Once again, China has conquered the world’s highest peak, Mount Qomolangma, on May 4th, 2022. Thirteen members of the Chinese Earth Summit Mission 2022 scientific expedition (探险) team successfully established an automatic weather station at an altitude of over 8800 meters, the world’s highest of its kind, on Mount Qomolangma on the China-Nepal border, achieving the milestone task of the country’s second comprehensive survey to the roof of the world.

To finish this mission, Yao Tandong, a leader of the expedition, said they have organized a massive party consisting of 16 teams and over 270 researchers, some of whom trained for over two years for the project. Now they have set up eight stations from 5200 meters to 8800 meters on Mount Qomolangma, with four stations higher than 7000 meters respectively at 7028 meters, 7790 meters, 8300 meters and 8800 meters. These weather stations at different altitudes mainly monitor the temperature, relative humidity, wind direction, wind speed, pressure and radiation changes in the region, and can realize real-time remote transmission (传输) of data.

Conventional weather observations are generally below 5000 meters and rarely above 5000 meters, and such high-altitude weather observations are scarce at the moment, Zhao Huabiao, a researcher at the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, said. “The reason for building a weather station at 8800 meters instead of 8848 meters is that the snow and ice on the summit are not suitable for fixing equipment, and in this regard, the weather station was built on bedrock around 8800 meters which is easier,” said Zhao.

The team reached the summit of Mount Qomolangma and used high-accuracy radar to measure the thickness of ice and snow, and collected samples for further research. Kang Shichang, a researcher of the Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said studying the changes to the glacier aims to clarify the impact of global warming, which is beneficial to mounting a global response to climate change. “Through the study of glacier changes and glacier air pollutants, we can see the impact of global and regional human activities in the Qomolangma area,” Kang said.

China announced a long-awaited plan to integrate(融合) the southern Pearl River Delta Area(PRDA) as an attempt to create a powerhouse to rival(相匹敌) the US Silicon Valley that is home to such well-known companies as Google, Facebook and Apple. The possibilities and challenges of the effort are both equally promising and challenging.

The plan is a natural result of the economic and technological development in the area. China’s opening up to the world more than four decades ago began in the south and PRDA has long been home to many of the country’s leading technological companies. includin, Huawei and Tencent.

“The plan is promising,” said Adam Xu, an analyst at OC & C Strategy Consultants. “If you really look at history in China, a lot of top-down plans always have very strong bottom-up support. And a lot of economic activities have already happened there. Now they have a big plan to officially recognize, promote and further accelerate.”

The key challenge will be execution(执行). The plan has to integrate three different legal systems among Mainland China, Hongkong and Macau. That makes PRDA unique compared to the other two major areas in China—the Beijing, Hebei, Tianjin Area and the Yangtze River Delta Area near Shanghai.

“We don’t know how effectively the top-down plan will guide the many independent growing forces at the local level,” Xu admitted. “This part will be quite an important challenge.”

China has already taken major steps to overcome some of the physical barriers such as linking Hongkong with Guangzhou and Shenzhen by high-speed railways and its recent opening of the 55-kilometer Hongkong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge. But other barriers, such as the flow of people, information and money, may prove to be a bigger challenge.

Xu said, “The biggest challenge and the biggest beauty—if they eventually succeed—will be linking all of these together.”

Chinese-language teacher Xie Fang is excited that one of her former students from Indonesia has been admitted to Beijing Language and Culture University. The 19-year-old student, Alvin Rizqi Adrian, achieved his dream of studying in China with a scholarship provided by the Chinese government.

Xie met the boy five years ago when she was selected to teach Chinese at Budi Utama Three Languages National School in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The school, founded in 2006 by local Chinese, teaches in three languages - Indonesian, English and Chinese. The school has more than 970 primary, middle and high students, half of whom have Chinese ancestry.

Xie taught students to speak and comprehend Chinese during her year at the school. “Most Indonesian children start to learn Chinese after they enter primary school,” Xie said. “But the textbooks from Singapore seemed relatively difficult for them at that stage.” Xie modified the content of the textbooks to make it easier and more interesting for the Indonesian children to learn Chinese.

One student in particular, Alvin Rizqi Adrian, impressed Xie a great deal. “At that time, he was a middle school student. He was so interested in Chinese that he worked very hard to learn and practice,” she said. Since 2004, Guangdong has sent 1, 000 Chinese teachers to more than 30 Chinese schools in 10 countries and regions.

Indonesia has the largest number of Chinese teachers sent from Guangdong, who mainly work in kindergartens, schools and universities founded by overseas Chinese. They usually spend one to two years on the foreign assignment. 11 Those days in Indonesia made me feel very appreciated. The local people have respect for Chinese teachers; Xie said. She keeps in touch with her Indonesian students through the Internet. "If I had the opportunity to go to Indonesia to teach again, I would be very happy to see the children improve their Chinese,n Xie said.