Just to the north of the mountains lived an old man called Yu Gong who was nearly 90 years old. With the two high mountains just in front of his house, his family and he had to walk a long way around the mountains whenever they had something to do on the other side of the mountains.

   One day, Yu Gong called all his family together to talk about how to move the two mountains to other places. His wife said, "An old man like you cannot even move a small hill, not to mention the two high mountains. Even if you can, where can you throw so much earth and stone?"

   "the Bohai Sea is big enough to contain all the earth and stone," Yu Gong said.
So it was decided. His children started to dig the mountains, led by the old man Yu Gong.

   A man named Zhi Sou saw them working and tried to stop them, saying, "You are so silly! You're so old and weak that you can't even take away the grass and trees. How can you move the high mountains?"

   "You're wrong," Yu Gong said with a sigh. "Look, my sons can continue my work after my death. When my sons die, my grandchildren will continue. So generations after generations, there's no end. But the mountains can't grow higher. Do you still say I can’t move them away?"

   Later the Heaven God, upon learning of Yu Gong’s story, was GREatly moved. He then ordered another god to come down and take the two high mountains away.

   the story tells us that so long as one is determined and sticks to it long enough, anything can be done, no matter how difficult it is.
 

    People wondered why Wen Tong could draw so well. Actually, Wen Tong loved bamboo so much he had grown various bamboo around his house. No matter what season it was and no matter whether it was sunny or rainy, he used to go to the bamboo forest to observe how they were growing.

He carefully observed the length and breadth of the bamboo poles as well as the shapes and colors of the leaves. Whenever he found something new, he went back to his study and drew what was in his mind on paper. After a long time, the images of the bamboo in different seasons, under different weather conditions and at different moments were deeply imprinted in his mind. Whenever he stood before the paper and picked up a painting brush, various forms of bamboo came into his mind at once. So, every time he was drawing bamboo he appeared confident and at ease. All the bamboo he drew looked like real.

    When people spoke highly of his paintings, he always said modestly that he had just put the images of the bamboo imprinted in his mind in the paper.

    the phrase "having the images of bamboo ready in one's bosom" means having plans or designs ready in one's mind before doing a certain job so that its success is guaranteed. It also means being calm and sober-minded in dealing with things.

　　They were going to Fort Lauderdalethree boys and three girls and when they boarded the bus, they were carrying sandwiches and wine in paper bags, dreaming of golden beaches as the gray cold of New York vanished behind them.

　　As the bus passed through New Jersey, they began to notice Vingo. He sat in front of them, dressed in a plain, ill-fitting suit, never moving, his dusty face masking his age. He kept chewing the inside of his lip a lot, frozen into some personal cocoon of silence.

　　Deep into the night, outside Washington, the bus pulled into Howard Johnson's, and everybody got off except Vingo. He sat rooted in his seat, and the young people began to wonder about him, trying to imagine his life: perhaps he was a sea captain, a runaway from his wife, an old soldier going home. When they went back to the bus, one of the girls sat beside him and introduced herself.

　　“We're going to Florida,” she said brightly.“ I hear it's really beautiful.”

　　“It is, ” he said quietly, as if remembering something he had tried to forget.

　　“Want some wine?” she said. He smiled and took a swig. He thanked her and retreated again into his silence. After a while, she went back to the others, and Vingo nodded in sleep.

　　In the morning, they awoke outside another Howard Johnson's,and this time Vingo went in. The girl insisted that he join them. He seemed very shy, and ordered black coffee and smoked nervously as the young people chattered about sleeping on beaches. When they returned to the bus, the girl sat with Vingo again, and after a while, slowly and painfully, he told his story. He had been in jail in New York for the past four years, and now he was going home.

　　“Are you married?”

　　“I don't know.”

　　“You don't know?” she said.

