My mother’s brother Uncle Mike got a violin from his father. His father got it from his grandfather, and so on. Back to the day, when an earlier Mike had brought me to see it, which was lying in its bed of rich, shining green velvet. It was carefully placed on the top of the china closet in the dinning room.

Once my father took a risk to open his own shop when he needed a mortgage but my mother didn’t not agree with him.

She cried, “They could turn us into the street. We’d be beggars, Carl.”

“I tell you, Mary, there’s no risk whatever “said my father, “It’s only a matter of your signature on this loan application. I can pay three thousand dollars back in two years without any trouble.”

A quarrel broke out between my father and mother when Uncle Mike offered the violin to my father.

“I’ve read where a Stradvarius violin has sold for as much as five thousand dollars. Take it out and sell it, Carl.”His hands trembled a little but his voice was perfectly calm.

So my father went out to sell it, yet he came back later with the violin, saying, “Up there where it is, it’s just as if we had a safe box with fifty new one- hundred-dollar bills. And if we have that, a three-thousand-dollar loan needn’t worry us.”

Uncle Mike left the violin to buy me a college education after his death. I went to sell it again the day before I left for my college where the old shop owner recognized it and told me something quite unexpected.

“It’s got a Strad label in it.” He said gently, “Lots of violins have that not genuine. Never was genuine. This violin is maybe a hundred years old but it is not, excuse me, a first-class violin.” He looked at me curiously, “I have seen this instrument before. Aren’t you Carl’s girl?”

Returning home, I decided to take the violin to the college and keep my father’s white lie a secret, speaking to my mother, “You won’t have to worry about me, if anything happens and I need money. It will be just as if I had a violin case full of bank notes, Won’t it, Papa?

“It will, Marie, it will.” My father said, avoiding my eyes.

Some fathers show their love to their children through actions, not words. Li Jiawei, a father from Chongqing, is one of them. He spent eight years building a real miniature（微型的）steam train for his son.

The son, named Hanghang, was found with autism（孤独症）at the age of three. After completing primary school, he had to drop out of school because he couldn’t catch up in classes and had difficulty communicating with other children. Hanghang spent most of his time at home watching TV. During that time, he developed a love for miniature trains in cartoons. He even drew trains on the walls of his family’s yard and slept with toy trains close at hand.

Seeing his son’s love for trains, Li had an idea: to build a real miniature train for his son. In his free time, Li studied steam trains and asked professionals questions at railway stations. When he started to build the steam train, he met with many difficulties. For example, no factories wanted to produce parts for a miniature train, so Li had to make the parts himself. Although it was hard work, Li didn’t give up.

Over eight years, Li spent more than 200,000 yuan testing the machine more than a thousand times. He finally built the first miniature train for his son in 2021.

But Li did not stop there. To make the train more powerful, he continued to improve it. During that time, Li noticed Hanghang also changed. He was no longer afraid of strangers and became more cheerful and lively.

Now, Li has made a total of eight miniature trains, and Hanghang has become a skilled “train driver”.

Look! Here is a photo of Tom’s family. This is a big family. The man in a red coat is Tom’s grandfather. His name is Jim King. The old woman is Tom’s grandmother, Natasha King. They are English. But now they are in China. The young woman is Tom’s father’s sister Lucy. She is in England. Tom’s mother is in China now. She works in a library. Tom has a brother John and a sister Joy. Tom’s father is an English teacher in China now.