2018年，星球孵化了一个极具开拓性的、面向12-16岁孩子的青少年项目——X-Teens。

这是一个怎样的项目？星球艺术总监、X-Teens项目负责人Anji老师是这样介绍的：

在X-Teens中，星球邀请到了艺术总监Anji老师、前《华尔街日报》主编Colum老师，带领孩子们通过社会调查、纪录片电影制作、公众演讲和辩论、新闻采访和非虚构创意写作等方式，关注国际新闻与世界文化，对社会议题进行初步探索研究。他们用充满探究精神和创意的方式，与真实世界进行深度连结，形成并表达自己的独特观点。

参加X-Teens项目的学员是7位11-13岁、6-8年级的孩子，来自双语、国际学校和公立学校，可以说是星球最最资深的一群孩子，几位在星球学习的时间已经超过5年，跟随星球从家庭阅读一路成长至今。

X-Teens小组所有孩子与两位老师的合照

经过4个月X-Teens项目的学习，每个人从自己对生活的观察出发，自主选题，以新闻采访的形式完成了一篇新闻非虚构创意写作稿件，以及一支摄影报道短片（Photoreportage）。同时，他们还围绕主题“Smartphones ON or OFF（智能手机的利与弊）”共同拍摄、制作了两支团队纪录片（Documentary）。

X-Teens项目完成的团队纪录片作品之一：《Smartphone OFF》

在今天推送的第一条里，我们给大家展示了X-Teens项目中更全面的回顾，这一条我们将展示所有X-Teens孩子们的国际新闻采访、非虚构创意写作作品。

正如Anji老师所说的那样：

孩子们的作品一共七篇，每篇稿件在老师的指导下，都经过至少2次的反复修改。

孩子们的作品，被作为“Young China Writers”专题发布在Medium平台上

希望大家可以从孩子们的文字中，读到他们眼中的世界，听见他们独特的声音。

✏️✏️✏️

     by Sandy Hua（13岁，公立学校8年级）

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

Nowadays, a lot of teenagers dream about being a game streamer. This is usually because of their love to video games. However, there's one thing they don't know. Being a game streamer looks easy, but actually it is hard.

Lonely Wolf is a game streamer working for a company called Hai Cheng on the website Iqiyi. He is a 15-year-old teenager, and his real name is Nie Xiansu.

Lonely Wolf was so poor at studying that he didn't enter high school. After he found himself interested in game streaming, he decided to do this job without much thought.

"This job is risky and it is slow to start," says Lonely Wolf. "You can't do it well without years of hard work unless you already know about it or have a good basis."

Lonely Wolf usually wakes up at 10 a.m. every day. During the day, he records videos. He usually goes to bed at 2 or 3 a.m. When necessary, he even stays up all night. 

He said this is because of his work, but also because it is his personal habit. He thinks he can work and think better at night when all things are still. He usually edits his videos or write some stories that time.

Although he works late, he doesn't earn much. He gets money from Hai Cheng once a month. The salary is between 1,000 yuan (around $1,480) and 1,500 yuan on average, but usually it is not steady.

"Well, it is enough for my daily budget, but perhaps I'm even inferior to a convenient store employee," says Lonely Wolf. 

"In fact, I'm not as hardworking as before now. I was so hardworking a year ago when I first step into this unknown area, but now, I don't have that much ambition to do so anymore. Hai Cheng is nice to me, and they help me with lots of problems. But I just lost my power. "

Why doesn't Lonely Wolf try to change his situation? In this way he could rediscover his ambition.

Usually, the most efficient way to improve a streamer's situation is to do popular things or get along with popular streamers for fame, and ask audience for virtual presents.

However, Lonely Wolf never does this. He says that he is already thankful to his fans for watching his video, so he does not want his their money.

At first, Lonely Wolf's parents did not oppose his decision to be a game streamer. Instead, they provided with money and some necessary equipment.

However, after one year, his family members began to think that he should learn something useful in order to make a living. They started to put stress on him. They asked him to earn 30,000 yuan a year, or they would find him another job or send him to vocational school.

They agreed to let Lonely Wolf keep working on game streaming, provided he studied something that would allow him to make a living by himself. Clearly, Lonely Wolf's parents are pretty open-minded, and care about both his life and feelings.

Lonely Wolf has a type of social anxiety disorder. He doesn't know many people in the real world, let alone have many friends. However, he has quite several online friends.

