Black Friday refers to the day after Thanksgiving. On this day, crowds of shoppers flood into stores all over the country to take advantage of the season’s biggest holiday bargains. But the real story behind Black Friday is a bit complicated.

The most commonly repeated story behind the post-Thanksgiving shopping-related Black Friday tradition links it to retailers (零售商). As the story goes, after an entire year of operating at a loss, recorded in red ink, stores would supposedly earn a profit, marked in black ink, on the day after Thanksgiving, because holiday shoppers blew so much money on discounted products. Though it’s true that retail companies used to record losses in red and profits in black when doing their accounting, this version of Black Friday’s origin is not an accurate story behind the tradition.

The true story behind Black Friday, however, is not as sunny as retailers might have you believe. Back in the 1950s, police in the city of Philadelphia used the term to describe the chaos that happened on the day after Thanksgiving, when tens of thousands of suburban shoppers and tourists flooded into the city in advance of the big Army-Navy football game held on that Saturday every year. Not only would the police not be able to take the day off, but also they would have to work extra-long shifts dealing with the additional crowds and traffic.

The term didn’t spread to the rest of the country until much later, however, and as recently as 1985 it wasn’t in common use nationwide. Sometime in the late 1980s, however, retailers found a way to reinvent Black Friday and turn it into something that reflected positively on them and their customers. The result was the “red to black” concept mentioned earlier. The Black Friday story stuck, and pretty soon the term’s darker roots in Philadelphia were largely forgotten.

“In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue” is how the children’s nursery rhyme begins. However, more than 90 years before the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria, a huge fleet of ships set sail from Nanjing. It was the first of a series of voyages that would, for a brief period, establish China as the leading power of the age. The voyage was led by Zheng He. In fact, some people think he was the original model for the legendary Sinbad the Sailor.

In 1371, Zheng He was born in what is now Yunnan Province to Muslim parents, who named him Ma Sanbao. When he was 11 years old, he was castrated and made to serve as a eunuch (宦官) in the imperial household. Ma befriended a prince who later became the Yong Le Emperor, one of the Ming Dynasty’s most distinguished. Brave, strong, intelligent and totally loyal, Ma won the trust of the prince who gave him a new name. Yong Le was an ambitious emperor who believed that China’s greatness would be increased with an “open­door” policy regarding international trade and diplomacy. In 1405, he ordered Chinese ships to sail to the Indian Ocean, and put Zheng He in charge of the voyage. Zheng went on to lead seven expeditions in 28 years, visiting more than 40 countries.

Zheng’s fleet had more than 300 ships and 30,000 sailors. The largest vessels, 133­meter­long “treasure ships”, had up to nine masts and could carry a thousand people. Along with a Han and Muslim crew, Zheng opened up trade routes in Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. The voyages helped expand foreign interest in Chinese goods such as silk and china. In addition, Zheng He brought foreign items back to China, including the first giraffe ever seen there. At the same time, the fleet’s obvious strength meant that the Emperor of China commanded respect and inspired fear all over Asia.

Though Zheng He died in 1433 and was probably buried at sea, a grave and small monument to him still exist in Jiangsu Province. Three years after Zheng He’s death, a new emperor banned the construction of oceangoing ships, and China’s brief era of naval expansion was over. Chinese policy turned inward, leaving the seas clear for the rising nations of Europe. Opinions vary on why this happened. Whatever the reason, conservative (保守的) forces gained the upper hand, and China’s potential for world domination was not realized. Records of Zheng He’s incredible voyages were burned. Not until the early 20th century did another fleet of comparable size take to the seas.

The first drawings on walls appeared in caves thousands of years ago. Modern graffiti（涂鸦）seems to have appeared in Philadelphia in the early 1960s, and by the late sixties it had reached New York. The new art form really took off in the 1970s, when people began writing their names, or “tags（标签）”, on building all over the city.

In the early days, the “taggers” were young street men who were trying to mark their space. They worked in groups and called what they did “writing” ---- the word “graffiti” was first used by The New York Times and the author Norman Mailer Art galleries in New York began buying graffiti in the early seventies. But at the same time is began to be considered as an art form. John Lindsay, the mayor of New York, announced the first war on graffiti. By the 1980s it became much harder to write on subway trains without being caught and instead many of the graffiti artists began using roofs of buildings.

The argument over whether graffiti is art is still going on. Peter Vallone, a New York City Councilor thinks that graffiti done with permission（许可）can be art, but if it is on someone else’s buildings it become a crime （犯罪）. On the other hand, Felix, a member of the Berlin-based group Reclaim Your City, says that graffiti shows freedom and makes cities livelier.

Graffiti is now sometimes big business. The Frenchman Blek le Rat and the British artist Banksy have become internationally famous by producing works which often make humorous points. Works by Banksy have been sold for over $100,000.