The world is changing fast, but you can learn it at a slower pace.
Special English You're listening to Special English.
Here is the news.
Zhengzhou Xinjiang International Airport in central China recently marked the milestone of handling one million tonnes of annual cargo and mail throughput following the arrival of an all-cargo aircraft operated by Malaysia's Raya Airways.
This demonstrates the strong development momentum of the airport in Zhengzhou, the capital city of Henan Province, as it aims to build itself into a leading global air cargo hub on the Air Silk Road.
Data from the Civil Aviation Administration of China shows that by 2024 only four Chinese civil airports, namely Shanghai Pudong Guangzhou Baiyun, Shenzhen Bao'an and Beijing Capital, reported annual cargo and mail throughput of over 1 million tonnes.
In recent years, Henan has been actively developing the Zhengzhou-Luxembourg air cargo route as a dual hub model to extend its reach, and it is seeking to replicate the model with other partners.
Jiang Mingchao, chairman of Zhongyu Aviation Group, which operates Zhengzhou Airport, said the airport will actively replicate the Zhengzhou-Luxembourg dual hub model and deepen air logistics cooperation with other countries, including Malaysia, Ethiopia and Hungary, to attract more airlines to open more routes.
Between 2021 and 2025, cargo and mail throughput at Zhengzhou Airport grew at an average annual rate of about 10, reaching 825000 tonnes in 2024.
The airport now has 70 all-cargo routes linking Zhengzhou with 73 cities in 32 countries.
You're listening to Special English.
A female from Russia recently became the 10000th foreigner to enrol in China's basic medical insurance in Yiwu in East China's Zhejiang province.
Yiwu, renowned as the world's small commodity capital, maintains trade ties with with 233 countries and regions, attracting nearly 600000 foreign merchants each year.
With around 30000 foreign businessmen active each day and over 1500 family members living locally, the demand for accessible healthcare coverage has surged.
Previously, insurance options were limited to foreigners employed by local enterprises, leaving flexibly employed individuals and their families uncovered.
To bridge this gap, the IWU Medical Insurance Bureau, with national-level support, pioneered a programme allowing foreigners holding at least two-year residence permits to enrol as flexible employees.
This initiative ensures they receive the same benefits as Chinese residents.
Eligible foreigners contribute premiums at the same rate as local residents and receive identical coverage, including reimbursement scopes and ratios.
The programme has also been extended to foreign children enrolled in Yiwu's schools.
Since 2019, foreign beneficiaries have utilised medical insurance for 95,400 instances, with cumulative expenditure of the Medical Insurance Fund exceeding 24 million yuan .
This is Special English.
In a gradual revolution of public parenting spaces, a new facility the father and baby room is popping up in shopping malls across Chinese cities, signalling a shift toward a more equitable distribution of child care responsibilities.
At a shopping centre in the South China metropolis of Shenzhen.
The Super Daddy Zone is identifiable by a glowing blue bottle logo.
Soundproof magnetic doors ensure privacy, while illustrated guides on the walls demonstrate how to prepare formula and hold an infant.
Fathers are often spotted pushing strollers to take care of their babies in this space.
Nearby.
A men's parenting room sits beside a woman's parenting room at another mall in Shenzhen, both equally equipped with nappy-changing stations, sinks with hot and cold water and formula preparation areas.
A MAL staff member explained that to meet customers' needs, they set up such baby care rooms for both dads and mums, on two different floors.
It encourages father's to be more involved in taking care of the baby.
The key difference from traditional mother and baby rooms is the omission of private breastfeeding cubicles, focusing just on care, feeding and rest functions.
A more inclusive and practical trend however, is merging the two into gender-neutral family nursing rooms.
Some establishments have rebranded the previous mother and baby rooms as simply nursing rooms, with clear zoning to separate breastfeeding areas from open washing and changing spaces.
This allows fathers to assist with childcare while respecting the privacy of nursing mothers.
Ming Liang, Executive Director of the Department of Urbanization of China Development Institute, said this evolution mirrors profound changes in Chinese families' parenting concepts, adding that such changes have reshaped father's role in parenting and pushed society toward a more balanced model of shared parenting.
Traditionally, public parenting facilities in China were almost exclusively mother and baby rooms designed to protect the privacy of breastfeeding women, often accompanied by no-men-allowed signs.
However, as societal norms shift and family structures evolve, fathers are taking a more active role in child-rearing, particularly among the post-90s and post-95 generations, who are now the primary child-bearing demographic.
This growing desire for shared responsibility has clashed with the reality of available facilities.
Experts believe that the emergence of father and baby rooms fills this gap.
Building a fertility-friendly society requires multi-dimensional support policies to ease family burdens and promote shared parenting.
Ming added that the transition from mother and baby to father and baby or just nursing rooms signifies more than a name change.
It marks a profound step in social progress.
An asteroid has been named after Chi-Fa Ren, a renowned Chinese space technology expert.
That is according to the China Academy of Space Technology under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.
The Academy noted that a ceremony was held recently to announce the name, which had been approved by the International Astronomical Union.
The asteroid coded 336877 was discovered by the Purple Mountain Observatory under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Qi participated in the development of the Dongfeng Hong 1 satellite, later led the development of Dongfeng Hong 2 and Dongfeng Hong 3 and became the chief designer for Shenzhou spacecraft, laying a solid foundation for the success of China's space station missions.
This is Special English.
A patient suffering from tetraplegia, steered a smart wheelchair through the neighbourhood with only his thoughts and directed a robotic dog to fetch a food delivery.