When asked about him, one of his online friends, Cuijimao, says:

"Lonely Wolf is a nice person. He is actually a bit decadent, but he always laughs and smiles in front of us. He only does things that he thinks is right, and he only do things he wants to do. I think it is pretty good."

Lemon, another of Lonely Wolf's online friends, says:

"I think it's true that study is not the only way to live. Well, I don't mean we should not study, but when we can't live with study, why don't we change a direction? "

"He chose this path, and worked hard to reach his goal. I think this is good enough. I respect his decision, and do not think a game streamer is different to others. Everyone has their own dream … We don't have much right to judge them," adds Lemon.

（Sandy Hua is young writer in Shanghai.）

  by Sarah Shan（11岁，双语学校6年级）

My wushu teacher, Wang Leijun. Photo credit: Shelia. 

When the elevator doors open, I walk into the training hall. I see bamboos out of the nearby window and the Chinese characters "禅武不二" projected onto the wall. It means there's no separation between zen and kung fu. 

Nearby, two teachers stick Buddhist figures on a door. Everything is quiet but energetic. 

In the corner, sits Wang Leijun, my wushu teacher. He looks up and gives a wave as I say hello. 

Mr. Wang  has eyes that are so deep and loving that it soothes one's mind and makes one smile every time one looks into them. He wears a traditional Han shirt with a blue belt that makes him look like a martial-arts fighter from a television show. 

Even though wushu is a type of martial art that involves kung fu, it's not not really fighting. Mr. Wang tells me that wushu is about stillness as well as action. It's about controlling one's body. It's about inspiring the intelligence inside you and bringing out the body's wisdom.

Mr. Wang sits opposite me. In between us is a long wooden table covered in a violet tablecloth. He gives me a smile that tells me he's ready. So we begin.

Wang started learning wushu when he was seven. His parents sent him to Shaolin Temple, a famous temple in Henan province in central China that is a school for wushu, to pursue his dream when he was around 10 years old. 

But schoolwork is also a must, so he studied at Shaolin Temple for a while before going home to catch up on schoolwork for a few months. But the young Wang just couldn't stop himself from returning to the temple to develop a greater understanding of wushu.

He tells me that when he was a child the reason he loved wushu because he loved the action, the powerful kung-fu moves, and that masters of wushu could "fly." But as he learnt more about wushu, he discovered that it improves his body by bringing peacefulness and quietness. 

This, he says, helps when he's facing a problem because it teaches him to be calm. He doesn't get impatient. Instead, he tries to achieve his goals, step by step, he says.

These days, he still loves wushu for the same reasons, but he also has a love for the arts, including performing arts and film. Mr. Wang feels that wushu can create things in art and can show art in another way. 

"In art, producing and creating is different," he says. When you're producing it, that might have come from your experience. But when you're creating it you're making something completely new." 

After you develop an interest in wushu one's creativity becomes very special. Creations will occur because the bond between the heart and body is at its strongest, he says. 

Mr. Wang says the most important thing in wushu is one's "spirit." Without it a person would be just a moving body, with no depth. But with a spirit one's power to shape others' feelings using wushu is much stronger. Wushu is all about your spirit and that's the special part. If there's no spirit, then it's just movements, he says.

"Chinese culture is very broad but wushu can show the politeness and the etiquette in Chinese culture," says Mr. Wang. 

What is good development of wushu and Chinese culture? When I ask Mr. Wang this hard question, he gives me an example that if people care more about feelings in a drawing than how good it looks, this would be a good development. 

The most beautiful art is not about how real it looks but the spirit inside it. He says culture had to be lively and that would be the best way to develop any culture. To use one's body and connect it to one's spirit by doing wushu, will create new domain of art, he says. 

Mr. Wang also likes calligraphy, Chinese painting, tea ceremony and, of course, wushu in Chinese culture. He thinks that they are all interlinked as they are all about transmissions between one's heart and body. It connects one's body, one's mind, and art together. 

The most special thing about Chinese culture is that it transfers different ideas and acts as a key to human intelligence.

Our interview draws to a close. Mr. Wang goes to teach a class of grown-ups baduanjin, which is a traditional physical exercise from ancient China. 

I watch as Mr. Wang completes the moves swiftly and beautifully. The baduanjin is soft and slow, but it makes me feel power that's contained within. It's temperament and peacefulness is just like how Chinese culture acts in the modern society.

