Jack Ma, the founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba, has offered some of his insights into running business and the role of innovation. The businessman also shared with people how Alibaba has grown into it is today.

As a Hangzhou native, Jack Ma owes his success to the hard work and innovative spirits that (impress) on him at a young age.

The business tycoon stresses the role of competitive and innovative ideas while opportunities, in his opinion, are open to those who own those creative thoughts.

"There are all kinds of problems every day when you start a new business, and these problems need  (fix) , either by yourself, or by others, because someone has to do it. And by that, those who are able to solve these problems  (seize) their opportunity," Ma said.

Ma is encouraging entrepreneurs (创业者) to have a broader vision and take a much ( wide ) picture into account in running business.

He describes an innovative entrepreneur as being someone always sets their sights on the future. "Being innovative means you look at today from a viewpoint of tomorrow. We need to look at today's China from a viewpoint of the world, and look at ourselves from the viewpoint of outside this industry. When you think this way, you will do things in a different way," Ma noted.

the huge success, Ma says he remains cool headed and still stays true to his dreams. "It's important to retain a' simple' and 'naive' outlook for the world. a man still maintains his' simplicity' and' naivety' when he turns 100, I think he will be a very noble old man. I hope we can all hold on to a simple mindset and stick to our dreams, because if we lose our dreams, everything we strive (accomplish) will become pointless and we will only become money-making machines.

Historically, women have had a tough time getting rich. What follows is一if debatable-a ranking of the wealthiest women in history.

1 Empress Wu

Lived: 624- 705 AD

Nation: China

Peak Wealth/ Global GDP: 22.7%

You don't become the richest woman of all time without a little bloodshed. When Emperor Gaozong gained power, Wu was cruel in eliminating competitors for her love. She reportedly killed her own week- old daughter and pinned the crime on one of Gaozong's main consorts, Empress Wang, who was imprisoned and killed. Once Gaozong died, Wu forced her own sons to resign and was named court administrator, a position equivalent to emperor. Her strategies paid off for China's economy: Under her 15-year rule, the empire expanded its area, making it one of the largest in the world at the time. National wealth prospered thanks to the trade of tea and silk with Western nations along the Silk Road.

2 Hatshepsut

Lived: 1507- 1458 BC

Nation: Egypt

Peak Wealth/ Global GDP: about 20%

In order to rule as Egypt's first female pharaoh, Hatshepsut worked hard to convince people that her rule was the will of the gods. And who could blame her: At stake ( 利害关系) was control of gold mines with an output that would be worth $2 billion today. She rose to power after the death of her husband and went on to control one of the largest empires in the ancient world, with lands that extended beyond Egypt's borders into the Middle East.

3 Catherine the Great

Lived: 1729- 1796

Nation: Russia

Peak Wealth/ Global GDP: 5.4%

Catherine the Great's title may refer not only to her political power but also to her fortune, which today would give her economic power equal to about $ 1.5 trillion. Catherine's rule over Russia, historically one of the largest empires in terms of land, gave her control of about 5% of global GDP at the time. While most Russians' lives did not improve during Catherine's rule, their labour drove some of the empire s most ambitious military expansion and cultural projects.

4 Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken

Lived: 1954-present

Nation: Netherlands

Peak Wealth/ Global GDP: 0.017%

Every time you crack open a Heineken, you're adding to the fortune of this Dutch woman, whose wealth peaked at $12.7 billion in 2016. De Carvalho-Heineken is the only child of Freddy Heineken, who served as CEO of the world's third-largest brewer from 1971 to 1989. She inherited her 25% stake in Heineken International when her father died in 2002. Without any formal business education, de Carvalho-Heineken was a driving force behind the selection of the company's current CEO, Jean-Francois van Boxmeer. He's overseen $30 billion in company acquisitions since he took the position.

I had the opportunity to catch a movie on a recent flight, China's Van Gogh, about a painter , Zhao Xiaoyong, who made a living drawing replicas (复制品) of the work of the great Vincent Van Gogh, in Shenzhen's Dafen Village. The movie is more than just a documentary. It is but is in no way a "tear-jerker".

Zhao was originally from Hunan. After arriving in Dafen 20 years ago, he started a family business by making replicas of Van Gogh and has finished over 100, 000 copies. Now Zhao has developed a great for Van Gogh and has strict requirements on the quality of his staff's work, but he had never visited the Netherlands before, nor had he seen the real drawing by Van Gogh himself.

Zhao had always wanted to make the trip, but travel expenses put him off and off again. After a long strugglehis wife, Zhao eventually made the trip.

Zhao had a serious breakdown when he visited the Van Gogh museum. Amazed by the beauty of the real work, he his own talent: none of his replicas came close to capturing the moments in the. And he wondered whether he could continue painting after all knowing that he had none of the originality and of the Dutch master.

Zhao,recovered some of his confidence when he went to Provence, France, and drew a painting at the same spot where Van Gogh drew his The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, to the of the audience.

Upon returning to China, Zhao began to produce original work. How Zhao would survive in his new pursuit is anybody's guess, but I am struck by the parallels between Zhao's story and China's recent economic development.

It seems that lengthy articles have gone out of favour with the general public; attention-getting phrases are instead catching people's eye. Even contributions for printed media are culled (集成化)by web-editors to achieve the results of 1 +1≥2, strengthening both writing style and reading habits in mass communication.

In reporting the event of a postgraduate who hanged himself using towels in a campus dormitory, for example, a few key words are selected on the university website, such as "bring Mom to university while studying" , "unemployed following graduation" , "undesirable learning" ,"fate has nothing to do with knowledge" ... and readers are quite satisfied with the media report.

Fragmentary reading, while providing great convenience for getting informative material, has also caused concern among experts and scholars, who believe that our cultural pace of development as well as the depth and wholeness of our print culture have all been harmed.

