Spring Festival celebration! Making dumplings together, sharing Chinese traditions, red envelopes, and cross-cultural friendship.

For full transcription, please click HERE

On a spring walk through the forest, Matti and Emilia share childhood memories of weekly school trips to learn about plants and animals—no classrooms, no fees, just teachers letting them explore freely. Xuemei reflects on how different this is from China, where expensive "nature education" courses have become popular. The friends discuss a troubling trend: nature education being commercialized, with parents paying high prices for superficial park visits mainly to take photos for social media. They explore Finland's "everyman's right"—the principle that nature belongs to everyone, freely accessible without tickets or money. A thoughtful critique of how some places have gotten their priorities backwards (本末倒置), treating nature as a product to sell rather than recognising it as part of daily life, as natural as eating or sleeping.

Topics: Finnish nature education, commercialisation of learning, everyman's right (jokamiehenoikeus), childhood in nature, educational philosophy, getting priorities backwards, accessibility to nature, real vs. superficial learning

Full transcript: https://sites.google.com/view/utu-dailychinese/episode-20

Why can you order anything in China and have it delivered within 30 minutes? Xuemei explains how China's massive food delivery culture has changed daily life - from meals to groceries to medicine, all delivered by millions of workers on bikes. But Matti shares a heartbreaking film he watched about delivery drivers, and the friends begin to question: What's the real cost of our convenience? They discuss the book "我在北京送快递" (I Delivered Packages in Beijing), where the author reveals he must deliver one package every 4 minutes just to survive. The conversation turns to women entering this field - over 1 million now - facing discrimination, safety risks, and lower pay. A thoughtful discussion about the human cost behind every delivered meal.

Topics: Food delivery culture, gig economy workers, women in delivery work, labor conditions, income struggles, kindness and respect, social responsibility

For full script with pinyin and English translation, see: https://sites.google.com/view/utu-dailychinese/episode-19