the ophthalmology（眼科学）department at Shanghai General Hospital,pointed out.

    Experts explain that two major factors lead to the high rate of myopia among Chinese people.One is high academic pressure,and the other one is excessive use of electronic devices over a long period of time.Genetics,on the other hand,are not the main reason,as only 20 percent of Chinese people had myopia in the 1960s.

    "Teenagers are now faced with severe academic pressure,which means they often study without natural light. This increases their risk of becoming nearsighted,"Xu said.

    Experts suggest that youngsters maintain a proper balance between study and rest so as to protect their eyesight, and parents should play an active role in the process.

With around 100 students scheduled to be in that 9:00 am Monday morning lecture, it is no surprise that almost 20 people actually make it to the class and only 10 of them are still awake after the first 15 minutes; it is not even a surprise that most of them are still in their pajama's(睡衣). Obviously, students are terrible at adjusting their sleep cycles to their daily schedule.

    All human beings possess a body clock. Along with other alerting systems, this governs the sleep/wake cycle and is therefore one of the main processes which govern sleep behaviour. Typically, the preferred sleep/wake cycle is delayed in adolescents, which leads to many students not feeling sleepy until much later in the evenings. This typical sleep pattern is usually referred to as the “night owl” schedule of sleep.

This is opposed to the “early bird” schedule, and is a kind of disorder where the individual tends to stay up much past midnight. Such a person has great difficulty in waking up in the mornings. Research suggests that night owls feel most alert and function best in the evenings and at night. Research findings have shown that about 20 percent of people can be classified as “night owls” and only 10 percent can be classified as “early birds” —— the other 70 percent are in the middle. Although this is clearly not true for all students, for the ones who are true night owls, this gives them an excellent excuse for missing their lectures which unfortunately fall before midday.

    Traffic jam and cities, it seems go hand in hand. Everyone complains about being stuck in traffic, but, like the weather, no one seems to do anything about it. In particular, traffic engineers, transportation planners, and public officials responsible for transportation systems in large cities are frequently criticized for failing to solve traffic jam.

    But is traffic jam a sign of failure? Long lines at restaurants or theater's box offices are seen as signs of success. Should transportation systems be viewed any differently? I think we should recognize that traffic jam is an unpreventable by-product of successful cities and view the “traffic problem” in a different light.

    Traffic jam occurs where there are lots of people but limited spaces. Culturally and economically successful cities have the worst traffic problems, while decaying cities don't have much traffic. New York and Los Angeles are America's most crowded cities. But if you want access to major brokerage houses（经济行）, you will find them easier to reach in crowded New York than in any other large cities. And if your company needs access to post-production film editors or satellite-guidance engineers, you will reach them more quickly through the crowded freeways of LA than through less crowded roads elsewhere.

    Despite traffic jam, a larger number and wider variety of social communications and economic dealings can be made perfect in large, crowded cities than elsewhere. Seen in this light, traffic jam is an unfortunate result of success, not a cause of economic decline and urban decay.

    So while we can consider traffic jam as increasing costs on the areas of big cities, the costs of inaccessibility in uncrowded places are almost certainly greater.

    There is no doubt that traffic jam brings the terrible economic and environmental damage in places like Bangkok, Jakarta, and Lagos. But mobility（移动性）is far higher and traffic jam levels are far lower here in the US, even in our most crowded cities. That's why, for now, we don't see people and capital streaming out of San Francisco and Chicago, heading for other cities in California, and Illinois.

    You're rushing to work and a man ahead of you collapses on the sidewalk. Do you stop to help? In a study of by-standers, it was found that some people avert their gaze and keep on walking rather than stop and get involved.

    "There is a tendency to decide that no action is needed." says a psychologist. "The first thoughts that pop into your mind often keep you from offering help. In order to take action, you have to work against them. " Here are some common thoughts that might prevent you from helping.

    Why should I be the one? I'm probably not the most competent (有能力的) person in this crowd. You might think someone older or with more medical knowledge should offer assistance.

    What if he doesn't really need my help? The fear of embarrassment is powerful; no one wants to risk looking foolish in front of others.

    No one else looks concerned—this must not be a problem. We can follow the people around us, but most people tend to hold back their emotions in public.

