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The popular TV program Readers has prompted more people in China to practice reading aloud in booths（小间）set up in big cities across the country.

    As the latest TV show to help people’s love for literature recover, the CCTV program Readers invites people from all walks of life to read aloud their favorite poems, essays and books, or even personal letters they wrote to their loved ones. Just as the weekly show has been well-received, its reading booths, equipped with professional recording devices and cameras, have become instant hits.

    A crowd of more than 200 people were pictured lining up outside the Shanghai Library at 11 am on March 4-the first day of the booth’s opening to the public in Shanghai. The deadline for registrations was brought forward to 2 pm instead of the scheduled 5:30 pm, as the number of waiting readers continued to grow. Some waited more than nine hours for a tryout in the booth, according to library management.

    “There is an old photo in the late 1970s capturing people lining up outside the Shanhai Library before it opens. If that was a spring of reading in Shanghai, now I think another spring has arrived again,” library manager Zhou Deming, told The Paper.

    The reading booth is the only one of its kind in the city of economic center at the moment, but more are expected to be put into use in the coming months, according to the library’s website.

    The program has also led to booths in other cities including Beijing, Hangzhou, Guangzhou and Xi’an to appeal to more people to read and share their life stories.

    With the recent boom of culture-themed TV shows such as Readers and Chinese Poetry Congress, some are optimistic that this will help the country love literature and reading again in general.

We have most friends at the age of 26 after having spent the first quarter of our lives building up our friendship circle, a new research has claimed.

The research into friendship shows that our social circle peaks at 26 years and 7 months，at which we typically have five close friends. Women are most popular at 25 years and 10 months，with men hitting the highest friendship point a little later at 27 years and 3 months.

The research, by Forever Friends, shows that about a third of adults meet their closest friends while at school, with about a fifth saying they meet them at work.

Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter now also play a major role in building new friendship. The research points out that 25 to 34-year-olds make 22 friends via Facebook, compared to 18 to 24-year-olds who make 12, and 35 to 44-year-olds who make just four.

Forever Friends’  relationship coach Sam Owen says: “It is no coincidence that over a third of us meet our best friends at school. It is a key time in our lives when friendship is growing through sharing notes, giving gifts, seeing each other regularly and laughing a lot. As adults we can often forget how powerful these small things are and how the little things can make a difference.”

Later in life we find ourselves losing friends. Over half of us lose friendship through moving, while 36% say that over time they grow apart from close pals. Having children also causes 19% to drift away from childhood friends.

With growing pressures being put on friendship these days, it’s important to make time for our friendship.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that in order to achieve contentment, one should "cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously."It turns out Emerson—who explored the meaning of a good life in much of his work—wasn't far off when it comes to What we now know about counting one's blessings. Research is continually finding that expressing thanks can lead to a healthier, happier and less-stressed lifestyle.

How can we, as Emerson advised, be thankful for each thing that contributes to our lives? Below are four habits that could help you cultivate gratitude on a daily basis.

Keep a journal.—Research has shown that writing down what you're thankful for can lead to a range of wellness benefits. Keeping a gratitude journal can reinforce positive thoughts—something particularly helpful as the brain tends to naturally focus on what goes wrong. Putting pen to paper can also help you make more progress as you work toward personal goals. In order to reap the full benefits of keeping a journal, Dr Robert Emmons, gratitude researcher and psychology professor at the University of California, Davis, recommends writing for five to 10 minutes every other day."You really need to commit to doing it, and if you write it down eventually it will become more automatic," Emmons says."It's like exercise—you're not just going to get up one morning and go running, you need to have a plan.

Don't avoid the negative.—Expressing gratitude has been proven to generate more optimism, but thankful people also don't shy away from the negative. Emmons says that while we often associate gratitude with focusing on the good and avoiding the bad, the key to leading a thankful life is embracing setbacks as part of your overall journey. Emmons suggests recalling a hard time you once experienced—chances are, you'll start to feel grateful for your current state and for overcoming former challenges.