These scenes were achieved during a recent clinical trial of a brain-computer interface conducted by a team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
This shattered the conventional boundaries of rehabilitation, carrying the brain's command from a two-dimensional cursor on a screen into full-bodied three-dimensional interaction with the physical world.
Brain-computer interfaces are designed to create a direct communication channel between the brain and external devices.
Around the world.
Research groups have already demonstrated the laboratory feats, including mind typing and robotic arm control.
The enduring challenge is to make those systems reliable enough to vanish into a patient's daily life.
The patient became quadriplegic in 2022 due to a spinal cord injury and received the Brain Computer Interface System developed by the Centre for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology under the Academy in June 2025.
After just weeks of training, he can reliably control a computer cursor and a tablet.
The researchers employed a high-throughput wireless invasive brain-computer interface system to enable the patient to stably control a smart wheelchair and a robotic dog using neural signals, achieving autonomous mobility and object retrieval in real-world settings.
It signifies that China's research in the field is shifting from merely restoring basic interaction to expanding the real-life horizons of paralyzed patients.
The team also creatively fused two distinct decoding strategies to distill meaningful commands from noisy neural activities and boost the overall brain control performance by more than 15.
Moreover, the researchers squeezed the system's end-to-end latency from neural pickup to command execution under 100 milliseconds, which is below the body's own reaction time, giving the patient control that feels fluid and natural.
This is Special English.
Chinese archaeologists have discovered three horse hoof-shaped kiln sites, believed to be part of a pottery workshop dating back to the Liao and Jin dynasties, near an ancient city site in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
According to the Regional Institute of Cultural Relics, and archaeology.
The discovery was made during excavations carried out between July and November around the former site of Wuanjiu, a city originally established by the Liao dynasty founder around a millennium ago, located in modern-day Qifeng City in Inner Mongolia.
Each kiln typically consists of a working area, a firing chamber and a flue chamber, shattered to various extents.
So far this year, Archaeologists have uncovered more than 50 architectural remains across a 500 square metre excavation area, including house foundations, ash pits, storage cellars and pottery kilns.
A variety of artefacts have been recovered, including pottery porcelain, stone and iron objects, bone artefacts, as well as copper statues, coins and architectural components.
The findings offer valuable material evidence and academic references for studying the hierarchical system and layout of Liao era cities, as well as the daily lives and production activities of their inhabitants.
That is, according to Gai Zhiyong, Deputy Head of Inner Mongolia Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology.
Systematic archaeological excavation at Wuanzhou began in July 2023.
That is the end of this edition of Special English.
To recap, I'm going to read one of the news items again at normal speed.
Please listen carefully.
In a gradual revolution of public parenting spaces, a new facility the father and baby room is popping up in shopping malls across Chinese cities, signaling a shift toward a more equitable distribution of childcare responsibilities.
At a shopping centre in the south Chinese metropolis of Shenzhen.
The Super Daddy Zone is identifiable by a glowing blue bottle logo.
Soundproof magnetic doors ensure privacy, while illustrated guides on the walls demonstrate how to prepare formula and hold an infant.
Fathers are often spotted pushing strollers to take care of their babies in this space.
Nearby.
A men's parenting room sits beside a woman's parenting room at another mall in Shenzhen, both equally equipped with nappy-changing stations, sinks with hot and cold water and formula preparation areas.
A mall staff member explained that to meet customers' needs, they set up such baby care rooms for both dads and mums, on two different floors.
It encourages fathers to be more involved in taking care of the baby.
The key difference from traditional mother and baby rooms is the omission of private breastfeeding cubicles, focusing just on care, feeding and rest functions.
A more inclusive and practical trend however, is merging the two into gender-neutral family nursing rooms.
Some establishments have rebranded the previous mother and baby rooms as simply nursing rooms, with clear zoning to separate breastfeeding areas from from open washing and changing spaces.
This allows fathers to assist with childcare while respecting the privacy of nursing mothers.
Ming Liang, executive director of the Department of Urbanization of China Development Institute, said this evolution mirrors profound changes in Chinese families' parenting concepts, adding that such changes have reshaped fathers' role in parenting and pushed society further toward a more balanced model of shared parenting.
Traditionally, public parenting facilities in China were almost exclusively mother and baby rooms designed to protect the privacy of breastfeeding women, often accompanied by no-men-allowed signs.
However, as societal norms shift and family structures evolve, Fathers are taking a more active role in child-rearing, particularly among the post-90s and post-95 generation, who are now the primary child-bearing demographic.
This growing desire for shared responsibility has clashed with the reality of available facilities.
Experts believe that the emergence of father and baby rooms fills this gap.
Building a fertility-friendly society requires multi-dimensional support policies to ease family burdens and promote shared parenting.
Ming added that the transition from mother and baby to father and baby or just nursing rooms signifies more than a name change.
It marks a profound step in social progress.
That is the end of today's programme.
Hope you'll join us every day to learn English at a slower pace.
CGTN Radio is proud to present Sweetness on the Plateau, a radio drama inspired by the true story of a visionary farmer from Shandong who carried not only seeds but dreams to the rooftop of the world.
Then let's do it!
Let's make his step!
Follow a determined team as they scale the razor-sharp peaks of Tangula.
Where's that gonna end?
Brave, relentless blizzards to build greenhouses and achieve the impossible turning the barren plateau into a garden of miracles.
We did it!
It's solid!
Tune in to sweetness on the plateau.
A powerful story of resilience, hope and the human spirit blooming against all odds.
We made sweetness happen.
Available now on CGTN radio and all major podcast platforms.
