It was Thanksgiving morning and in the crowded kitchen of my small home I was busy preparing the traditional Thanksgiving turkey when the doorbell rang. I opened the front door and saw two small children in rags huddling(蜷缩) together inside the storm door on the top step. “Any old paper, lady?” asked one of them.

I was busy. I wanted to say “no” until I looked down at their feet. They were wearing thin little sandals, wet with heavy snow. “Come in and I’ll make you a cup of hot cocoa.”

They walked over and sat down at the table. Their wet scandals left marks upon the floor. I served them cocoa and bread with jam to fight against the cold outside. Then I went back to the kitchen and started again on my household budget.

The silence in the front door struck me. I looked in. The girl held the empty cup in her hands, looking at it. The boy asked in a flat voice, “Lady, are you rich?”

“Am I rich? Mercy, no!”

I looked at my shabby slipcover ( 家具套). The girl put her cup back in its saucer carefully and said, “Your cups match your saucer.” Her voice was hungry with a need that no amount of food could supply. They left after that, holding their bundles of papers against the wind. They didn’t say “Thank you”. They didn’t need to. They had reminded me that I had so much for which to be grateful.

Plain china cups and saucers were only worth five pence. But they matched.

I tasted the potatoes and stirred the meat soup. Potatoes and brown meat soup, a roof covered over our heads, my man with a good, steady job—these matched, too.

I moved the chairs back from the fire and cleaned the living room. The muddy prints of small scandals were still wet upon my floor. Let them be for a whole, I thought, just in case I should begin to feel how rich I am.

This is the story of a man who works in a big factory. I have seen him for years, but I've never paid any attention to him. He was a little bit weird (怪异的). He always wore an old red hat and carried a rubbish bag. He usually spent his break time and his lunchtime walking around in that big old factory and collecting used tins (铝罐).

One day, I was fixing one of the broken machines in the factory when this "tin man" came with his bag. As usual, he picked up the tins, which were all over the place. My manager was standing there, watching me.

When I finished my job, I heard my manager ask the "tin man" about what he was going to do with those tins he had collected. I never even thought about this kind of question, because I     always assumed (推断) that "tin man" would take those tins to the recycling center.

Unexpectedly, the "tin man" answered, "I will give these tins to my neighbor. He has epilepsy (癫痫) and cannot work."

I was shocked to hear that, so I asked him, "You mean you collect all those tins just to help your neighbor?"

"I know this does not help much," he said. "But I give everything to him, because he cannot work. He needs help."

It was the most beautiful moment of my life. It has made me feel humble (谦卑的) every day since then.

It is the year 1026, the time of the Song Dynasty. You are trained to become a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) doctor. You are about to take your final exam. What kind of thing will you face?

During the Song Dynasty, doctors needed to show they understood meridians (经络) — paths of energy running through the body.

If you were the one to take the exam, you would be asked to show how you would treat symptoms on a life-sized model covered in wax (蜡). Under the wax, the model would be made of bronze (铜), filled with water, and covered in holes running along the meridian paths.

You would need to place an acupuncture needle (针灸用的针) into the correct part of a meridian to pass the exam. If you got it right, the needle would go straight through he hole, and water would pour out of the model. If you picked the wrong spot, the needle would hit the bronze model and you failed.

The exams wanted to make sure all young doctors knew how to treat patients hitting the same correct acupuncture points.

The first “bronze man” acupuncture model was made in 1026 by one of the great doctors named Wang Weiyi. Wang also wrote a book that was used across the country to teach how to use the model. Now you can see a copy of one of these bronze men in China’s National Museum.