When an earthquake hit a small town，many houses fell down.After the earthquake，all the newspapers reported many stories about some of the families who were in trouble.

One Sunday，when I was reading a newspaper，a special picture touched me.It gave the clothing sizes of each family member.I thought that this would be a good chance to teach my children to help those who were less lucky than themselves.I said to my seven­year­old twins，Brad and Brett, and three­year­old Meghan，“We have so much，and these poor people now have nothing.We’ll share what we have with them.”

I filled a box with foods and clothes.While I was doing this, I encouraged the boys to choose their toys and donate some of their less favourite things.Meghan watched quietly as the boys took out their old toys and games and put them together.Then she walked away.A few minutes later, she came back with Lucy, her much­loved doll.She put the doll on top of the other toys.“Oh，dear，” I said.“You don’t have to give Lucy.You love her so much.” Meghan said，“Lucy makes me happy，Mommy.Maybe she’ll make another little girl happy, too.”

I looked at Meghan for a long moment.She taught me a lesson.It’s easy to give something that we don’t want any more, but hard to give what we cherish (珍爱)，isn’t it?

Lewis Carroll was the pen-name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, an English writer and author of two of the best loved children’s books in English literature — Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. The characters and phrases from these books have entered and become part of the English lexicon (词典) in a way that was comparable to those from Shakespeare’s works.

Charles Dodgson was born on January 27, 1832 and spent the first eleven years of his life at Warrington. Dodgson was educated first by homeschooling, then at boarding schools in Richmond and at Rugby, and finally at Charist Church College, Oxford. In later life, he remembered his boarding school experience with no fondness. Still, he was an excellent student and did very well academically throughout. For all his brilliance or perhaps because of it, he couldn’t be bothered to spend long hours studying and so he didn’t. If things came easily, that was fine; if they didn’t, well, that doesn’t seem to have bothered him very much.

His book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland first came into being in 1862 as a story he made up for Alice Liddell, the ten-year-old daughter of his friend Dean Henry Liddell. Later he wrote it down and showed the book, illustrated with his own drawings, to another friend, the fairy tale writer George Macdonald and his children. They loved it and enthusiastically urged him to get it published. Accordingly, Dodgson revised it for publication. And in 1865, with illustrations more professionally done by Sir John Tenniel, it became an immediate bestseller. Its sequel(续集)Through the Looking-Glass proved equally popular.

Instead of escaping the summer heat in air-conditioning indoors, Mustafa Furkan Ozgener prefers the sunshine in an experimental seed field of over 200 kinds of melons in Pingluo County, Northwest China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. Picking melons, weighing them, observing their growth, tasting, recording and taking pictures, the 31-year-old Turkish man runs his tests on up to 50 kinds of melons every day. “I love working in the field. Melons are favored in Turkey in the hot summers and my job here is to choose the best kinds for Turkish customers,” he said.

Influenced by his father who used to do business in China, Ozgener majored in Chinese at university and therefore expected a journey to China one day. The young man visited China for the first time as an exchange student in Beijing. Two years later, Ozgener applied for a master’s degree in tourism management at China’s Sun Yat-sen University. Since then, he’s traveled around the country to learn about the colorful Chinese culture and enjoy different dishes. “The more I learn about China, the more I want to stay here,” said Ozgener. He worked as a translator in Ningxia after graduation.

The company Ozgener works for now is a scientific and technological enterprise engaged in vegetable planting, production, promotion, import and export. It has bred over 70 new varieties of seeds and exported seeds to 27 countries and regions in Asia and Africa, including the Middle East.

Before the outbreak of COVID-19, Ozgener would spend two months in Hainan and another four months in Ningxia to help foreign clients select seeds. Then he would go back to Turkey. But due to the epidemic (流行病), he has stayed in Ningxia for more than a year, observing and selecting target seeds in the field every day.

“I used to do translation work only, but now I’m also responsible for all the stuff related to the seeds. It’s tiring but rewarding, because I can learn a lot. I will continue to pursue my dream here,” said Ozgener.