1. —The birds appear to fly away very quickly.

—Maybe they see something frightening.

—l have no idea.

The Chinese government raised the protection level of Chinese pangolins(穿山甲) to the top level on World Environment Day -- June 5th. Pangolins used to be at the second level under national protection. This act makes people pay more attention to ecological civilization(生态文明). It also shows our great determination to fight against the illegal hunting(非法捕猎) and the trading of wild animals and other things made from them.

According to a national wildlife study in the 1990s, there were about 60,000 Chinese pangolins in 11 provinces, including Yunnan, Hunan, Guangdong, Sichuan and Zhejiang. Until now, pangolins have become fewer and fewer because of the living places that are being destroyed, crazy hunting and smuggling. In 2017, Chinese pangolins were placed on the Red List of Threatened Species after a team of experts believed their number had dropped by 90 percent in the past years.

"The value of pangolins to the ecosystem is much more than the value of their meat or scales(鳞).There is a long way to go in protecting them, but we can start by saying no to things made from them," said Zhou Fei, chief program officer of the World Wildlife Fund of China.

What's more, the pangolin has a very strong response(反应) to stress, which means that it easily becomes nervous when it is caught.

Pangolin scales have been taken away from the Chinese Pharmacopeia(药典). It means the scales will no longer be used as a kind of medicine.

Sergio De les, 50, is a man from Italy. When he was young, he set his foot in China for the first time in 1996. Now he livesin Beijing for more than 17 years, and he sees Beijing as his second hometown. 

A group of village kids live near Sergio's home and they all have a football dream. So Sergio started a football club forthem. "I want those kids to grow up while playing football, " Sergio says.

In the suburb(城郊) outside Beijing, Sergio's team has 150 kids. Their ages are from 6 to 12 and 30% of them are girls. "We train them every Sunday and have a football match every month. It's a kind of the club's routine, " says Sergio.

Sergio's football team focuses on(注重) the personal development(个人发展) of village children. "There is only one rule for joining my team: parents have to take part in the training, too, " says Sergio.

This year's March game was called The Little World Cup. It was special because itwasorganized(组织)for the Chinese village children for the first time. 67 people, including different parent-children pairs joined in the game.

Now Sergio is planning a new football match for disabled(残疾的) children in China. 

At 7 am, we got on the state-of-the-art Fuxing Hao train at Shanghai Railway Station. We stored our (背包) and found our seats. Unlike other trains which start with a shake and much 5 (噪音) , this train felt so smooth that if you were not looking out of windows, you could (几乎不) tell we were moving. Yet, within minutes, we were passing over the rails at speeds of more than 350 kilometers an hour.

Soon, the towns of (东部的) China were rushing by. I saw my wife smiling and (指向) to a coin she had balanced on the table She took another coin and balanced it next to the first, and then another, until she had a (行) of coins. They stood there on the table for more than 20 minutes before one finally fell over.

After that, we (两个都) went back to reading and enjoying the beauty outside. We felt quite (放松的) . Then, before we knew it, we heard the announcement that we were arriving in Beijing. For 1, 318 kilometers, we (花费) only 4 hours and 38 minutes. Thanks to high speed trains, we can travel in China much more conveniently. No (疑惑), they will also bring the people of the country closer together, and in time bring about deep social changes, the full nature of which no one can fully guess.