　　“Well, when I was in jail I wrote to my wife,” he said. “ I told her that I was going to be away a long time, and that if she couldn't stand it, if the kids kept asking questions, if it hurt too much, well, she could just forget me, I'd understand. Get a new guy, I saidshe‘s a wonderful woman,really somethingand forget about me. I told her she didn't have to write me for nothing. And she didn‘t. Not for three and a half years.”

　　“And you're going home now, not knowing?”

　　“Yeah,” he said shyly. “ Well, last week, when I was sure the parole was coming through, I wrote her again. We used to live in Brunswick, just before Jacksonville, and there's a big oak tree just as you come into town. I told her that if she'd take me back, she should put a yellow handkerchief on the tree, and I'd get off and come home. If she didn't want me, forget itno handkerchief, and I'd go on through.”

　　“Wow,” the girl exclaimed. “Wow.”

　　She told the others, and soon all of them were in it, caught up in the approach of Brunswick, looking at the pictures Vingo showed them of his wife and three children. The woman was handsome in a plain way, the children still unformed in the much-handled snapshots.

　　Now they were 20 miles from Brunswick, and the young people took over window seats on the right side, waiting for the approach of the great oak tree. The bus acquired a dark, hushed mood, full of the silence of absence and lost years. Vingo stopped looking, tightening his face into the ex-con's mask, as if fortifying himself against still another disappointment.

　　Then Brunswick was ten miles, and then five. Then,suddenly, all of the young people were up out of their seats, screaming and shouting and crying, doing small dances of joy. All except Vingo.

　　Vingo sat there stunned, looking at the oak tree. It was covered with yellow handkerchiefs20 of them, 30 of them, maybe hundreds, a tree that stood like a banner of welcome billowing in the wind. As the young people shouted, the old con rose and made his way to the front of the bus to go home.

If HOVER can open up your dreams
If HOVER can open up your mind
Don't say it never can be real
You could see miracles happen to you

Here HOVER show you the way
We all have this only brief
We all dream of conquering English to start afresh
We should make the future come together
We will give what we've got
You will know where it is from
This is the moment to be all that we can be

As great hopes make great men
And time let me tell you tomorrow is another day
That you are chosen to be good
And when your dreams all come true
It's the right time to get you through

Don't be so depressed
Just join HOVER to practice English
You could make yourself ever proud
Raise your head you could see
Dare to dream you will believe

That we can show the spirit of transcending ourselves
that nobody else can achieve
Just open up your dream
You will know where it is from
It's from the bottom of our hearts

This is the moment to open up dreams
that we can blossom out hand in hand

　　Love is a mysterious and a complicated force. What do a person mean when they say they love someone? Love is many different things. Each of us have our own understanding of Love is, and most of the time we base our definitions from feelings and experiences. The book defines love in many ways. "It is a strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties." It can be an affection and tenderness felt by lovers. Love is the object of attachment, devotion, or admiration.

　　Just when we thought we finally grasp what love is, somebody asks:

　　"Does anyone really know what 'LOVE' mean? I believe I have a true love, but 'True love' is always hurt, isn't it?"

　　I scratches my head with this thought and began to wonder. What is the answer to this? "This I have to know!" I said to myself. I looked in the mirror and asked "Is it a true love when you know you want to live with this special person for the rest of your life? Have we reached 'true love' when we are ready to give everything away towards our subject? or maybe when can go as far as to sacrifice ourselves for our love? What about love as an obsession? Is that possible?

　　"But isn't love suppose to be an obsession? If it is not, then you'd have to rationalize. If you rationalize then it's not love, because there is always a better rationalization."

　　"I think the "in love" phase is obsessive but according to Williamson (and backed up by my paltry experience), love does not involve the ego, is selfless and the opposite of obsession."

　　According to Marriane Williamson, the author of "A Return to Love," there is a "holy love" and a "special love." "The latter type is the obsessiveone; finding that one 'special' person absorbs _ALL_ your attention."

