Book

These days I was reading a book called“Silent Spring”,this book took place in forty years ago when the pesticide was widely used. In the book, Rachel Carson stated that uncontrolled pesticide uses caused the deaths of animals in both short and long term especially birds. One day the over use of pesticide would evoke a silent spring which means no bird songs could be heard because they have all died from pesticides. People suffered from pesticides, too. The pesticides could poison people through fruit, meat, water or even air, but the most terrible thing is that the pesticides damaged the ecological system.

This book could be a breakthrough in the environmental movement. It facilitated the ban of the pesticide DDT in United States and most of the countries, and helped the environmentalism to against materialism and scientism. It increased the public awareness about how the technology affects the nature. In this book, Carson encouraged people to use pesticides carefully and responsibly, and aware the chemical impact on the entire ecological system. Like Al Gore, Carson gave us “an inconvenient truth”. Pesticides may not be a big issue like 70 years ago, but today we are still facing vast problems such as Global Warming, deforestation, and desertification. The only way that we save ourselves is to respect the nature and correct our mistakes.

culture

Today I worked in Subway in university, and one of the employees was called Liz was talking to me when we prepared at the back. She is a Canadian who just graduated from high school. I told her about Chinese culture because she asked me some questions that connected my culture. There are lots of difference between Canada and China. Some of them made her surprise such as the education system. When I told her about how the Chinese go to university after high school, she was shocked. I told her that in China, after we graduated from high school, all of us expect people who wanted to go abroad needed to take an final exam which to make people to go into different universities. We studied in high school for three years, and no matter how the marks were during these three years you had to do the test in order to go to the university. Also it is the only mark to judge students that they are good or bad students; furthermore, to go good or bad universities depended on this mark. All in all, this experience improved my confidence while I am talking to native speaker. Also I learned some new useful vocabulary from her.