（Sarah Shan is a sixth-grader who is keen on learning the true meaning of Chinese culture.）

  by Thomas Li（13岁，双语学校8年级）

Photo by Dolo Iglesias on Unsplash

Drums, guitars, amplifiers litter the room. An African-American man sits in front of two desktop computers, their screens displaying the music-editing software FL Studio.

Next to him is a young woman.

"Dude, you caught me in a bad time," he says. "I was in the middle of helping her to record her CD."

The gets up and woman leaves.

I had come to interview the man: Anthony L. Smith, a musician who emigrated to Shanghai in 2010.

Smith, who is 49 years old, is also my guitar teacher at JZ school - a music school in Shanghai that mainly teaches jazz. He can play piano, drums, guitar and bass.

"Dude, I'm busy," he says. "Just start now, please."

Smith is chubby and strong with big round arms and legs, and has wide eyes. He is always dressed casually.

He describes his Chinese-American wife as "very Chinese," so that means he had already learned much about Chinese culture before coming to Shanghai.

"I knew how to use kuaizi (chopsticks)," he says. "[And] I had met nainai (grandmother) and popo (grandma)," he adds, referring to his in-laws.

Smith learned Chinese, too. When he speaks Mandarin he has a Western accent. Once in class, when he wanted to tell me that a note was a half-note, he said: " baan." At first, I couldn't understand him. Finally, I realized what he was trying to communicate. Chinese people usually say "yiban" not "baan."

Smith believes that the spoken language is more reliable than the language one learns from a textbook. To illustrate his point, he tells me a story.

"I told a taxi driver to turn left by saying 'wang zuo zhuan,' which I learned from a textbook," he explains. "The taxi driver said: 'Oh, zuo zhuan.'"

Smith realized that, in the real world, one only needs to say "zuo zhuan" for "turn left."

I asked him about why he came to China. After all, America is the "Land of the Free," something that I consider makes for a better environment for making music.

Smith says his first impression of China was that safety was not an issue in the country.

"If the environment is dangerous, that will make it less good to make music. If you're concerned about being shot by someone, then that's not a good environment to make music, because you might get killed," he says.

"China is safe. To me, it's a perfect environment," he adds.

According to Smith, there's a lot of news about people being shot in America. But reported cases are only a fraction of what's actually taking place. Only the most tragic gun accidents made it to the news. But every day, many small shootings occur.

"The gun situation [in America] is worse than what it appears on the news," he says.

He always thinks Chinese people are very nice and welcoming toward foreigners. However, he thinks his own country is struggling with racism, which is the opposite of China.

What is Smith's purpose for teaching music?

"Besides being able to pay my rent, [it is] to help educate you guys. To help raise you guys. To help you go from teenagers to young men. To instill knowledge and experience that I have into you. To make sure if you are going to study in America, that you know how to be safe when you get there, because it's very different from here [China]."

Smith is a mentor, as much as a teacher. When students have questions about life, he answers those questions in addition to teaching them how to play music. Sometimes those inquiries have nothing to do with music. If students ask him questions, he's going to try to give an answer that will help them out in life.

For him, it's "… not just teaching you how to play an E major chord, " he says.

Smith is proud of his African heritage, which he says is not so much about an individual, but about community.

"It's about helping the community you are part of," he says. "I need to contribute to the society that I live in. It is my responsibility to help out."

Smith shares his understanding of music.

"Music is about life. If you're just playing music and you're not concerned about life, you're missing the point of playing music," he says. "Music is to try to help the community you're in."

"If you listen to songs written by African-American musicians, like Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin, they're not just singing about love. They're singing about how to make the community better than what it is. They're trying to change society for the better. There's a higher purpose for music. That's to uplift and change [in a way] that makes the society better. That's what music is supposed to be about."

"And that's a very African thing," he says.

（Thomas Li is a 13-year-old boy who thinks differently.）

  by Andre Zhao（11岁，国际学校6年级）

Photo by sharon wright on Unsplash

Stress is an emotion that we've all felt. It is how our brain and body respond to any demand. 

Zhou Qin is a primary school teacher. Mr. Zhou engulfs a large and shiny moustache, wears thick spectacles, and is enthusiastic and entertaining. 

He has a dark and warm voice, and he changes his pace a lot. Mr. Zhou shares moments in his life that gave him stress and how he coped.

