The ant(蚂蚁) works every day but the monkey plays in the tree every day in summer. One day the ant is carrying some candy to her home. Her home is next to a big tree. The monkey is playing games in the tree. He says to the ant, “Why are you working every day? It is warm today. Don't work. Come and play games with me.” But the ant says, “Winter will come and it will be very cold. I want to store lots of food. I will sleep all day in winter.”
    Winter will not come soon. You can work in autumn,” says the monkey.
    Summer and autumn are over. There is snow(雪) everywhere. The monkey can't find any food. Do you know what will happen?

    Can you write down a Chinese word being read to you? Sometimes it can be difficult when you find the word is not included in most dictionaries.

    Lu Jialei, 14, from Hangzhou Foreign Language School, won the CCTV Chinese Character (汉字) Spelling Contest on Oct 18^th, 2013. About 160 people competed. The host read a word to the contestant, explained its meaning and gave sample sentences. The contestant was required to write down the word.

    Winning the contest was a “surprise” to Lu. “I was not the smartest one,” she said. “But I paid attention to details.” To prepare for the contest, she and her teammates studied the Modern Chinese Dictionary for 10 days. There are more than 56,000 entries (词条) including characters, words and phrases in it. She also had a secret weapon. She studied how Chinese characters were formed.

    “When others paid attention to the plot of a story, she looked at how authors use words and sentences to express themselves,” said Su Yunsheng, Lu's Chinese teacher. Su is happy to see students like Lu find the beauty of Chinese language.

    “Besides using something Chinese and having Chinese traditional festivals, learning to write Chinese characters is also an important part of inheriting (传承) Chinese culture,” said Su.