Have you ever seen an “ugly” oyster(牡蛎)? That is the term oyster farmers use for the sea animals whose shells get too large to sell to seafood restaurants. Each year, farmers grow oysters to just the right size so people at restaurants will enjoy eating them. If they get too big, restaurants no longer want to buy them.

So last year, when many seafood restaurants in the U.S. closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic(流行病), oyster farmers lost the chance to sell their products. Eventually, they had a lot of “uglies” and didn’t know what to do with them.

That was a big problem until a conservation program came to the rescue. The program is called Supporting Oyster Aquaculture and Restoration, or SOAR. It is buying more than 5 million oysters at the cost of about $2 million from farmers on the east coast of the U.S. and in Washington State.

Farmers take living oysters that are too big to sell and send them to places like the Great Bay in the northeastern state of New Hampshire. Oysters are placed in special locations called reefs(暗礁). Once they attach to the structures in the water, they can live for a number of years. They help create a good environment for other sea life. The hope is that the oysters will help clean the water and also have babies.

Lisa Calvo runs Sweet Amalia Oyster Farm in southern New Jersey. She said the program helped her business get through the pandemic and “stay afloat”.

Calvo started her farm about 20 years ago. She sells her oysters to restaurants close to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and those in the towns along the ocean in New Jersey. Oysters are ready to sell when they are about two years old. When all the restaurants started closing, she said she was “in a panic”.

She was able to earn about half the usual amount of money by selling her oysters to the program. That was better than nothing.

Destine Whitaker was in fourth grade when she learned that millions of people around the world lack clean water.

“It was a problem that confused me for a long time,” said Whitaker, from the United States city of Philadelphia. “Water is a necessity.”

When she got to Carver High School of Engineering and Science, Whitaker carefully researched the problem and felt that she must do something about it.

Early in her senior year, Whitaker approached fellow members of the school’s National Honor Society with a proposal: They should raise money to buy water purification systems for people in need. Whitaker, the National Honor Society president, knew the systems would have to be easy to carry and able to operate without electricity. So she checked with a microbiologist to make sure the system she had her eye on would fit the bill.

Once her classmates agreed to back the proposal, Whitaker took it upon herself to raise money. She organized a game where students bought tickets to guess how many pieces of candy ajar contained.

In the end, they raised $800—a large amount for a school where 70 percent of the students’ families are not well-off.

Whitaker soon found that raising money was the easier part of the project. However, finding an organization that could deliver the water purification systems was the toughest one. She approached some organizations about their possible connections but no one could help.

Then Whitaker connected with Joseph Sackor, who runs the Liberia Medical Mission—an organization that provides medical care to Liberians who lack health services. Sackor accepted the school’s money and agreed to deliver the systems to people who needed them.

Whitaker dreams of someday starting her own nonprofit organization to bring clean water to more people in need.

“Some students in Liberia can’t even go to school because their parents cannot afford to buy them bottled water,” Sackor said. “This money is huge.”

Six “sacrificial pits (祭祀坑)”, dating back 3,200 to 4,000 yeas, were newly discovered in Sanxingdui Ruins site in Guanghan. Over 500 artifacts, including gold masks, bronze wares, ivories, jades and textiles were unearthed from the site. Sanxingdui site is located in Sanxingdui Town, Guanghan City, Sichuan Province, on the south bank of Qianjiang River (Yangtze River), a tributary of Tuojiang River in the north of Chengdu Plain. The site covers an area of about 12 square kilometers, and the core area is the ancient city of Sanxingdui, with an area of about 3.6 square kilometers. It is the largest and highest-grade central site found in Sichuan Basin during the Xia and Shang period.

Sanxingdui site, first found in 1929, is generally considered as one of the most important archaeological sites along the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. However, the work of excavation on the site only began in 1986,when two pits-widely believed for sacrificial ceremonies-were accidentally discovered.

Investigation in the area around No.1 and 2 pits was relaunched in October 2019, and No.3 pit was found in December 2019, according to Lei Yu, a researcher of Sichuan Provincial Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute who heads the ongoing excavation. Thirty four research universities and research institutes have cooperated in this project. He said the new discoveries will help to better understand many unexplained findings in 1986.

More excavation followed in March 2020, and five more pits were found last year. And detailed research began in October. Excavation capsules with hi-tech equipment were set up in the pits in order to prevent the site from further damage.

According to the National Cultural Heritage Administration, studies of Sanxingdui site will become a crucial project in an ongoing program Archaeology China, which tries to explain the origins of Chinese civilization and how diverse cultures communicate and come together.