He says: 

"The most stressful situation I faced was when I had just graduated and settled in being a teacher. I found it hard to motivate kids to learn. I did research, did experiments, but I was quite hopeless." 

In his opinion, people need to be prepared and flexible to cope with stressful situations. That would help us when we face such situations so that we could be more confident.

Time pressure is an unbearable factor within stress. When I ask him to give me an example of when he had to cope with constant time pressures teaching students, he says that he needs to balance the time between work and life. 

Four years ago, his parents had a serious disease while his students were preparing for their finals. In Mr. Zhou's opinion, we need to be prepared for this kind of time-related pressure and advises that at such times one needs to trust a friends and colleagues. Hence teamwork is very important, he says.

Is stress a good or bad thing? Zhou says it depends. 

"Stress helps you understand that you need to know what you lack, achieve your goals, and improve. However, stress makes people nervous, hard to focus, and have low efficiency."

Sometimes, stress can be a positive force, motivating you to perform well in an English test, or soccer game, for example. 

But often, like when you're stuck on an easy math question and time is running out, it can be a negative force.

Stress is an enduring emotion that will last till the sun explodes. 

Let's face stress using better ways, and be prepared for similar obstacles!

(Andre Zhao is a 12-year-old boy who enjoys sports.)

     by Samuel Yang（11岁，双语学校6年级）

Photo by Kea Mowat on Unsplash

Walking past the skiing tracks, the sound of skis and snowboards swishing downhill ring cleary in my ears. I enter the coffee shop in the Vanke snow resort in northern China's Jilin province. 

It's just after Christmas but there's no snow here - a place known for skiing. 

I enter the coffee shop where I am to meet Coach Hu. When he enters, he's not wearing his coach's uniform. Instead, he wrapped up in clothing suited for winter. I order hot chocolate. Coach Hu has a coffee. 

"I started my skiing career in Jilin, but when I first skied, it was in my second year in college," says Coach Hu. "The first time I skied I thought it was extremely fun and interesting." 

After that, Coach Hu decided to go to a ski ranch in his second year in college where he underwent more systematic training. 

"I really love skiing. Every winter, I use as much time as possible to enjoy the joy of skiing. And because I love skiing, I became a skiing instructor."

Altogether, Coach Hu has been skiing for about seven years throughout a few years in college and his career as a skiing instructor.

Coach Hu. I ask if he has ever had any serious injury skiing. "I once had a head injury," he recalls, adding that it wasn't a very serious one. 

Another time, he hurt himself when he was snowboarding, something he says was probably due to his inexperience at that time.

In China, the popularity of skiing is still growing with the upcoming winter Olympics in 2022 taking place near the capital, Beijing. While the sport is still relatively new for Chinese people, its popularity is growing.

Picture of Coach Hu

Although he hasn't skied in other countries, Coach Hu does have a few thoughts to share. 

"Chinese skiers would choose to ski in Japan because it is near China," he says. 

One main difference between skiing in China and in other countries is that in European countries there is a "higher sea level" factor, which makes skiing there more thrilling and fun. 

The type of snow in other countries is also more suited for skiing than in China where "about 80% of the snow is artificial and manmade," he says. 

"People nowadays want to aim for something better, to have hobbies and to learn sports. Many people nowadays, also have a lot of pressure due to work, so they would choose to ski to release this stress," he says. 

"They also want the exhilaration and the adrenaline of skiing," he adds. 

（Samuel Yang is an 11-year-old Chinese boy who likes English literature.）

  by Stephen Hou（13岁，公立学校8年级）

Photo by Hans Vivek on Unsplash

Eric Huang, is a manager at Shang Uji, a company that's a shining star in technology circles. 

Mr. Huang is a finance and economics graduate. He speaks in a way that is always logical. He's also good at history.

I talk with him about his last job, asking him about his reasons for leaving.

He answers me in a peaceful way. He wanted to bring more value to people, he says. He didn't want to do something that is useless for humans, he adds.

Mr. Huang used to be a manager and received a high salary. But it didn't make him happy. So he decided to come back to China and start a company. He wanted to do something meaningful.

The company he worked for before was a foreign company. I ask him what he thinks about Western countries. 

He thinks for a few seconds, answering that Western countries are truly stronger than China. But he says that one day China will become stronger.

I ask him about the history of China, and how it has been attacked. 

