British chemist David Evans has become an overnight celebrity on Chinese social media. His chemistry experiments have attracted over 2 million followers in just a few months. Evans is a chemistry professor at the Beijing University of Chemical Technology. The 60-year-old always wears a white lab coat, a pair of safety goggles(护目镜），and smiles often.Some web users say he looks just like the "grandpa of KFC".

Evans has posted videos of various experiments. His most popular experiments have attracted millions of hits on video-sharing apps. Excited children's cheers and shouts can be heard in his videos. “I hope my experiments can arouse people's interest in science,” he says.

Evans has been interested in China since childhood.In the early 1970s, before the reform and opening-up,he viewed it as a “country full of mysteries". He first visited the Chinese mainland in 1987 to attend a chemistry conference in Nanjing,Jiangsu Province. He quit his job in the United Kingdom and moved to Beijing in 1996. Many of his friends thought he was crazy. But Evans says they just saw China's challenges but not its potential.

Since 2011, Evans has turned to the Internet to popularize science. He learned short-video apps are also popular in small cities and rural areas. And he realized this enables him to reach more students, who lack opportunities to perform fun experiments. But even a one-minute video requires a considerable amount of work. Still, he thinks it's worth it to fulfill his responsibility to popularize science.

His experiments always fill schools' lecture halls with laughter. Some viewers call him "a Harry Potter-like magician”, but he disagrees. “A magician never tells the secrets behind his tricks, but a scientist always gives an explanation.” He sees himself as a teacher. He performs experiments to spread knowledge, inspire thinking, remove misunderstandings and show that science can create change. Evans says he looks forward to more "chemical reactions" with China.

Dutch author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld has become one of the youngest writers to be shortlisted （列入候选） for a Booker prize, after their debut novel （处女作）made the final line-up for the International Booker.

Rijneveld. a rising star in Dutch literature, is 28― lightly older than British author Daisy Johnson was when she was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2018 age 27. The author, who identifies as male and uses the pronouns they/them, was shortlisted after a six-hour virtual (虚拟的) judging meeting for the £50,000 prize, which is shared equally between writer and translator, for The Discomfort of Evening, translated by Michele Hutchison. The novel, tells of a girl whose brother dies in a skating accident and draws from Rijneveld’s own experiences: when they were three, their 12-year-old brother was knocked over and killed by a bus.

“Rijneveld’s language renders (重现) the world again, revealing the shocks and violence of early youth through the angle of a Dutch dairy farm. The strangeness of a child looking at the strangeness of the world is in it,” said judges of the work.

“The Discomfort of Evening is one of six novels in the running for the International Booker, each of which,” said chair of judges Ted Hodgkinson, “restlessly reinvents （重 塑）received narratives, from foundational myths to family folklore, plunging us into discomfiting and delightful encounters with selves in a state of transition (过渡)”.

Hodgkinson chaired a panel （专家组）of five judges who selected the shortlist from 124 submissions. The coronavirus pandemic meant their meeting had to be virtual, but Hodgkinson said he and his panel still managed to discuss the line-up for more than six hours.

The winner will be announced on 19 May.

Thank you. It’s my great honor to be given this award.

You cannot imagine that I have always been a late starter. Years ago, when I was 16, I took an important exam — GCE(General Certificate of Education), which turned out to be a failure. My dad was reading my report card and saw that my position in class was 29th, but the number in class was 29. It meant that I had achieved the distinction of being bottom of my class.

I wasn’t lazy, and I was really trying. You can picture how I felt. Dad put his hand on my shoulder and said, “You can only do the best you can, but whatever you decide to do, make sure you love it.” He was a really sweet guy and a great man. I knew his attempt to hide his disappointment with some of his encouraging words. I was depressed for a week, but his advice was a wake-up call.

Fortunately I love working with my hands, and I was good at two things: woodwork and art, and I really loved to draw and paint. I was quite talented. Dad strongly encouraged me to go to art school, which in those days wasn’t the obvious place that a father would suggest.

So I got into Hartlepool College of Art. The college was a revelation (出乎意料), the passionate teachers there, who were extremely interested in the students, not just tolerating them but actually engaging with them. It was a world apart from my schooling until then. It’s extraordinary what an enthusiastic teacher can do, drawing the student out, lighting independence, and encouraging a design of your own future, rather than waiting for something to happen. I’m honored to have become one of these passionate teachers years later.

My teachers inspired me, and thanks to my dad, here I am tonight. I think I should mention all the talents I have worked with over time, and to my kids and my wife Giannina, thank you.

Thank you for this great award. I shall find a very special place for it.