Umbrella
As early as 3500 years ago, umbrella had emerged in China. Regarding the invention of umbrella, there are many folk legends, among which the most widely spread one is the story about Luban inventing umbrella. According to the records of “Jade Chips”, umbrella was invented by Luban’s wife out of care and concern about her hardworking husband. As the folklore tells, daily meals delivered by Luban’s Wife Yun were often spoilt by downpours. So Luban built pavilions along the road. Later on, as inspired by children using lotus leaves for rain shelter, he invented the first umbrella by making a flexible framework covered by a cloth.
Features of Chinese Mythology
Scholars and critics have written about the special features of Chinese mythology. Among the most obvious are:
Singles’ Day in China
In the United States, the lonely have Reddit and cats. In China, they have Singles' Day, which falls on Nov. 11 — 11.11, the four ones symbolizing "bare branches," Chinese slang for bachelors. Thought to have originated about 20 years ago as a joke on college campuses, Singles' Day was once an occasion for confessing one's feelings to that special someone. But since 2010, online retailers have transformed the holiday, also known as "Double 11," into an epic online shopping extravaganza akin to America's Cyber Monday.
在美国，孤单的人有红迪网和猫。在中国，孤单的人有光棍节。光棍节在每年11月11日，即11.11象征着“光棍”，汉语中给单身人士的诨名。光棍节大约20年前兴起自中国大学校园，学生们借这个日子打趣，在这一天向自己心仪的对象表白。但是2010年之后，又称“双11”的光棍节，被网络零售商转变成了和美国的“网购礼拜一”相似的网购狂欢庆典。
China has 271 million online consumers, meaning that almost half of China's 591 million Internet users buy products online. E-commerce sites Taobao and Tmall, which saw a combined $1 trillion in sales in 2012, will both be running promotional campaigns during China's Singles' Day. Among the offers: 50 percent discounts on products like boyfriend body pillows and hoodies that read "I am single because I am fat." Amazon.cn declared that the site would sell "20,000 products discounted by as much as 90 percent." That includes a wedding ring, which singles can presumably buy, just in case.
中国有2亿7100万网络消费者，这意味着中国的5亿9100万网民中有近半数在网上购物。如淘宝和天猫的网购网站，在2012年销售量加在一起有1万亿美元。这两家网站都会在中国的光棍节这天发起促销活动，他们的促销策略是相关商品的五折优惠、比如“男朋友抱枕”、上书“我肉多所以我单身”的套头衫等。亚马逊网称将该站上将有“2万件商品1折优惠”，这其中包括结婚戒指——也许单身人士会买一只来以备日后可用。
Jack Ma, founder of Internet giant Alibaba, told Chinese Premier Li Keqiang late last month that Alibaba's sales on Singles' Day 2012 were "nearly $3.3 billion" — more than double the roughly $1.5 billion purchased on Cyber Monday in 2012. For Singles' Day 2013, Ma expects sales to exceed $4.9 billion.
网络巨头阿里巴巴的创始人马云在10月底会见李克强总理的时候曾对总理坦言，2012年光棍节期间，阿里巴巴的销售量有“近33亿美元”——比2012年美国的“网购礼拜一”创下的约15亿美元销售量翻了一番。对2013年的光棍节，马云预测销售量将突破49亿。
The rise of singletons as a consumer group is not without its own costs. Chinese business magazine Caijing reported that big delivery companies were forced to scramble to find over 100 extra airplanes to handle the 323 million parcels they needed to deliver over the Singles' Day shopping period.
消费者群体中单身族的崛起并不是没有代价的。据《中国财经杂志》报道，在光棍节期间，为了处理3亿2300万份包裹，许多大型物流公司需要筹措超过100台货运飞机四处奔走。
The holiday strains the logistics system: Products frequently sell out or arrive late. Even when everything moves smoothly, consumers complain about commercial gimmicks. According to the Beijing Evening News, a popular local paper, some online retailers quietly raise prices before slashing them.
光棍节期间物流系统往往问题百出：商品常常已经断货或者送货延期。就算物流系统一切正常，网购公司的销售猫腻也常常引起消费者不满。根据北京一家知名报刊《北京晚报》报道，许多在线零售商都会先抬高商品价格，然后再鼓吹降价销售。
But Chinese have not forgotten about the true meaning of this holiday: hating singlehood. Singles' Day is an occasion on which Chinese confess their feelings and try to find significant others. On Nov. 7, with four days to go before the holiday, the top trending topic on Weibo, China's Twitter, was "Help Your Roommate Find Someone." Over 200,000 people participated in the discussion, posting pictures of their roommates (and sometimes themselves) in hopes of avoiding another lonely Singles' Day.
但是中国人也没有忘记这个节日的真正含义：厌倦单身。光棍节正是中国人承认自己对单身状态的厌倦，试着寻觅到另一半的日子。在11月7日光棍节前4天，微博（中国版的推特）上最热门的话题就是“为你的室友找到另一半”。超过20万人参与了讨论，上传自己室友的照片（有时就是自己的照片），希望能在光棍节前结束单身。
Chinese are no strangers to loneliness: There are tens of millions of men in China who may never find love due to the country's massive gender imbalance, a result of the One Child Policy and a longstanding preference for male children. Chinese women don't have it easy either: Those who remain unmarried at the ripe old age of 27 risk being labeled "leftover women".