    "If you spot trouble and find yourself explaining inaction, force yourself to stop and assess the situation instead of walking on," says the psychologist. "Then retry to involve other people; you don't have to take on the entire responsibility of being helpful. Sometimes it's just a matter of turning to the person next to you and saying, 'It looks like we should do something.' Or asking someone if an ambulance has been called and, if not, to call for one. Once you take action, most people will follow you."

    Mid-afternoon on a particularly busy Tuesday, I took leave of my desk at work and walked into a local Starbucks only to find a space where neither my clients nor my children would ask me to do something.

    Inside, I ran into Kate, a co-worker of mine. The topic of parenthood came up. I complained about how packed my schedule was. From the minute I woke up to the minute I fell asleep, I was constantly in demand and always had someone knocking at the door. But a bit of sadness seemed to come over Kate's face.

    "Well, my daughter's in San Francisco and she doesn't seem to need me at all these days," Kate said. It was in that moment that I realized although I might often feel in high demand, there will come a day when I will actually miss that same stress I then complained about.

    And as our conversation continued, it turned to our children's younger years, with Kate smiling proudly, thinking of the little boy and girl she raised who are now a man and a woman. But I noticed her smile was marked with regret. She explained that she often wondered about what she could have done differently when her children were in their earlier years.

    This got me thinking. Is regret an unfortunate footnote (注脚) to parenthood? With that in mind, I asked six older parents one question: What is your biggest regret from your early days as a parent?

    It turned out that all of them thought they could have done it better. But, each of them also has a strong, healthy relationship with their kids. Whatever regrets their parents might have had about their upbringing, one thing is clear —— it didn't affect them in a meaningful way.

    The bottom line is, we all feel like we could be doing this parenting thing better. And quite clearly, years later, we're still going to look back and wish we tried things differently. But the past can't be changed, and neither should it.

    Until the 1990s coffee was rarely served in China except at luxury hotels aimed at foreigners. When Starbucks opened its first shop there in 1999, it was far from clear that the country's tea-drinkers would take to such a different and usually more costly source of caffeine. Starbucks tried to attract customers to coffee's bitter taste by promoting milk and sugar-heavy concoctions(调和) such as Frappuccinos.

    But coffee has become fashionable among the middle class in China. Starbucks now has about 3, 800 shops in China more than in any other country outside America. Statista, a business-intelligence portal(门户网站), says the roast coffee market in China is growing by more than10 %year. Starbucks and its rivals see big opportunities for expanding there.

    So too, however, do home-grown competitors. A major new presence is Luckin Coffee, Beijing- based chain. Since its founding less than two years ago, it has opened more than 2,300 shops. On May 17th Luckin's initial public offering on the Nasdaq stockmarket raised more than $570m, giving it a value of about $4bn.

    Luckin's remarkable growth is sign of change. No longer do Chinese consumers see coffee as such a luxury. Most of Luckin's shops are merely kiosks where busy white-collar workers pick up their drinks, having ordered them online. Super-fast delivery can also be arranged through the company's app. Independent coffee shops are springing up. The growth is striking considering the country's reputation for its tea-drinking culture where many residents like to relax in teahouses sipping tea served gracefully.

    But the two markets are different. The teahouses tend to cater to older people who like to spend long hours playing mahjong and gossiping. At the coffee shops it is rare to see anyone over 40. Young people use them for socialising, but much of their interaction is online -sharing photos of their drinks and of the coffee-making equipment. An option on the Chinese rating app Dianping allows users to search for wanghong ("internet viral") coffee houses.

    People in Japan tend to live longer and stay healthier in their later years, with an increasing number of old people living alone. Japan is on a fast track to "ultra-age" with people aged 65 or above accounting for 28 percent of its total population in 2017; it was 26.7 percent in 2015. On the other hand, the number of births in 2017 fell to its lowest (about 941,000) since records began in 1899.

    Demand for care services for elderly people has boomed. A shrinking working population means fewer able-bodied adults are available to look after the elderly. There is a shortage of state-provided elderly care facilities (养老院), while private ones are expensive. Any elderly people do not have the heart to burden other family members who may not live nearby. So they choose to live alone, and often die alone.

    The country will be short of 380,000 of health nurses by 2025. The government has to turn to advanced robots to meet the shortage. Now about 5,000 nursing homes are testing robots which assist the elderly with a lot of physical issues, even emotional and psychological issues. A study found that using robots encouraged one third of the people to become more active and independent. Yet there is no robot that can provide the emotional support to the elderly by listening to their need, taking care of them and in general making their twilight year (暮年) happy.