In my view, however, fragmentary reading is in fact a natural selection of the variety of our society which is undergoing a period of change. Looking back at the history of man's reading, for several thousand years people read from bamboo slips, and sheepskins, which did not interrupt knowledge spread or the recording of inventions. Everything was and still is about the reader, not the medium.

In fact, traditional print materials may also be read fragmentarily while materials on mass medium can be read consistently as well, centering on their contents. Reading habits form and vary following thinking patterns and serve these patterns.

Reading and thinking, whether they are fragmented or thoughtful, can actually be put together harmoniously as a whole in our mind, in the same way that both intensive and extensive reading are combined in language learning lessons. Instead of being opposite, combinations of this kind, I think, have to be learned during the social change.

It had taken so much for Tina to get to the supermarket; to go home1left her in tears. At the checkout, the checkout assistant scanned Tina's items and2her cash.

"You can't pay cash in here," she told Tina. Tina is one of the many people who have3to purchase necessities during the coronavirus pandemic, as stores4refuse to take cash. A recent study of more than 2,000 people in the consumer group found that one in 10 people was refused by shops when trying to purchase essential items with cash during the pandemic.

Retailers moved to ban cash transactions (交易) because of5that coins and notes may spread virus.6reports, the World Health Organization never instructed consumers to avoid cash during the pandemic.

The UK has been moving towards a7economy for some time, with ATM usage declining at about 6% to 10% a year. But the concern over virus spread further pushed this transition. "During lockdown, cash withdrawals from ATMs were8about 60%,"says Natalie Ceeney of the access to Cash Review.

But for the approximately 1.2 million people living in the UK who are unbanked一meaning they don't9any bank account-buying essentials became a challenging task. "People without legal immigration status in the UK are not legally allowed to open a bank account," says James Tullett of the migrant and refugee charity Ramfel. When shops refuse to take cash from these people, they are likely to use informal services, which are more10to being exploited.

It is not only11people who will have struggled during the pandemic. People with bank accounts12to use cash for a variety of practical and personal reasons. "Those who13cash are the most disadvantaged people in our society," says Ceeney.

"Cash is really the14of payments," says Scott. "It appeared before the card and is still popular today. We need to have a15form of payment systems .... cash and card working together, just as bicycles and car lanes go together."

Jenny Carter is an" extreme night owl", one of an estimated 8. 2% of the population whose natural characteristic is to fall asleep well after midnight. Left to her own devices, she'd prefer to go to bed around 3 a.m. and wake up about noon.

She has struggled to organize her life in a way that suits her natural sleeping pattern. She negotiated a slightly later start time at work一10 a.m.一but wishes she could begin at noon and finish at 8 p.m. Instead, she deprives herself of sleep during the week and catches up at weekends, when she often sleeps until 3 p.m.

But this isn't what frustrates her most about being a night owl. "I think one of the worst things is people equating night owls and late risers with laziness," she says." I am just as productive, enthusiastic and organized as others, but at a different time. Feeling completely out of line with the rest of society is the hardest thing, like you must be the one that's wrong.

So why do night owls exist? There is no single universally accepted theory, but evolutionary biologists think that communities with more variation in sleeping patterns may have been more likely to survive.

Another theory is that variation is simply how genetics works. Colin Espie, professor of sleep medicine at the University of Oxford, says this mirrors differences in hair, eye and skin colour, or height.

Natural night owls are fundamentally different to insomniacs or people who stay up until the early hours because of family or work circumstances. Being a night owl isn't a problem.

But this isn't always well understood. Jessica Batchelor is a medical writer who feels most productive at 11 p.m. in the evening. "I can't tell anyone when I went to sleep, woke up, showered, ate a meal, or took a nap without being judged," she says. "I struggle with feelings of guilt and shame.

This mentality is rooted in our ancient past, when farm work had to begin at dawn.

Our culture mistakenly associates sleeping little and rising early with virtue. It is often praised as a habit of successful people: for instance, in the fascination with Margaret Thatcher's four-hour rest, or articles about "sleepless-elite" CEOs who start their days with a 4 a.m. jog. Yet here comes a problem: around eight hours of good-quality sleep is essential for better health for almost everybody.

We've all heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and that may actually be true. A study of more than 50, 000 adults aged 30 and older found that breakfast eaters were more likely to lose weight than those who didn't eat a morning meal. Other studies link skipping breakfast with a higher risk of developing high blood pressure, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes.Balancing carbohydrates (碳水化合物) with protein , fiber, and healthy fats is the key to a satisfying and nutritious breakfast. These tips will help you really rise and shine:

1 Eat even if you're not hungry.

Although you might not feel like eating first thing in the morning, it's a good idea to get something into your system. Eating within 90 minutes of waking up will jump-start your metabolism (新陈代谢) and keep you from getting hungry later.

2 Be boring.

But if you are watching your weight, you might want to stick with the same old menu. A 2014 British study found that people who allowed their breakfast calories to change (as measured by a five-day diet diary) had larger waists and a higher incidence of metabolic syndrome than folks who kept their morning calorie intake constant, no matter how much they ate the rest of the day. It's not clear why your morning calorie count makes such a difference, but given that a larger waist size and metabolic syndrome can increase your chances of diabetes, heart attack, and stroke, it's worth making the effort to hold it steady.

3 Add peanuts or peanut butter.

In a small study of 15 obese women, eating peanuts or peanut butter helped to lower the glycemic response to a breakfast of Cream of Wheat and orange juice一meaning that the carbohydrates were digested more slowly and blood sugar did not rise as high.So they were less likely to snack later. Spreading peanut butter on toast or sprinkling chopped nuts on cereal (麦片) are easy ways to add protein to a carb-heavy meal.