The strong always attack the poor, he says. China had been attacked because, at that time, the country was not strong enough.

Today, the work Mr. Huang does is trying to solve this problem.

He says his job is something to do with Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI is something that tries to imitate human thinking, he says. 

I ask how he sees himself. He says he's small but that something makes him feel he's strong enough to change the world.

People around Mr. Huang say he works so hard all the time. Running a company is not that easy as one might imagine. Neither is giving up a high-paying salary.

All the things Mr. Huang does is for his unrealistic target - to change the world, make China better, and to serve the Motherland just like every other returned entrepreneur.

Patriotism, like other moral emotions and beliefs, tends to be noble, enabling people to understand and love truly beautiful things, and to experience happiness. 

Patriotism is not just about one country or two countries. It's for every country, and for every person, in this world. 

It's also, of course, for returning entrepreneurs. 

（Stephen Hou is a 13-year-old boy who likes to play assassin games.）

  by Veronica Jiang（13岁，公立学校8年级）

Photo by Wladislav Glad on Unsplash

I ask Jennifer my PE teacher if she likes Starbucks.

She thinks for a while, then tells me she's not keen on it. Jennifer tells me that she had never gone to Starbucks on her own initiative. Ever.

Jennifer thinks Starbucks is quite expensive. 

"I mean it's popular," she adds with a smile. "You know, popular things are always expensive." 

Yet unlike other popular products, she feels the quality of the drinks and food Starbucks produce is still good enough for customers to pay such money. 

"You know Mr. Hu, don't you?" she asks. 

I nodded. 

"The reason he doesn't like Starbucks is because it was too expensive for him when he was saving all his money for Air Jordan basketball shoes," she tells me. 

We both laugh together as she finishes her sentence.

I suspect there must be some reason she doesn't usually buy Starbucks. 

I tell Jennifer that Starbucks has delivery system, and asked if she would buy things there more often. 

She seems surprised and excited to hear about that, and says if the extra delivery charges are not so expensive, she might order coffee more often. 

She thinks the delivery service is very convenient - she doesn't have much free time at work to buy coffee in stores.

I ask Jennifer if she know anything about Luckin, the new coffee shop that's in competition with Starbucks. 

She says she has only tried it once. She continues, explaining how there are lots of activities held in the shop, and that frequently it offered discounts. 

Also, both the coffee and the extra delivery charges are pretty cheap. Because of that, she recommends me to go and have a try there one day. 

"The price-quality ratio is good," she says.

I tell Jennifer about one outlet of Starbucks in Washington, D.C., that is especially for deaf and hard-of-hearing people. 

Then there's the Starbucks in Milan, Italy. That Starbucks has special features like a unique bar with more than 100 cocktails, homemade gelato made with liquid nitrogen, and Prince baked goods. 

Starbucks' entry into Italy may be the brand's biggest test yet: the country has lots of coffee shops. 

According to newspapers in Italy, "a huge number of the citizens saying they were against the new Starbucks." 

"Italians are puzzled by Starbucks' entry, insisting that espresso anywhere else in the country would be better." 

Also drinking an espresso standing at a café bar is a sacred ritual in Italian culture. Most importantly, Starbucks charges nearly double the price for an espresso that Italians pay at their local bars.

I ask Jennifer her opinion of Starbucks now. 

She seems astonished, telling me:

"About the Starbucks for deaf and hard-of-hearing people…  I think they're doing this only to maximize their benefits and make everyone think that they're doing charity, but actually they're just using the deaf and hard-of-hearing people to advertise."

"As for that new Starbucks in Milan, I think it didn't conform to market demand. Italians don't need it, they already had a lot of café bars much better than the Starbucks in the country. I don't think they made a good decision."

Jennifer tells a story about her friend who is a big fan of Starbucks. 

Once she went to a Starbucks and bought a coffee. For some reason, she left it on the coffee table. When she came back, she saw a waiter taking her drink. The waiter just kept walking away with her drink even as she continued calling out to him not to take it.

Later, the store manager informed her that the waiter was deaf. The manager was sorry about what had happened and offered Jennifer's friend another coffee. 

Jennifer's friend told the manager she understood, and declined the offer of a refill. Jennifer says she believes her friend would support the concept of a Starbucks dedicated to deaf customers.

（Veronica Jiang is a 13-year-old girl who likes money.）

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