China Part Four - How to Help China -

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你好朋友！Nǐ hǎo péngyǒu! (Hello friends!)

Thanks for visiting again, it's always nice to see a friendly face. Chun says hi, too! Remember in my letter from last week I told you about their spring rolls? Did you get a chance to make them with your family? If you did, please ask your parent, guardian or teacher to send me a message and let me know how you enjoyed them. Before that we talked about the Chinese New Year and welcoming the Year of the Monkey - that was fun! Did you have a feast and see some lion dancing? We also talked about China, its land and animals - what a fun country to visit!

Photo By tpsdave [CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0)] via Pixabay

I want to talk to you about China and its environment. China is a big place, filled with lots and LOTS of people! And, over the most recent decades, it has grown a lot, adding more cars and factories and causing a drastic increase in smog in its major cities. Smog is bad for the humans and the animals that live there.

Water contamination is when the water has stuff in it that usually comes from factories or power plants and makes it hard for plants and animals to use the water. It has made the land weaker, less able to support the diverse natural wildlife native to China. But the good news is that there are things we can all do to help, even from your home!

Ways to Help

Air pollution in the big cities of China has become a major problem over the last few years. China has added many new factories, power plants, and other industrial buildings, but all of that comes at the cost of polluting the air, which can make people and animals sick.

Organizations like Greenpeace can help by making people aware of the simple things they can do to help, such as:

Reducing the use of coal for power, instead using clean and renewable energy like solar power.
Using electric vehicles whenever possible.
Building more parks into residential areas.
Spreading out coal-burning plants, away from people's homes and not too close to one another.

Visit their webpage to find out more about what you can do to help improve air quality in your own hometown, because helping the air quality anywhere helps us all over the planet.

World Wild Fund (WWF)-China

The WWF was the first international conservation organization invited to work in China. They have an extensive list of things you can do to help the environment as a whole, and China, in particular. My favorite is planting a seed, because seeds become trees which give us all the air we breathe. Plus trees are fun to climb and they hold honey beehives!

The Rainforest Alliance

The Rainforest Alliance has some great tips for taking care of the environment, especially their Shop the Frog page, which helps you find products that are made in factories that try extra hard to take care of the land around them. Also, they have a fun Kid's Corner with educational activities!

Remember that any little thing you can do will help. Try to not use too much paper when you color, recycle, and walk, bike, or take public transportation whenever you can. These are all great things that even you can do to help the whole planet!

Speaking of coloring, I was very excited to hear from so many of my friends about what kind of fun they had with my coloring page! I'm glad too, because I had to hold my arms up in that Tai Chi pose for a long time while our artist drew me, and that monkey was a squirmy little guy! Keep your eye out for more coloring pages in the future.