　　So who is right and who is wrong about love? There is no wrong answer. Love is many wonderful things. Love may not work out all the time but it leaves you a special sort of feeling, like nothing you have ever imagined. Is love a purpose of life? I think are life will be dull without it. But is it necessary? Important? It is a part of life, and forever it will be a part of us.

"Love is not thinking about your happiness but making others happy." -anonymous

　　"Our hearts are created to Love." -E. Atienza

　　"Love is like a roller coaster, it has ups and downs."

　　"Love doesn't make the world go around, Love makes the ride worth while." -unknown

　　"Money will buy you sex but not Love." -Simon Vainrub

　　"The more you cry for the person you really love, the more you can understand real love." -Tsuchida Tomomi

Polly's son, Jim, had great difficulty in school. He was classified as educationally handicapped and required a great deal of patience on the part of his parents and teachers. But Jim was a happy kid with a great smile that lit up the room.

His parents acknowledged his academic difficulties, but always tried to help him see his strengths so that he could walk with pride. Shortly after Jim finished high school, he was killed in a motorcycle accident. After his death, his mother submitted this letter to the newspaper.

　　Today we buried our 20-year-old son. He was killed instantly in a motorcycle accident on Friday night. How I wish I had known when I talked to him last that it would be the last time. If I had only known I would have said, "Jim, I love you and I'm so very proud of you."

　　I would have taken the time to count the many blessings he brought to the lives of the many who loved him. I would have taken time to appreciate his beautiful smile, the sound of his laughter, his genuine love of people.

　　When you put all the good attributes on the scale and you try to balance all the irritating traits such as the radio which was always too loud, the haircut that wasn't to our liking, the dirty socks under the bed, etc., the irritations don't amount to much.

　　I won't get another chance to tell my son all I would have wanted him to hear, but, other parents, you do have a chance. Tell your young people what you would want them to hear if you knew it would be your last conversation. The last time I talked to Jim was the day he died. He called me to say, "Hi, Mom! I just called to say I love you. Got to go to work. Bye." He gave me something to treasure forever.

　　If there is any purpose at all to Jim's death, maybe it is to make others appreciate more of life and to have people, especially families, take the time to let each other know just how much we care.

　　You may never have another chance. Do it today!

New and forthcoming books

Short story collections to watch out for

Talking up the short story is an admirable enterprise, especially in Britain. The short story has been having a hard time, with outlets for publication shrinking and collections barely able to reach an agent’s desk. The idea of short stories making money has become as quaint a notion as travelling by commercial balloon. It is therefore quite right, and compatible with the national instinct, to support the underdog. We take the side of the short story and try to big it up.

One way of doing this, which short story enthusiasts will recognise, is to suggest that a story is as challenging to write as a novel. Each line must be impeccably precise, no word can be wasted. This is true. The bad news for writers is that every line should be equally meticulous in a novel. There’s no letting up on quality just because more pages demand to be filled. The writer has to write well for longer, at the same time administering the vast bureaucracy of a novel: the structure, the people, the places, the meals, the transport – all the required paperwork.

Or perhaps, as some people argue, the short story has a particular contemporary relevance because these days time itself is shorter, or shorter than it used to be. This may be so, but another contemporary phenomenon is greed, and there’s a sense of frustration that comes bundled with every short story ever written, and especially so in the finest examples. I can recognise why the writer stopped writing, but as a greedy reader if I like what I read I want more and more of the same.

How about another 200 pages or so?  At which point, of course, the story may start to resemble a novel.  The main limitation of the short story is its shortness, which is one reason the novel has developed into the dominant form it now is.

The shortness of a short story (there it is again – impossible to escape this defining feature) is also its major attraction to novelists. The same, only easier.  The writing process is instantly recognisable – do one thing you can’t do and which is difficult, and when that’s done do another – but this series of difficulties comes to an end much sooner. Writers have a vested interested in talking up the form. 

