There in every postcard-perfect picture of Greece, a bright red, green and blue boat can be seen in the sea transporting tourists to an unknown beach. Petros Tzevelekos, a fisherman from Greece, sits on a bench in front of the pier (突堤) in North Evia with a sad expression. Just a few years ago, his own kaiki was tied there. Every day, before dawn, he would climb aboard the boat to go fishing to make his living.

These handmade wooden masterpieces have witnessed the country’s long seafaring tradition for centuries, which is an important part of Greek heritage. Sadly, however, Petros Tzevelekos cannot do it anymore, because his beloved kaiki was smashed to pieces in front of his eyes. Tzevelekos’ beloved boat was one of the about 13,000 boats which have been destroyed since 1994, after a European Union directive called for the destruction of the small wooden fishing boats. The sad result? Hundreds of Greece’s beautiful vessels have ended up in scraps in landfills. In addition to the great damage to the many Greeks who make a living by fishing, the directive also threatens the centuries-long traditional craft of boat-building. It led to the extinction of related boat-building professions which for decades fed and educated Greek families on remote islands and at coastal villages.

This is the same country that has Nobel Prize (1979) winning poet Odysseas Elytis, who summed up all that Greece was in five verses (诗句):

If you take Greece apart,

In the end you will be left with

an olive tree, a vineyard and a boat...

which means that with these items

you can rebuild Greece...

In 2018, the Save Kaiki Campaign was launched in Greece as an effort to stop the destruction of these treasures that once proudly roamed the seas now facing a bleak future. I can only remind that what made Greece the highly sought-after destination it is today was its fishing villages on the islands and the kaiki on the sea.

Many people may not find the idea of visiting Beijing's Forbidden City just to see its cultural relics(遗迹)very exciting. But what if you got to see deer there too? That certainly sounds like a better day out.

Nine deer were introduced into the Forbidden City, also known as the Palace Museum, on Sept. 26 and would make it their home until February. The beautiful animals are part of an exhibition on deer-related relics, including furniture, clothes and artworks. In ancient China, deer patterns(图案)could be seen on lots of items since lu—deer—were considered to be a lucky animal because the Chinese word shares the pronunciation(发音)of the character that means “official salary(俸禄)”.

The deer in the Palace Museum are not only to be part of the exhibition, but also to act as ambassadors(大使)to attract visitors. “It’s a better way to bring cultural relics closer to the people,”explained Wang Yamin, a deputy director at the Museum, according to ChinaDaily.

Turning itself into a zoo is the latest effort that the museum has made at introducing academic(学术的)art to ordinary people.

In 2014, for example, the museum’s online store started to offer products such as T-shirts featuring the pattern of an emperor's coat, and earphones looking like the necklaces worn by ancient officials. These products soon gained popularity on social media because they allowed people to wear a piece of history.

Two years later, the TV series MastersintheForbiddenCity(《我在故宫修文物》)lifted the mysterious veil(面纱)on the experts who work in the museum—people whose job is to repair the relics within it. And while many of us may have imagined these workers to be old and boring, they're actually quite young and interesting. Some are even in their 20s. They lead a peaceful career, although it can sometimes be dull. Workers aren't allowed to wear any make-up or do their nails(指甲)because the chemicals(化学物质)may damage the relics they're working on, for example.

Little by little, the Palace Museum is shaking off the stereotypes(刻板印象)of being an old-fashioned academic institution. As Shan Jixiang, the museum’s director, once said, “Academic research is not alien from the public’s interest. We’d like to make visiting the museum a part of people's daily lives. ”

It looks like the Forbidden City isn’t so forbidden after all.

Some 120 kilometers north of Rome, street signs along the road tell drivers they're bound for “the dying town” Civita di Bagnoregio. The village stands on a declining plateau. It has gone through landslides, earthquakes, and erosion since humans' first settlement about 2,500 years ago. Nowadays Civita has been reduced to only 90 by 150 meters.

In the Middle ages, the size of the plateau was three times its size nowadays, and the population was over 3,000， yet the river surrounding Civita gradually made the town collapse from the bottom up. Since 1695, when a destructive earthquake took place in Civita, many people were forced to escape from their hometown, and the population there has never recovered. By the 1920s, there were merely 600 residents in the town. Currently, there are only about 10 residents. What a small population it has!

The survival of Civita is uncertain. However, as the news that the town was about to disappear started to widely spread, more and more people wanted to visit it. Now up to 10,000 people visit Civita per day. And there is doubt as to whether it is dying. The flood of people and money leads to natives longing for the rescue of the town.

Yet the actual situation in Civita is that there are no grocery stores, hardware, or convenience stores. People living there can only have access to a handful of restaurants and tourist shops. Besides, they have to get supplies through a narrow, 300-meter-long bridge that connects them to the outside world.

Today, Civita is pursuing a UNESCO World Heritage designation, in order to earn official recognition of its landscape and adaptability to nature. Recently, the town presented a 242-page document to the UNESCO, hoping that it will help strengthen Civita's role as a site of historical and cultural significance. Also, Civitas UNESCO team plans to create tourist attractions in the surrounding towns. If Civita recovers successfully, other towns in the same situation could find a direction based on its experience.