英文美文 · 第二十三辑

Twice a year, something quiet happens. Day and night become the same length. This year it comes on September 23. We call it Qiufen, the middle of autumn. On that day, the sun looks straight down at the equator. So every place on Earth gets about twelve hours of light and twelve hours of dark. After this day, the nights grow longer and the mornings feel cooler. There is a fun game too. People try to stand an egg on its end. Some say it only works today. It is not true, but trying is half the fun.

Many parents tell their children to stop playing games. This month, some young players are playing for their country. At the Asian Games in Japan, video games are a real sport. Winners get real medals. Players sit in teams and move fast. They train many hours every day, just like runners or swimmers. Some people still ask, is this a sport? Others say yes. It needs quick hands, quick thinking, and a strong mind. One thing is clear. These young people stand on the same stage as the best athletes in Asia. They carry the same flag.

This year, China sends 815 athletes to the Asian Games. Most of them are about twenty-four years old. But one is only twelve. Twelve! While most children are sitting in a classroom, this one stands on a stage with the whole world watching. The team is young too. More than one in four was born after 2005. They are not only the future. They are here now. Older athletes say the young ones push them to be better. Maybe that is what a team means. One generation hands the next a baton, and the race goes on.

On September 20, a rocket rose from the desert. It carried nine satellites at once. They went up together, then let go one by one. Each one found its own path in space. That is hard to do. If they separate too fast or too slow, they can hit each other. But the team made it look easy. One of the nine can even think for itself. It takes a picture and studies it in space. It need not send everything home. Like a smart student, it does part of the work before the teacher sees it.

A plastic bottle is hard to break down. It can stay in the ground for hundreds of years. Scientists in America are trying a new way. They use tiny living things, called yeast, to eat the plastic. After the yeast does its work, what is left can be turned into food, a kind of protein. They even made it into little cookies. Is it strange? A little. But think about it. If old bottles can become dinner, we may solve two problems at once. Less rubbish, and more food. Science often looks strange before it looks useful.

The moon keeps us company. It goes around Earth again and again. But a planet far away is a different story. If a moon comes too close, the planet's pull can take hold of it. Then the moon may fall and hit the planet. Some scientists now think this happened to Venus. Long ago, Venus had a moon. But Venus turns very slowly. Its pull worked differently, and the moon fell back. Today Venus has no moon. Our Earth is lucky. Its moon stays at a safe distance. Every night, we can look up and find it.

Almost a thousand years ago, a writer far from home looked up at the moon. His name was Su Shi. He missed his brother, so he wrote a poem and asked the moon a question. When would the bright moon appear? Then he gave his own answer. People have joys and sorrows, and the moon has dark and bright nights. Nothing is ever perfect. He could not always be with the one he loved. So he made a wish. Though far apart, may we share the same moon. Nine hundred and fifty years later, families still repeat those lines.

Long ago, the universe made stars easily. Today it makes far fewer. For years, scientists believed the reason was simple: the gas was running out. A team in China tested that idea, using the FAST telescope and a huge sky survey. They measured hydrogen across millions of galaxies. What they found was surprising. Star formation has dropped to about two fifths of what it once was, yet the gas supply has barely changed. So the old answer is wrong. The gas is still there, but less of it becomes stars. Something else is slowing the engines of the sky.

Stars do not live alone. The biggest ones die in huge explosions. Each explosion throws out energy and pushes gas away, leaving a giant empty space. A Chinese-led team looked at Andromeda, the nearest large galaxy, using two powerful telescopes. They found 118 of these bubbles. Each one may have taken forty million years to grow. Together, they add up. The team showed that these explosions drive the swirling motion of gas across the whole galaxy. It is a slow chain. One star dies, and millions of years later, its galaxy is different.

More than two thousand years ago, an official named Zhang Qian was sent west. The emperor wanted allies, so Zhang Qian left with about a hundred men. He was caught, held for years, and then escaped. Still, he kept walking. Thirteen years passed before he reached home again. He came back with no army. Instead, he brought something more useful: knowledge. He described distant lands, their food, their horses, their roads. That meeting of east and west became the Silk Road. One man's long journey opened a door that stayed open for centuries.

Rivers are the veins of the planet. They carry water from mountains to fields, and then to the sea. Last year, many of them ran thin. The World Meteorological Organization reported that 2025 was one of the driest years for rivers in thirty-five years. Underground water kept falling. Glaciers lost more ice for the fourth year in a row. The report warned that the water cycle is becoming stranger and harder to predict. Why does it matter? Because farms, cities, and factories all drink from the same system. When the cycle breaks, it breaks for everyone.

On a stage, there is almost nothing. Two chairs, one table, no real walls. Yet the audience sees a palace, a river, a battlefield. This is Peking Opera, and it has been sung for more than two hundred years. Every painted face is a clue. Red means courage, white means a cunning mind. A single step across the stage can mean a journey of a thousand miles. This week, famous groups perform old works in Beijing. Some young people say the art is too slow. Others find something they cannot find elsewhere: a whole world built from imagination.