Here is a snippet of my personal essay “Bask in Nature”. For more, click here.
After traveling two dozen countries in my lifetime, I now understand why my well-traveled English penpal said people were alike around the world. I can’t agree more. In my latest trip to my birthplace, Guangzhou, China, I found the lifestyle is at the same pace with, if not more advanced than, the American lifestyle. Every service you can think of is at one’s fingertips—grocery shopping, car rental, bureaucratic errands, Chinese people are no strangers to e-commerce; as are American people. Tesla is doing very well in China, as are electric and hybrid autos. Let us not question what is the energy source of the electric cars. (Read more here) The public awareness of environmental protection is high in China, at least in the most developed coastal cities and the capital city Beijing. Plastic bags are banned in Guangzhou’s supermarkets; not yet in my American home Centreville. Paperless billings are common; a SMS reminds the users to check e-statements. I can still have print statements in America if I choose to. Mailboxes in China are for e-commerce goods. Junk mail is obsolete in Guangzhou’s residential postal mailboxes but omnipresent in my American home every day.
One of the major wastes I see, both happening in China and the US, is the packaging of online shopping products. On any given day, you’ll see piles of carton boxes and paper materials in the dumpster. Some of them look like new. Can we reuse these packages? Online shopping reduces human traffic to the stores but increases freight transportation and greenhouse gas emissions. Online shopping creates new jobs and yet destroys some traditional professions like shopkeepers, knock-on-your-door salespersons etc.
Basking in nature, I see the natural beauty, and yet our natural environment is vulnerable. The American chestnut is extinct in the Bluestone River Gorge after a wave of exotic pests and pathogens killed the native trees. But the blight-resistant Chinese chestnut thrives. Aha, Darwin’s survival of the fittest is in full play. Is the concept applicable to the ongoing US-China trade war, too?
Stay tuned for a day-to-day travel journal of my discovery in Cantonese culture and New Zealand landscape. Click here.