Spend time with loved ones.—Thankful people know they didn't get to where they are by themselves—and they make it a habit to spend time with those people who matter most."Gratitude really helps us connect to other people," Emmons says."It actually strengthens relationships and relationships are the strongest predictors of happiness and coping with stress."Expressing appreciation for loved ones can also help create closeness by allowing others to see how you look at them. According to Dr.Michael E.McCullough, a University of Miami researcher, your feelings of gratitude benefit more than just yourself."More than other emotion, gratitude is the emotion of friendship," McCullough told the New York Times in 2011."It is part of a psychological system that causes people to raise their estimates of how much value they hold in the eyes of another person."

Volunteer.—Everyone needs a little help sometimes—and grateful people know there's no other way to acknowledge this than by paying it forward. In his book "Thanks!, "Emmons notes that those who volunteer often feel grateful for the experience to give back."Since service to others helped them to find their own inner spirituality, they were grateful for the opportunity to serve, "he wrote. As recent research published in BMC Public Health points out, volunteering can result in fewer feelings of depression and increased overall well-being. Emmons suggests examining your own talents and use them to help others, noting that people become more grateful as givers rather than receivers.

Bad news sells. If it bleeds, it leads. No news is good news, and good news is no news. Those are the classic rules for the evening broadcasts and the morning papers. But now that information is being spread and monitored（监控）in different ways, researchers are discovering new rules. By tracking people’s e-mails and online posts, scientists have found that good news can spread faster and farther than disasters and sob stories.

    “The ‘if it bleeds’ rule works for mass media,” says Jonah Berger, a scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. “They want your eyeballs and don’t care how you’re feeling. But when you share a story with your friends, you care a lot more how they react. You don’t want them to think of you as a Debbie Downer.”

    Researchers analyzing word-of-mouth communication—e-mails, Web posts and reviews, face-to-face conversations—found that it tended to be more positive than negative（消极的）, but that didn’t necessarily mean people preferred positive news. Was positive news shared more often simply because people experienced more good things than bad things? To test for that possibility, Dr. Berger looked at how people spread a particular set of news stories: thousands of articles on The New York Times’ website. He and a Penn colleague analyzed the “most emailed” list for six months. One of his first findings was that articles in the science section were much more likely to make the list than non-science articles. He found that science amazed Times’ readers and made them want to share this positive feeling with others.

    Readers also tended to share articles that were exciting or funny, or that inspired negative feelings like anger or anxiety, but not articles that left them merely sad. They needed to be aroused（激发）one way or the other, and they preferred good news to bad. The more positive an article, the more likely it was to be shared, as Dr. Berger explains in his new book, Contagious: Why Things Catch On.

Many Shopping malls now have special areas that offer shoppers their first chance to experience “VR technology”.You may have entered one out of curiosity, or you may think it is just another piece of useless technology. Whatever your opinion, VR, or virtual（虚拟的）reality, is going to become a big part of our lives very soon.

2016 saw the introduction of many fancy products in the worldofVR,including MicrosoftˈsHoloLens and Samsungˈs Gear VR. Allofthem offer anexcitinglook at the newrealities" andopportunities that VR brings.

These,however, are the early days of a technology that is expected togofromstrength tostrength. And 2017 looks like it is going to be the year in which VR technology really takes off.

For a start, using VR will become more normal in 2017. Microsoft and Intel have already discussed their plans for simpler and less expensive VR headsets.

The idea of VR will stop being a sci-fi (science-fiction) idea, and instead it will turn into an industry of real products used as ways to show off imagination." said Andrew, a designer at US VR Company, Survios.

It is also expected that VR products will play a part in more common and real-life fields like fashion and film. For example, to enjoy the atmosphere and energy of the front row experience at a fashion show, fans will no longer have to go alongin the flesh. Instead people will be able to enjoy the experience by just wearing a VR headset at home.

You can also expect VR mirrors and fitting-rooms sooner rather than later. ˈˈ This is an especially good opportunity for brands(品牌)looking to offer very personalized experiences.ˈˈ said Roy DeYoung from US-based marketing agency, PMX.

As time goes on, there will be less discussion about whether people will accept VR technology. It will simply be a discussion of when.