As for long-distance holidays, there are some unique destinations that actually offer you great value for your money, even if you're on a budget.
Tokyo, Japan
Food lovers should head to this busy city which has the lowest cost for dining out — you could even bag a three-course evening meal for two, with a bottle of house wine, for just under £ 34. For sightseeing there are plenty of free museums and attractions, while tour bus ticket prices start from as little as £ 11.56.
Bangkok, Thailand
Thailand's capital is second to none as the best value long-distance city. Although there isn't a huge difference across all prices compared to the other cities, it is accommodation that really makes it stand out. I you're only stopping for a long weekend, then make sure to check out the awe-inspiring The Grand Palace, a complex of breathtaking temples.
Beijing, China
The Chinese capital took third spot with a total basket price of £ 337. 49. If you only do one cultural day out during your stay, make it a trip to The Forbidden City. There are some seriously beautiful and delicate buildings from the Ming and Qing dynasties, not to mention they're home to priceless artificial objects from China's historical milestones.
Dubai, UAE
Although Dubai does have a reputation for being quite the splurge (挥霍金钱) when it comes to holidays and if you're going to addict yourself to a spot of shopping or hit the roller-coasters, it actually provides quite good value for what you pay. The city also offers some cheaper prices across its museums, galleries and attractions as well as airport transfers.
Fou Ts'ong, a Chinese-born pianist known for his sensitive interpretations of Chopin, Debussy and Mozart, died on Monday at a hospital in London, where he had lived for many years. He was 86.
A lover of classical music from a young age, Mr. Fou began taking piano lessons when he was 7. Mr. Fou made his first stage appearance in 1952. The concert caught the attention of officials in Beijing, who selected him to compete and tour in Eastern Europe. Mr. Fou soon moved to Poland, where he studied at the Warsaw Conservatory（音乐学校）on a scholarship. To prepare for the fifth Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1955, he practiced so diligently that he hurt his fingers and was nearly cut from the first round of the competition.
Mr. Fou was one of the first Chinese pianists to achieve global prominence when he took third place in the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 1955. He also won a special prize for his performance of Chopin's mazurkas. Almost overnight, he became a national hero. To China, Mr. Fou's recognition in a well-known international competition was proof that the country could stand on its own artistically in the West. Chinese reporters flocked to interview Mr. Fou, while many others sought out his father, Fu Lei, for advice on child-rearing.
In 1981, a volume of letters written by his father, primarily to Mr. Fou, was published in China. Full of advice, encouragement, life teachings and strict paternal love, the book Fu Lei's Family Letters became a best-seller in China. Besides influencing a generation of Chinese, Mr. Fu's words resonated (引起共鸣) long after his death with the person for whom they were intended.
"My father had a saying that ‘First you must be a person, then an artist, and then a musician, and only then can you be a pianist,'" Mr. Fou once recalled (回想起) in an interview. "Even now, I believe in this order — that it should be this way and that I am this way."
There's a new AI bot: ChatGPT, and you'd better pay attention, even if you aren't into artificial intelligence. The tool is an AI chatbot system that OpenAI released in November 2022 to show off and test what a very large, powerful AI system can achieve.
ChatGPT remembers the thread of your dialogue, using previous questions and answers to inform its next responses. It derives its answers from huge volumes of information on the Internet. ChatGPT is built on top of the OpenAI GPT-3 family of large language models and is fine-tuned (a method of transfer learning) using both supervised and reinforcement learning（监督和强化学习）.
You can ask ChatGPT anything, like explaining physics, asking for birthday party ideas and getting programming (编程) help. Perhaps it's not smart enough to replace all humans yet, but it can be creative, and its answers can sound downright authoritative. A few days after its launch, more than 1 million people were trying out ChatGPT. UBS analyst Lloyd Walmsley estimated in February 2023 that ChatGPT reached 100 million monthly users in January, accomplishing in 2 months what took TikTok about 9 months and Instagram two and a half years.
ChatGPT is free to use at the moment because it is still in its research phase. But when too many people hop onto the server (服务器), it overloads and can't process your request. It just means you should try visiting the site at a later time when fewer people are trying to access it. If you want to skip the wait and have reliable access, there is an option for you. As of Feb. 1, 2023, OpenAI has a ChatGPT pro plan, ChatGPT Plus, which allows users to have general access even during peak times. This service does come at a cost of $20/month.