    Japan provides a case study for China, which is too faced with a fast aging population. 17.23 million babies were born in China in 2017, about 630,000 fewer than in 2016. people aged 60 accounted for 17.3% of China's population in 2017. With insufficient elderly care facilities and unbalanced supply, China may find it tough to cope with the rapidly increasing number of senior citizens.

    To meet the challenge, the Chinese government should make policy changes, which Japan is unwilling or unable to do or even consider. China should pay attention to the signals its aging population is sending and take proper and timely action.

    Recently, many e-commerce platforms, including Didi Taxi, Ctrip, Fliggy, JD and Taobao, have been uncovered that they are cheating their frequent customers. Their ways are pretty clever. When there are new users or conservative old users, they will give a quite appealing price to attract them into registering and buying goods. However, their big data is not friendly to the stable users and frequent visitors. The system always offers them higher price for the same products or service. How does this happen? According to the data analysis, the system knows clearly that although they feel the price is high, they will finally pay the bill. By collecting and analyzing users' profiles, buying habits and other information, big data recommends the same products to different users with different prices.

    Companies also try other ways to make money, making online consumption far more worrying. For example, video websites always offer 120 seconds' advertisements, which drives people crazy. And even if you pay for the membership to get rid of the ads, you have to "enjoy" 15-second "private" ads. By broadcasting them, companies make huge profits—second to the membership fees. Also, owning 100Mbps network, you still put up with the slow speed when you are downloading a song. You have no choice but to become a VIP when you seek high quality services. Users seem to be lambs (羊羔) among wolves. Even though they say, "Since you have money, I'll charge you more", we can't do anything about it.

    It pains us that we haven't figured out a way to deal with the problem. The only thing we can do is replacing our iPhones with Android phones if we want to buy a membership card, and applying for new accounts if we want cheaper hotels. Not finding a way to fight back, we can't do anything but accept them passively.

Being able to find high quality healthcare at an affordable price is a problem to be solved in many countries. In the United States, Walmart, a large chain store, is trying to help. It is offering something new to its employees: cutting the cost of a doctor's appointment(预约) to only $4 instead of the usual $40 for the same service.

Walmart is the latest major business in the United States to push its workers toward a high-tech way to be examined and treated by doctors. Thanks to telemedicine (远程医疗), people can talk with medical experts from the privacy of their own homes, often using a secure video connection.

Supporters say online visits make it easier for patients to see an expert or quickly find help for problems considered non-emergencies. Some healthcare needs are well-suited for telemedicine. It can help people seek treatment for insect bites or skin conditions. Patients who have had medical treatments and cannot move around easily can use telemedicine for their follow-up visits. Also, people seeking help for mental health issues can benefit from the privacy that telemedicine gives.

But still, many people do not use telemedicine, they continue to go to the doctor's office when they are sick. 80 percent of middle-size and large U.S. companies offered telemedicine services to their workers in 2018. However, only 8 percent of its employees used telemedicine at least once in 2017. Compared with seeing a real doctor in person, some people may think the quality of telemedicine is not as good. Parents, for example, may feel they are not giving their child the best care if they use a virtual doctor appointment. Another reason some adults may not use telemedicine services is trust. Tom Hill, aged 66, says he has no plans to ever use telemedicine. He says, for him, it is important to look at his doctor in the eye and shake hands.

However, for some people, especially young people and busy students, telemedicine might be a good choice. It can cut down on the time away from work. It can also cut down on the cost of doctor visits.

One of our biggest problems many of us feel is having too much to do and not feeling like we have enough time to do it.

Of course, having "not enough time" is just a feeling. The fact is that we all have the same amount of time, but we often fill up the container (容器) of our days with too many things.

The problem is having too many things to fit into a small container (24 hours). If we look at task and time management simply as a container organization problem, it becomes simpler.

How do we fit all of the things we have to do into our small container? We do that by simplifying what we have to do.

Pay attention to all the things you should do today and tomorrow, and try to notice all the things you're fitting into the container of your day. What games are you playing on your phone? What are you reading? What work are you busy doing? How much time are you spending on Facebook of Twitter? How much TV are you watching? How much time do you spend cleaning, taking care of other people?

What you might realize is that you're fitting a lot of junk into the container. Throw some of that out. Prevent yourself from using certain sites or apps until you've done a few really important tasks.