There are other pleasures. It can be interesting to sacrifice some of the what-happens-nextness (the engine of a novel) for more of the what’s-happening-nowness (the focus of a story).  Beyond that, the challenge for a writer is not technical but conceptual: identifying and sorting ideas into the right shapes and sizes. I get different types of ideas (thankfully) and because different forms offer different opportunities I’ve written a sports book, a travel book, and a biography. This is how I know that writing novels throws up the most problems quickest, and therefore offers the best apprenticeship for all other forms of creative writing, including short stories.

I came to short stories late, and it may be that my ideas are getting smaller. I’m running out, or running down. I’m also using up what’s left over. Stories are useful for that, too, with the added advantage of avoiding The Best Book In The World syndrome, which can make writing books so daunting. There’s always the temptation to delay work on a book because it has to be The Best Book In The World. Now. Today. 

Stories are more relaxed, more comfortably likened to a game of Patience: set up the cards and arrange the conflict (black on red, red on black) – sometimes it comes out, and sometimes it doesn’t. When it does, as with any other type of writing, it’s because the words fit the sentences fit the paragraphs fit the structure fit the form fit the ideas fit the writer. And when that happens, when everything comes together, small is just as likely to be beautiful.

Suri, the regularly photographed daughter of actors Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, toppled last year's winner Shiloh Jolie-Pitt to score top honors in Forbes.com's second annual list of "Hollywood's 10 Hottest Tots."

Shiloh, the two-year-old daughter of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, slipped to second place and was joined by two others from the Jolie-Pitt household with three-year-old Zahara in third place and brother Pax, 4, coming in fourth.

To compile the list, Forbes.com ranked 50 celebrity children aged five years and younger by evaluating the amount of press and online attention they have received in the past year.

The website then recruited polling firm E-Poll Market Research to narrow the list, getting awareness scores for the children and consumer appeal rankings for their celebrity parents.

Suri received more blog mentions than any other Tinseltown child and was referenced in more than 1,300 news articles, which can help shape public opinion about her parents while also fuelling demand for what she wears, plays with and eats.

Rounding out the top five was one-year-old Sam Alexis Woods, the daughter of world golfing champion Tiger Woods and his model wife Elin Nordegren, who is now expecting their second child.

Others children in the top 10 were Cruz Beckham, late Australian actor Heath Ledger's daughter Matilda Rose, Madonna and Guy Ritchie's adopted three-year-old son David Banda, Britney Spear's son Sean Preston Federline, and Sam Sheen.

Celebrity media editors said these children, who grace the front of magazines with and without their famous parents, could be even more in the spotlight next year as people seek uplifting stories amid the financial crisis.

"It's much more fun to look at cute pictures of Suri than think about how much your 401(k) has decreased," Dina Sansing, entertainment director for Us Weekly told Forbes.com.

The word, which beat hundreds of other suggestions from members of the public, will feature in the 30th anniversary edition of the dictionary, which is to be published next year.

Though the word apparently originates from North America, Collins said it was now widely used on the Internet, and was increasingly seen in British spoken English.

The dictionary entry for "meh" will say it can be used as an interjection to indicate indifference or boredom, as an adjective to describe something as boring or mediocre, or to show an individual is apathetic or unimpressed.

The word was popularized by the US comedy animation series "The Simpsons", where characters Bart and Lisa use it to express indifference when their father Homer suggests a day trip.

It was submitted by Erin Whyte from Nottingham, central England, and a panel of Collins language experts singled it out from the hundreds of other submissions because of its frequency of use in modern English.

"This is a new interjection from the US that seems to have inveigled its way into common speech over here," said Cormac McKeown, head of content at Collins Dictionaries.

"It shows people are increasingly writing in a register somewhere in between spoken and written English."

Other words submitted to Collins's campaign -- which was launched in June and called on members of the public to suggest words they used in everyday English -- were jargonaut (a fan of jargon); frenemy (an enemy disguised as a friend) and huggles (a hybrid of hugs and snuggles).