An old gentleman who lives a few doors away from me can always be seen with a bag. He goes out by himself and picks up plastic bottles, plastic bags and pieces of paper everywhere. He does it all carefully and never complains.
The children in the nearby school are probably responsible for some of that litter. "There will be some time when they know better," he said. "It's just not yet. So, I'll do it for them.”
Well, this morning I was out walking my neighbour's dog when I saw another neighbour, a much younger man, doing the same thing! He had his two little sons with him and they were having good fun trying to pick up the litter.
"What a good job you are doing," I said to him. "Well, an older fellow in our street does this," he said. "And my friend and I thought it wasn't fair that he had to
do it all the time, so now we take turns."
Not only was he taking a turn, not only did he have a friend join in as well, but he was passing on the lesson to the next generation!
By the time I had returned the dog to my neighbour, I looked again and his children's friends had joined in!
This man was teaching a whole group of young children to keep their own street clean. An older man had set an example for him and now he was passing it on-the next generation(一代) is doing what he did!
Tu Youyou is an 84-year-old Chinese woman scientist. She won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Medicine on October 5. She found a1that cures the deadly disease called malaria(疟疾). Tui2the prize with two scientists from the USA and Japan. Tu is the first native Chinese person to get the Nobel Prize in natural science.
Tu found artemisinin(青蒿素) in sweet wormwood (蒿,洋艾) back in 1971. She3the following years trying to improve the medicine.4World Health Organization, about 200 million people suffer from malaria around the world, and about half a million die each year. Today, artemisinin is still the most useful medicine that5against malaria.
When Tu joined the national research team to find the malaria medicine in the 1960s and 1970s, things were6. The team didn't have advanced equipment(先进设备) then. Tu used to test medicines7taking them herself. Tu's team searched old Chinese medicine books and8over 2,000 traditional recipes(配方).
To do research, Tu also had to move around a lot. Once she returned to her family9six months away from home. Her little daughter didn't recognise(认出) her and hid from the "strange woman" However, Tu never10about what she had done. "I feel rewarded(获得回报的) when I see so many cured patients," she said.