Now ask yourself this: Which task would you do if you could only do one task today? That should be what you put your focus on next. So just focus on one important task. By picking your tasks carefully, you're taking care of the container of your time. You can pick important tasks or joyful ones, but you're being conscious (意识到的) about the choices. You're treating it like the gift of great value, for it is limited, valuable, to be filled with the best things, but not overstuffed.

Young people can have problems with their minds. Some students become worried because they have to study very hard. Others have trouble getting on well with people like their parents and classmates.

Li Wen, a junior 2 student from No. 2 Middle School, could not understand his teachers and was doing badly in his lessons. He became so worried about it that he started to cut his finger with a knife. Another student 16­year­old Yang Fang from No. 1 Middle School, was afraid of exams. She got very worried in one and when she looked at the exam paper, she couldn't think of anything to write.

A recent report from Jiefang Daily says about 18% of Shanghai teenagers have mental problems. Their troubles include being worried and very unhappy and having problems in learning and getting on with people. Many students who have problems won't go for advice or help. Some think they will look stupid if they go to see a doctor. Others don't want to talk about their secrets. Liang Yuezhu, an expert on teenagers from Beijing Anding Hospital has the following advice for teenagers：

·Talk to your parents or teachers often.

·Take part in group activities and play sports.

·Go to see a doctor if you feel unhappy or unwell.

Buying clothes for a special event, hiding the price tickets and returning them to the store the next day has for years been the method of economical shoppers. Today people are doing it just for social media.

A survey conducted by the credit card company Barclaycard revealed that nearly one in ten UK shoppers admits to buying clothing only to post photos on social media for likes. After the "outfit (装束) of the day" makes it online, they return it to the store. According to Barclaycard, the "try before you buy" policy of online retailers (零售商) where people pay for clothing they order online after they try it on at home could be contributing to this rising trend.

But the rise of social media has meant that everyone, not just superstars, expects to build and maintain a personal brand. Since we're documenting our lives and posting them online for public judgment, getting caught in the same outfits more than once should be avoided. And the cost of all those outfits of the day adds up, which makes returning a popular way.

There are brands that tailor clothes specifically for social media shoppers, like Fashion Nova. "These are clothes made for social media: meant to be worn once, photographed and abandoned," Allison P. Davis wrote in her report about the brand. Another favorite of the social media age is Rent the Runway, which lets customers rent designer clothing for a fee.

Some, however, are moving in the opposite direction. Groups promoting "work uniforms" have increased greatly in recent years, aiming to free women from "the annoyance of clothing decisions". The concept of the "capsule wardrobe" (胶囊衣柜), which calls for purchasing a small number of high-quality pieces instead of lots of trendy throwaway clothes, is also making a comeback.

When we think of a generation gap we usually think of conflicting tastes in music, or pastimes. But now the generation gap is handwriting. After one teacher in Tennessee discovered that she had students who couldn't read the assignments she was writing on the board, she posted it on the Internet saying handwriting should be taught in schools.

Opponents claim that handwriting has become out of time in our modern world. Typed words have become a primary form of communication. Once a practical skill， handwriting is no longer used by the vast majority of Americans. It is no longer taught in schools, and some claim that the time that it would take to teach it could be put to better use, for instance, by teaching the technical skills.

But even in today's world there are still plenty of reasons to pick up a pen and apply it to paper. Many American institutions still require original signatures, for instance, signing for a registered letter and buying a house. And original signatures are much more difficult to forge(伪造) than their digital counterparts. There is also strong evidence that writing by hand is good for the mind. It activates a different part of the brain, and improves fine moving skills in young children. People also tend to remember what they write by hand more than what they type, and the process of writing by hand has been shown to stimulate ideas. Besides, studies have shown that kids who write by hand learn to read and spell earlier than those who don't. Not to mention, handwriting is pleasing, as is evidenced by the fact that no one has ever typed a love letter. And handwriting remains popular as an art form.

Yes, we live in a modern world, but we live in a modern world that is based on fundamental values.

You can tell a lot about people's general state of mind based on their social media feeds. Are they always tweeting（发微博）about their biggest annoyances or posting pictures of particularly cute kitties? In a similar fashion, researchers are turning to Twitter for clues about the overall happiness of entire geographic communities.

What they're finding is that regional variation in the use of common phrases produces predictions that don't always reflect the local state of well being. But removing from their analyses just three specific terms -- good, love and LOL - greatly improves the accuracy of the methods.