However, ChatGPT can not replace Google. ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence bot that provides solutions to your questions, but Google is a search engine in which you can search for as much information as possible. ChatGPT has limited knowledge due to its programming but Google has unlimited knowledge which is updated every day.
If you've ever had trouble getting your teen up in the morning or you've seen your teen fall asleep during the school day, you're not alone. Many teens have difficulty in waking up early for school, and that's because they sleep late at night. The American Academy of Pediatrics' Adolescent Sleep Working Group reviewed studies about sleep in teens. Researchers studied the harmful effects of not getting enough sleep-anything less than 8.5 to 9 hours of sleep on school nights-could have on young people. They discovered not getting enough sleep may cause poor grades at school. Not getting enough sleep has also been connected to a higher risk of car accidents in teens.
It may seem as though the way to solve the problem would be for teens to just go to sleep earlier. But researchers say that isn't likely to work. Teens experience physical changes that make falling asleep earlier difficult. Their biological (生物的) clocks just won't allow them to fall asleep at 8 p. m. , even when they're tired.
Studies have shown that just delaying (推迟) school by 30 minutes can have a great effect on a teen's health and performance. So most researchers suggest the school start time be delayed until at least 8:30 a. m. for teenagers.
Some of the benefits could include:
·Teens may be more likely to get the necessary amount of sleep.
·The delayed start time could help teens sleep during their natural sleep.
·Teens may be less likely to depend on coffee to stay awake during the day.
·Enough sleep could help teens study better in class, which could help them do better in exams.
·Sleeping longer could reduce health problems caused by a lack of sleep in the long run.
·Getting home later in the afternoon may reduce the amount of time when some teens are home alone, and could reduce the possibility that tens will take part in unhealthy activities.
But doing that can also cause some problems.
You don't need to travel far away to write a travel diary. Your writing can start with a family vacation or a weekend getaway. All you need is a destination or a place of departure (出发)!
Your trip journal can begin before your trip has started Use your journal to start planning the things you want to do. It can be a cool restaurant where you want to eat, a hike you want to go on or different sights you want to see.
Write about what you imagine it will be. Sometimes when you travel, your destination is wildly different from what you expected. Maybe you expected the local food to be bad but it turned out to be delicious. Maybe you thought you would not be comfortable with the climate while you adapted to it. Whatever, try to write it down before you arrive. It will be interesting to compare these predictions to what you have actually experienced.
It is always easier to remember things when they are fresh in your brain, but it may be diluted (冲淡)with time going by. So try to write as much as you can during travelling every day if you can. Your journals don't have to be long, but letting then express your feelings is the most important.
Add pictures to your journal. Combining pictures with your first-hand accounts of what they represented, or what happened when they were taken, will make for a better travel journal.
Write about your trip after you leave. It is important to reflect on your travels, so you can have a new understanding.
A. Ask a parent for help.
B. Get prepared for your travel journal.
C. Write as much as you can during your trip.
D. Use your journal to plan your trip properly.
E. Maybe you imagined the town to be smaller than it actually is.
F. Even though your journal is meant for writing, pictures are still worth a thousand words.
G. This is also a great way to learn about your-self and other people who you have travelled with.
I was 11 years old when my family went on a holiday to Beijing. That was my first trip to China. One morning, my brother became 1and had to stay in the hotel to rest. As my mum had to be with him, she told me to 2breakfast from the food store in front of the 3. She also told me that she would be right by the window, 4me.
Had I been back home, it would have been a (n) 5task. But my inexperience and the 6to the environment turned it into a highly challenging experience I still remember 7. The food store had a lot of people coming and going. I had no 8what to do. Overwhelmed (不知所措的) and on the point of crying, I suddenly 9what my mum had told me. I stepped out of the shop and looked up. True to her 10, she was just by the fifth-floor window, giving me the thumbs-up (翘拇指). I was comforted.
Although she wasn't right by my side, I knew she was 11giving me the confidence to complete the task. On the top of the 12were all Chinese characters , with most characters unrecognizable to me. At that moment, I 13my task. My mum had given me very simple instructions—buy several cakes—but among the 14, what she said was gone.
I realized that was the biggest challenge I faced. I had no idea how to 15, or to whom to give my orders. Fortunately, a lady saw me and communicated with me in fluent English. That made me remember what I wanted to buy.
要点如下：1. 基本概况；
2. 历史与文化；
3. 交通与旅游
注意：1. 100词左右；
2. 可适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
3. 书面整洁
Beijing, the capital of China, is a beautiful city.
