About Dragon Boat Festival Hi, I'd like to re-introduce you about China's Dragon Boat Festival, which is also known as Duanwu Festival. It falls on 5th day of the 5th Month in the lunar calendar. So it varies from year to year on the Gregorian calendar. There are many versions of stories about its origin. The story best known holds that this festival is to commemorate a poet and a patriot named Quyuan. He drown himself in a big river when his beloved country was conquered by another one. People who admired him raced out their boats to rescue him, or at least to find his body. When all the attempts to find his remains failed, the folks then dropped balls of sticky rice -- Zong Zi, into the river in the hope that the fishes would eat them instead of Quyuan's body. This is how the name is called Dragon Boats Festival or Zong Zi Festival. This story exemplifies the patriotism of Chinese people towards our motherland. We celebrate this festival every year to remember the devotion of this great poet to his country. I hope I have well explained what this festival is about. Please correct me if I have any spelling, grammar or logic mistakes. Cheers, Lynn

My very "entrepreneur" aunt My aunt has been a housewife for all her life. When her son grows old enough to live on his own, she felt like doing something as a career. She has been very good at housework, so she gets to do some house-cleaning part-time work for the neighbors who are in need of a hand, which turns out to be great for her life. She feels energetic again. She gets the idea of renting a big house and refurbishing it to an Airbnb flat after she helps clean a friend's Airbnb rooms. She gets the idea of distribution selling a home-made spicy sauce after people praised her for her talent at DIY these sauce. She is very good at child-care, and she thinks of starting a nursing center for new moms. She has had a lot of great ideas. And all of these ideas are very practical. I really admire her amazing creation. However, there is a big problem. She never really sticks to any certain ideas. And she always thinks of the big pictures instead of the details. For example, when she thinks of selling sauce, she already thinks of investing in expensive machines instead of sending more of the sauce to various friends to test if it is really that good. So she never gets to realize her true gifts at all. I do wish her to have a more active life and to realize her special talents, but I do not know how to help her in details as well, it is my problem, too.

How to Acquire the English Intonation?

Hello, English instructors and learners! 

My mother tongue is Mandarin, in which we have 4 tones.

It is not a flat toned language, but it is not the same with English intonations. 

I speak very flat toned English, do you have any advice to practice intonation?

I listened to podcasts very often, recently I've been into the TED NPR's How I Built This.

I find the storytellers are not exaggerating their intonations like people in the cartoons or the films do, which I am not able to make at all because I have a quiet and shy character.

I tried to shadow mimic the TED speakers' intonations.

But still, when I give a free talk, my speech is as flat as usual.

I am totally upset about my inability. 

Sigh...

Is there anyone who experienced the same frustrations?

Have you found any effective methods to improve your intonation of speech? 

Please do share with me, thank you in advance!

Book Review - The Sins of The Mother - Part 2 The author (of The Sins of The Mother) has been very brilliant not to tap too much into the details but deep enough to reflect Olivia's children's problematic relationship with either their child or their spouse. As said, John married an intellectual and austere woman. He always felt satisfied with the love from his grandmother and his father, holding no grudge against his ambitious mother. To John, a life of love was a happy one; a life with a soulmate is a perfect one. But his being excessively passionate about his wife made he neglected his adolescent son, who was suffering from identity crisis and felt desperately lonely. It is not uncommon that people can be present but still absent. The scenario was different with (for?) Phil, he hold the deepest hatred towards his mother for making his childhood miserable. When one has been harmed, he does whatever it takes to avoid being harmed again. This is not always the case, at least not that of Phil's. He chose a social-climber as his partner and was subject (submissive?) to his partner's wish not to have children. His wife used his money to remain high-profile, took advantage of his family name to build career ties but never warmed up to him, about which he himself did not feel bad. What is wanted remained wanted; what was missing (remained?) missing. Some people feel shadowed by the peers, some by their role models. Poor Liz loved and awed her mother, but was somehow determined to compete with her mother. Being the first-born of the family, she was supposed to set a perfect role model for her siblings. However, despite her talent in writing, her works did not sell well so she had to live on her trust fund. Her short marriages ended up with broken hearts and two daughters. The more she has been determined to impress her mother, the more disappointed she turned out to feel about herself. As for Casse, somewhere in her mind, there must be a voice saying "For 20 years I have not received any care from you, I am pretty sure I can do better without you". And she proved herself right when she run a very successful business representing artists, and had a life with an ideal partner. Strangely enough, she cut off all the connections with her original family but remained close to her granny still. Deep down in her heart, something has to be there.

Book review - The Sins of The Mother - part 1 I've read a short novel The Sins of The Mother last Sunday. It is about a successful woman who built a business empire with the support of her devoted husband and mother to care for her 4 children. She enjoyed her life and embraced every opportunity to expand her commercial success, which she did not think was a problem. However, when the kids grew up to either cut off the relationship with her or stayed alien to her, she started to realize something was wrong and to make up for the missing time and to strengthen the family bonds, she meticulously planned a family trip each June. This year, she invited her children and grandchildren to go on a 2-week luxurious vacation. The oldest son Phil married with an ice queen who was very ambitious about her career but had obviously no interest in building up a solid family; the second child John was luckier to have found an intellectual and family-life loving wife; the third kid Liz experienced a succession of failures with her marriage and career; the youngest daughter Casse was not coming due to the resentment towards her for not being there when her husband died. (start to get bumpy with the "she", she refers to the heroin or the heroin's daughter? how to make it less bewildering? and I have the problem to use the right tense, should I use "have done" tense or "did" for such book review? Is there anyone who can help me with these 2 questions?) This was when the thought-provoking part got out of the water. 3 of her children brought their families on the yacht she had chartered for them.

Need help with "Haven't, mustn't"

I have to finish my homework before I can go out playing basketball, mustn't I? 

Is this the right way to use mustn't? Or should I use haven't I?