Iowan praises stories on deer, migrant workers
March 8, 2010, Monday
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DEAR editor,
In recent days I was especially drawn to a couple of stories appearing in your paper.
In the February 28 edition, Ms Zhao Dan writes about Dr Chen Min's efforts to re-introduce "water deer" into Shanghai. What an incredible name, "water deer."
I conjure up images of lithe animals swimming easily then, rising from the water, almost floating among the surrounding trees with their running grace.
Please let Ms Zhao know how I found the article to be well-written, filled with interesting facts and some history of the water deer and Shanghai.
My sincere admiration for Dr Chen Min's labors, too. What a lovely thing to bring beautiful creatures into a huge city so that more humans may see, admire, and learn from them. We share this beautiful planet with them and cannot long survive without them.
If you would be so kind, sir, to forward the attached photos to both Ms Zhao Dan and Dr Chen Min, I would be very grateful. These deer - the younger peering at me just outside my basement window, and the other, perhaps his mother, only about 15 feet away - were just outside our house last March.
In the February 25 edition, I was drawn to both "A farewell to farms," by Mr Han Jun, and "Plight of 225 million migrant workers requires urgent action" by Mr John Gong.
In reading their articles I was struck by how familiar these stories sound to an American (aware of his own country's history), as well as by the admirably concerned and compassionate note struck by these authors.
The United States has continued to see an ongoing drop in the number of its own farmers, too. Together with the vanishing of "family farms" and the ever-growing size of corporate style operations, the small rural communities that depended upon vibrant, and numerous farm families are equally withering, their schools closing for lack of students, their main street stores shuttered and dark.
People who work the land tend to have much in common with others who do so even in other lands, just as the "civilization" of mega-cities has much in common wherever in the world we find millions of people occupying relatively small spaces of land.
Mr John Gong alludes to the current migration within China as needing to be monitored lest it acquire some of the desperate character of the "Grapes of Wrath" history in the US.
This internal migration in the US was of desperately poor people who, during the Great Depression of the 1930s, also suffered from incredible drought in formerly well-producing agricultural lands.
All of this gives me greater appreciation for the wide range of challenges facing modern Chinese society, as well as admiration for those who are attempting to focus your society's attention on them and also those struggling to deal with them wisely and compassionately.
Subscribing to your fine paper on my Kindle was one of the most wonderful and exciting things I have done since I have retired, opening a window into a vibrant, rich, and beautiful part of the world about which I had been unfortunately largely ignorant.
(The author was a member of the Iowa state House of Representatives. He also served in the Iowa executive branch. He retired in 2004. His e-mail: gloster@iowatelecom.net)
In recent days I was especially drawn to a couple of stories appearing in your paper.
In the February 28 edition, Ms Zhao Dan writes about Dr Chen Min's efforts to re-introduce "water deer" into Shanghai. What an incredible name, "water deer."
I conjure up images of lithe animals swimming easily then, rising from the water, almost floating among the surrounding trees with their running grace.
Please let Ms Zhao know how I found the article to be well-written, filled with interesting facts and some history of the water deer and Shanghai.
My sincere admiration for Dr Chen Min's labors, too. What a lovely thing to bring beautiful creatures into a huge city so that more humans may see, admire, and learn from them. We share this beautiful planet with them and cannot long survive without them.
If you would be so kind, sir, to forward the attached photos to both Ms Zhao Dan and Dr Chen Min, I would be very grateful. These deer - the younger peering at me just outside my basement window, and the other, perhaps his mother, only about 15 feet away - were just outside our house last March.
In the February 25 edition, I was drawn to both "A farewell to farms," by Mr Han Jun, and "Plight of 225 million migrant workers requires urgent action" by Mr John Gong.
In reading their articles I was struck by how familiar these stories sound to an American (aware of his own country's history), as well as by the admirably concerned and compassionate note struck by these authors.
The United States has continued to see an ongoing drop in the number of its own farmers, too. Together with the vanishing of "family farms" and the ever-growing size of corporate style operations, the small rural communities that depended upon vibrant, and numerous farm families are equally withering, their schools closing for lack of students, their main street stores shuttered and dark.
People who work the land tend to have much in common with others who do so even in other lands, just as the "civilization" of mega-cities has much in common wherever in the world we find millions of people occupying relatively small spaces of land.
Mr John Gong alludes to the current migration within China as needing to be monitored lest it acquire some of the desperate character of the "Grapes of Wrath" history in the US.
This internal migration in the US was of desperately poor people who, during the Great Depression of the 1930s, also suffered from incredible drought in formerly well-producing agricultural lands.
All of this gives me greater appreciation for the wide range of challenges facing modern Chinese society, as well as admiration for those who are attempting to focus your society's attention on them and also those struggling to deal with them wisely and compassionately.
Subscribing to your fine paper on my Kindle was one of the most wonderful and exciting things I have done since I have retired, opening a window into a vibrant, rich, and beautiful part of the world about which I had been unfortunately largely ignorant.
(The author was a member of the Iowa state House of Representatives. He also served in the Iowa executive branch. He retired in 2004. His e-mail: gloster@iowatelecom.net)
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