孤单对于中国人来说并不陌生：由于中国长期实行计划生育政策，以及长久以来重男轻女的子女偏好，中国的性别比例严重失衡，有数以百万的中国男子也许一辈子都不会找到伴侣。中国女性的情况也不容乐观：那些在27岁的“熟女”年龄之后还未婚的女性会被贴上“剩女”的标签。
Although poverty and singledom are often linked outcomes in China, at least one web user was sure of which was worse. "Spending Singles' Day alone isn't that scary," he wrote. "What's scary is when you're so poor you can't even enjoy Taobao's ‘Double 11.'" Retail therapy indeed.
虽然在中国“贫穷”和“单身”往往是相互联系的，但网民们知道前者比后者更糟糕。如一位中国网民所说的，“一个人过光棍节并不可怕，可怕的是你没钱去参加淘宝的‘双11’庆典。”
Style and Art of Writing
In style and art of writing, both early and later mythical stories are superb. Classical Chinese is extremely concise. A few hundred, even a few dozen words are enough to tell a story complete with dialogue and behavioral and psychological descriptions. Take The Foolish Old Man Removes the Mountains. After he heard that the Foolish Old Man of North Mountain had begun digging the Taihang and Wangwu Mountains.
A proposed national Chinese carbon trading scheme
A proposed national Chinese carbon trading scheme is likely to see carbon prices trade at alevel that helps to cut emissions slightly but is not high enough to yield dramatic reductions, according to a survey of the potential price for carbon in the world’s largest polluter.
中国是世界最大的温室气体排放国，近来该国一项关于碳市场潜在价值的调查显示：拟议的碳市场交易计划中一定标准的碳交易价格有助于减少温室气体排放，但是收效甚微，还远远不能满足减排的要求。
A national scheme is still far off butexperimental trading has begun on China’s only existing carbon market – a pilot project in the southern boomtown ofShenzhen, on the border with Hong Kong. Several other pilots are due to open inthe next two years as China tests the water for a market-based system to discourage polluting emissions.
距离全国性的碳排放交易体系的实施还为时尚远，但是目前一个试点计划已经在中国南部的新兴都市深圳实施，该城市位于香港边境对岸，是中国唯一现有的碳市场所在地。随着中国为市场体系试点运行来控制排污，未来两年中，中国政府会相继推出其他几个试点计划。
A survey of financiers, regulators, academics and industry players showed thathalf expect a national scheme that unifies experience from the various pilotsto be launched by 2018, said survey author Frank Jotzo of the Crawford School of Public Policy at Australian National University.
澳大利亚国立大学克劳福德公共政策学院的Frank Jotzo教授对金融家、监管机构、学者及工业界人士做了一项调查。调查显示，半数的人期望国家在整合各个试点计划的经验后在2018年推出全国性的碳市场交易计划。
About the Capital Daxing of Sui and Capital Chang’an of Tang
Geographical position: In Xi'an, Shaanxi Province Period: 582-907 Excavated from 1956 to the present
Shijing (The Book of Songs)
Shijing (The Book of Songs) is the earliest collection ofChinese poems including 305 poems of the Zhou Dynasty (1122-256 B.C.). It was originally called Shi (Poems) and Shi Sanbai (Three Hundred Poems). It was the Confucians of the Han Dynasty who gave it the name Shijing. It is also called Maoshi (Mao Poems) because it was by the hand of Mao Heng of the Han Dynasty that Shijing was passed down to the present time.
Performers compete at Spring Festival Gala Express 为“上春晚”而竞技
The "Spring Festival Gala Express" contest sees performers compete for the chance to appear in CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala, the most watched variety show in the world with last year’s gala attracted over 700 million audiences.“我要上春晚”的表演者为了能在CCTV的春节联欢晚会舞台上亮相而相互角逐。春节联欢晚会 去年曾吸引了7亿人， 是世界上观众最多的综合节目。
Chinese literature: Chinese Poetic Literature
Chinese Poetry Literature is conventionally divided into four classes: poetry, ci , ge or songs, fu. Poetry proper has three forms. The first is " lü shi" or code verse which must contain two or more of what we call parallel couples. Thousands upon thousands of such endless double-filed processions march down the history of Chinese literature. In addition to parallelism in content there is also a phonetic parallelism or a parallelism of tones. The classical language of the Chinese poets is rhythmical almost to an excess, though not inherently musical. Prosody is based on changes in pitch as well as in accent. In a parallel couplet not only must the content, the parts of speech, the mythological and historico-geographical allusions, be all separately matched and balanced, but most of the tones must also be paired reciprocally. Even tones are conjoined with inflected ones, and vice versa. In general it can be said that the earlier code verse writers did not consider such a rigid pattern a formal necessity. It became more and more fossilized in the later literary examinations.
Mutant Gene Discovery突变基因新发现
Chinese doctors have discovered and registered a new mutant gene for alpha-thalassemia, first of its kind worldwide, an advance that enriches the gene database to assist researches into cures for genetic disease.中国医生已经发现并注册了一种新的α-地中海贫血突变基因，这是全球第一次发现该类型的基因 ，这种进步丰富了基因数据库，有助于关于遗传性疾病治疗方法的研究。
Malay 
English 
French 
German 
Thai 
Vietnamese 
Myanmar