You might say that animals such as squirrels and rabbits are residents’ neighbors or parts of people’s life in University of St. Thomas. However, as a newcomer who has just stayed in St. Paul for a week, I can’t help stopping to watch or have a photo shoot again and again when the animals bump into my sight.
When I was a child in my hometown, Yunnan province, I could see squirrels climbing trees on the hills near my house. The animals have just gone in the past 20 years.
Now, I work in Beijing, a place I mentioned in St. Paul often arouses kind of sympathy: how about the air pollution; is it serious… Yes, the air is bad and the PM2.5 is high (the figure provided by US embassy in BJ is usually much higher than what Chinese gov. announced). In foggy days, going out with a mouth mask has become kind of fashion.
One of my friends posted a lot of information about various masks on his micro-blog and recommended us strongly to buy 3M masks. I bought a big box of 3M masks last winter (not a joke). Anyway, 3M, which I just know is a local company in MN, has not designed any masks for squirrels or rabbits. That could be the reason why many animals disappeared in neighborhood except people masked (a joke)?
People care about pollution and people masked do care more about pollution. Let’s see the latest environment news in our website (http://english.caixin.com/environment/). Fortunately, some of the articles have been translated into English. The headline is below:
China’s Urban Sludge Dilemma: Sinking in Stink 08.08.2013
Gov’t to Spend 1.7 Tln Yuan on Plan to Fight Air Pollution 07.23.2013
Guangdong Officials Wisely Came Clean on Soil Pollution 07.15.2013
CNPC Report Says Kunming Chemical Project Not Harmful 06.28.2013
Traditional Medicine: Handle with Care 06.25.2013
Coal-fired Plants ‘Killed 9,900 in Northern Region in 2011’ 06.18.2013
Confronting China’s Cadmium-Laced Rice Crisis 06.05.2013
Yesterday, a nice lady in the party at downtown Minneapolis told me it took a long time for America to clean the pollution from industrialization and China developed so fast in the past decades that it has no time to deal with its environment problem.
Yeah, the key question is how many ways China must go before the animals come back to our neighborhood.
When you read the words above, you might know how happy I was when I took the pictures in my neighborhood at the campus.