解放军文职招聘考试Greening Our Future (I)

 Greening Our Future (I)

In China, every young person is required to plant one tree each year. I always participate in this activity. Each spring when I go out to plant trees, I will indulge myself in the beauty of nature. I will watch the blue sky, the green hills in the distance, and the glittering sunlight as reflected by the leaves. When we start to work, we see each seedling as a life. We carefully cov­er its roots with earth and feed it with plenty of water. In my mind, nature is our mother, and as her chil­dren, we should look after her and love her.

Last summer, as you might have seen on televi­sion, severe floods of the Yangtze River affected the whole of southeastern China, inundated hundreds of villages and claimed thousands of lives. At the same time, however, people along the Yellow River in the north were experiencing an unprecedented drought. For more than two hundred days, not a single drop of water from the Yellow River ran into the sea. That summer, I traveled by train from south to north, crossing these two rivers. In the Yangtze River, waves were roaring high in a pouring rain, and boats were being thrown up and down in the millow. Over the other river, I could see the dry and sandy riverbed, on which ferryboats sat quietly. I felt pain in my heart upon seeing the contrast of these two rivers. The reason for these floods and droughts is similar: for decades, we have been cutting down trees in the upper and middle reaches of the two rivers.

Nature gave birth to our civilization. We come from nature and grow with her nourishment, yet we of­ten like to see ourselves as her masters. We have at­tempted to conquer her and make her our slave. As a result, nature cramps in pain, losing her fresh air, clean water and rich soil. Now that we are being punished for our abuse of her, we know that we should no longer continue with such abuse and should no longer build our wealth upon her gifts. Rather, we must look after our Mother Nature just as she has looked after us.