Mr. Fang is now the owner of 36 greenhouses producing organic vegetables in the Gobi desert in Northwest China's Gansu province. He is one of the beneficiaries of the Gobi Farming Program of Gansu province that is building rows of greenhouses in the desert to help transform local farming and alleviate poverty.

Grain production in Gansu is greatly affected by the climate and the output is unstable. Agricultural production there relies heavily on rivers, oases and groundwater irrigation. If traditional extensive agricultural production continued, it could gradually narrow the living space.

In 1995, a local entrepreneur ventured to use Israeli technologies to build greenhouses for vegetables growing in the desert. Such individual pilot projects encouraged the Gansu government to launch a provincial-level Gobi farming program in 2017 with a target to build up a controlled-environment agriculture of about 20, 000 hectares by 2022. Some cities in the province，which include Fang s village, have already been experimenting with Gobi farming for several years.

Despite the harsh environment， farming in the Gobi desert has its advantages: the extended amount of sunlight provides adequate energy for crops， a significant temperature difference between day and night helps crops accumulate nutrients and the Gobi's hot and dry air means fewer pests and crop diseases. The Gobi greenhouses popping up in Gansu use drip and spray irrigation， which can cut water consumption by almost 50 percent compared to a normal farm. The greenhouses are also eco-friendly， as they use substrates for soilless cultivation recycled from rotten leaves, straw and cow and sheep feces.

With the greenhouses， Fang earns around 70, 000 yuan annually. Data from Suzhou district of Jiuquan showed the greenhouse program has helped bring an average revenue o about $ 72, 300 per hectare to local farmers. Large scale greenhouse farming is an investment-intensive project and cannot be sustained only by government financial support. Therefore, the local government has been encouraging villagers such as Fang to take the lead to rent greenhouses or build their own.

It is not an easy task, and many villagers still want to wait and see. However, more and more are starting to join in, either to run their own greenhouses or work as hired workers for greenhouse owners. Starting from managing four greenhouses in 2009，Fang now is also a partner of a greenhouse farming cooperative running 120 greenhouses.

The relatively low cost of large-scale land use in the Gobi desert have also encouraged large firms to start their Gobi farming pilot projects in Gansu. If the Gobi farming proves successful, it could provide experiences for countries in Central Asia linked with Gansu both by the ancient Silk Road as well as its modern version of the Belt and Road Initiative.

From crafty spies to distinctive detectives, discover some inquiring minds. 

Montgomery Bonbon : Murder at the Museum by Alasdair Beckett-King

Illustrated by Claire Powell 

(Walker Books)

This is the first book in a funny new detective series. Montgomery Bonbon is a smart gentle man detective with a mystery to solve. Behind the hat and moustache is 10-year-old Bonnie Montgomery. Will anyone notice?

Alice Eclair Spy Etraordinaire: A Spoonful of Spying by Sarah Todd Taylor

( Nosy Crow)

Alice Eclair is a baker by day and a spy by night, In her latest adventure, she's in Paris for the World Fair, where all eyes are on the aero plane exhibition. With enemy spies all around, Alice will need every trick in her recipe book to stop France's greatest invention from falling into the wrong hands. 

Ollie Spark and the Exploding Popcorn Mystery by Gillian Cross and Alan Snow ( David Fickling Books)

Ollie Spark loves mending machines and solving mysteries. In his second adventure, he travels to a food festival on a remote island. There, an encounter with a grand duchess leads to an undercover spying mission-his most exciting and dangerous yet. 

Rockstar Detectives: Murder at the Movies by Adam Hills

Illustrated by Luna Valentine

(Puffin Books)

Best friends Charley and George are in Sydney, Australia. George is a social media whizz(专家)and ambitious comedian and Charley is a 13-year-old singer who is in Australia to make her first film. However, some dangerous accidents on set lead them into an investigation. 

"When I was 14, I'd pick my younger brother up from school, Jen says. "I'd be in charge of checking his homework and making sure that he was fed until our parents got home. " That is one of the things that led Jen, a Stanford Graduate School of Business student, to become interested in how people's perception of their own age can influence their actions.

That curiosity led her to team up with Szu-chi Huang, an associate professor at Stanford, on a series of experiments in which they shifted participants' perception of their own age in order to study the effects on their willingness to help strangers in need.

In one study, researchers set up a stand at a sports event and invited passers-by to write thank-you cards to people they knew. In the process, the researchers shifted participants^, subjective age by informing them about the average age of others who had participated in the event. In another, they organized a food-bank donation drive at local farmers⁵ markets. In some instances, they asked teenage volunteers to collect the money, a trick to make participants feel older. In other instances, the volunteers were in their 50s.

The researchers found that when participants perceived themselves as older, they were more willing to do things for others with whom they didn't have a personal connection. "We found that when people are led to feel older, they feel more responsibility," Huang says. "It's like the society is on our shoulders. We feel like we're expected to make this world better for the next generation."

Organizations involved in social causes might take advantage of the new insights about subjective age to make their recruiting (征募) and fundraising efforts more efficient. "If you want to create an older subjective age among the audience you're trying to reach, recruiting younger volunteers might help, Huang says.