"We're living in a crazy COVID-19 era. And now more than ever, we're using social media to adapt to a new normal and reach out to the friends and family that we can't meet face-to-face. " Kokil Jaidka studies computational linguistics at the National University of Singapore. "But our words aren't useful just to understand what we, as individuals, think and feel. They're also useful clues about the community we live in. "

One of the simpler methods that many scientists use to analyze the data involves correlating words with positive or negative emotions. But when those records are compared with phone surveys that assess regional well-being, Jaidka says, they don't paint an accurate picture of the local zeitgeist（时代精神）.

Being able to get an accurate read on the mood of the population is no laughing matter. "That's particularly important now, in the time of COVID, where we're expecting a mental health crisis and we're already seeing in survey data the largest decrease in subjective well-being in 10 years at least, if not ever. "

To find out why , Jaidka and her team analyzed billions of tweets from around the United States. And they found that among the most frequently used terms on Twitter are LOL, love and good. And they actually throw the analysis off. Why the disconnect?

"Internet language is really a different beast than regular spoken language. We've adapted words from the English vocabulary to mean different things in different situations. " says Jaidka. "Take, for example, LOL. I've tweeted the word LOL to express irony, annoyance and sometimes just pure surprise. When the methods for measuring LOL as a marker of happiness were created in the 1990s, it still meant laughing out loud. "

"There are plenty of terms that are less misleading," says Jaidka. "Our models tell us that words like excited, fun, great, opportunity, interesting, fantastic and those are better words for measuring subjective well-being. "

Sometime in the early 1960s, a significant thing happened in Sydney, Australia. The city discovered its harbor. Then, one after another, Sydney discovered tots of things that were just sort of there-broad parks, superb beaches, and a culturally diverse population. But it is the harbor that makes the city.

Andrew Reynolds, a cheerful fellow in his early 30s, pilots Sydney ferryboats for a living. I spent the whole morning shuttling back and forth across the harbor. After our third run Andrew shut down the engine, and we went our separate ways-he for a lunch break, I to explore the city.

"I'll miss these old boats," he said as we parted.

"How do you mean?" I asked.

"Oh, they're replacing them with catamarans. Catamarans are faster, but they're not so elegant, and they're not fun to pilot. Hut that's progress, I guess."

Everywhere in Sydney these days, change and progress are the watchwords（口号）, and traditions are increasingly rare. Shirley Fitzgerald, the city's official historian, told me that in its rush to modernity in the 1970s, Sydney swept aside much of its past, including many of its finest buildings. "Sydney is confused about itself," she said. "We can't seem to make up our minds whether we want a modern city or a traditional one. It's a conflict that we aren't getting any better at resolving（解决）.”

On the other hand, being young and old at the same time has its attractions. I considered this when I met a thoughtful young businessman named Anthony. "Many people say that we lack culture in this country," he told me. "What people forget is that the Italians, when they came to Australia, brought 2000 years of their culture, the Greeks some 3000 years, and the Chinese more still. We've got a foundation built on ancient cultures but with a drive and dynamism of a young country. It's a pretty hard combination to beat."

He is right, but I can't help wishing they would keep those old ferries.

Have you ever wanted to travel abroad and experience a culture different from your own? You can do that just by partnering with an English language school in China. Come to experience all that China will offer by becoming an English teacher and get paid to take in the culture, the traditional food, and the centuries of history.

China is making big moves to make a more English-literate society. With China's unbelievable economic growth in the last 30 years, the country has become a worldwide financial center. English is firmly established as the international language of business and trade. And as the Chinese economy grows, the English language market in China is growing fast. In order to remain competitive globally, the Chinese government has chosen to make English instruction a priority in many schools throughout the country.

China has one of the largest school-aged populations in the world, and there are new teaching opportunities available daily. Teaching in China typically takes place in private language schools, public schools, or private international schools. The English language market in China has never been in more demand. Major cities all across the country are looking for native-born English speakers to instruct their students. Teachers are given the opportunity to earn a generous wage and enjoy many benefits while taking in the rich cultural history that China will offer. China is an extremely vast and fascinating country with plenty to do and see.

If you are looking for a teaching job in China, your best bet is to go through a teacher placement company. They have close relationships with all of the best schools in China and will work with you to place you in a school that fits your needs and your comfort level.