Volunteer unfazed by landslides

Clambering over giant landslides in the middle of nowhere in Sichuan province and carrying aid to quake victims is not why Frank Dunne came to China. The middle-aged American salesman actually had an even more exotic plan: making apple jam in Tibet. In his new adventure, he is organizing and sometimes leading "extreme teams" that the U.S. charity Heart to Heart has been sending to remote mountain villages, carrying aid on their backs when the roads are blocked.
His destination was Long Zhu, a scattering of houses across forested hillsides now scarred by rockslides that he had visited 10 days earlier as the head of the first civilian relief team to reach the 800 inhabitants.
Getting there would be difficult and dangerous. Mr. Dunne made the nine members of his team sign release forms and take a group photo "in case we get buried under a landslide" provoked by one of the numerous aftershocks that still rattle the region.
As he unloaded food, tents, personal hygiene products and medicine that he and his fellow volunteers would carry by hand, Mr. Dunne thought not only of the recipients but also of the donors who would want to know where it had gone.
He took one photo himself holding a box of bread with the baker's name prominently displayed. Another showed him in an "Operation Blessing" T-shirt, a nod to the help that Pat Robertson has given "Heart to Heart.” In a third picture, he was pitching a tent paid for by the American Chamber of Commerce. "Pictures are important," he explained. "They keep supporters smiling and giving. This is going to be a long effort and we don't want them tiring easily."
Source:
The Christian Science Monitor
无惧滑坡的美国志愿者
冒着滑坡的危险运送救援物资给地震灾区不是弗兰克·邓恩来中国的初衷。这个中年美国人原本有个更奇怪的计划：在西藏做苹果酱。这次冒险，他带着美国“心连心”组织的救援队运送物资到偏远山村，没路的时候就背着走。
他们要去龙竹。10天前邓恩带第领一支民众救援队去过那里，沿途的山上到处是滑坡，村里有800个居民。
去那里的路是艰险的。邓恩让他的九名队员都签下免责条款，并拍了集体照，因为可能会被余震造成的山体滑坡掩埋。
到龙竹后，邓恩卸下食品、帐篷、个人卫生用品和药品，他所想到的不仅是领取物品的人，还有捐助物品并想知道它们的去处的人。
他拿着一箱印着厂名的面包，拍了张照片，还拍了张穿着印有“Operation Blessing”的T恤，表示对捐赠人Pat Robertson的肯定。在第三张照片里，他后面是美国商务部捐赠的帐篷。他解释说：“照片很重要，它使支持者们高兴并愿意付出。这将是长期的努力，我们希望他们不要倦怠。”

Yaya in West Canada
丫丫在加西
Xiamen people in Canada （1）
吴亚宇（丫丫），双语周刊主编，2007年底到加拿大西部的埃德蒙顿求学。在异国他乡的种种经历，使她亲身感受到东西方文化的差距和碰撞。我们特设专栏，与读者一起分享她的所见所闻。
Chinese people consider the two happiest things in the world to be meeting an old friend in a foreign land and a good rain after a long drought. This spring in Western Canada I came across some fellow townsmen from Xiamen, my adopted hometown. It felt so wonderful to discuss Xiamen in the South Fujian dialect.
One Xiamenese person I met is Ms. Juan, a fellow student. When her husband came to Canada to work, her entire family moved to Edmonton. They initially lived in a rented house with their first child but now they have bought their own house and have two children. They have successfully adapted to life in Edmonton.
Ms. Juan, her husband and I all graduated from Xiamen University, further deepening our friendship. She is a gourmet cook who grows bean sprouts and cooks various pastries. She once served me with a spicy fish stew to satisfy my appetite for Chinese delicacies that tasted as wonderful as anything from a fine Chinese restaurant.
I can’t help but envy her ability to create a good life. The only thing regrettable in Edmonton is that only frozen seafood is available, unlike Xiamen, where fresh seafood is abundant. Ms. Juan often said that when she returns to Xiamen, the first dish she will eat is boiled prawn, whose sweet and fresh flavor she has long missed.
Transitioning from an engineer to a housewife, Ms. Juan has devoted herself to cooking for the family and educating her two children. Every week she devotes her time to accompanying her children to various classes when not attending courses herself. Her elder child is a trilingual straight-A student. Ms. Juan must feel justly proud of her achievements.
天南地北厦门人（一）
他乡遇故知，久旱逢甘霖，都说是人生的两大幸事。在春天的加西，我居然也碰到了来自鹭岛的老乡。此时听到乡音，聊起乡情，能不感到亲切吗？
Juan 是我的学姐。因为她先生的工作调动，全家迁到了埃德蒙顿，从最早的租房到现在独立的House，从最初的一个小孩到现在活蹦乱跳的两个小家伙，Juan一家已经真正在这里扎了根。
Juan和先生还有我都是毕业于厦大，自然更亲近些。她做得一手好菜，能发豆芽，自己常做各种意大利面，令我自叹不如。特别是为了给我解馋，创造的水煮鱼片堪称能与国内餐厅的菜肴媲美。
看看这样的前辈，我不由得赞叹咱厦门人真是生活的好手。这里的海鲜都是冰冻的，哪有厦门的活鱼鲜虾，所以每次Juan都说，现在回去第一个就要点厦门的白灼虾，多甜啊。
Juan这位以前的高工现在的大厨，全部心思都用在一家四口的每日三餐和调教两个小宝宝上了，每周除了在学校上课外，几乎都是陪着孩子上这课那课，老大小小年纪能说三门语言门门成绩A，Juan的辛苦一点也没白费。
Translated by
Wendy Yang

On my Mind
一孔之见

Electric bikes pose a green dilemma
With a long legacy of bicycle use, Chinese commuters are accustomed to personal mobility and short trips. However, distances are becoming too long for bicycles and public transit services are often incapable of serving populations in cities with disorganized urban development patterns while competing with cars for road space.
Electric bikes have filled the niche, providing high levels of personal mobility at a fraction of the cost of a car or public transit. Electric bikes travel about 35 percent faster than bicycles and have a much larger range. In the city of Kunming, an electric bike can access 60 percent more jobs within 20 minutes than a traditional bicycle.
While this increase in mobility is remarkable, this mobility does come at a cost, namely increased lead pollution from battery use. Electric bikes use one car-sized lead acid battery per year. Each battery represents emits up to 40 percent of its lead content into the environment during the production process, resulting in about three kilograms of lead emitted per battery produced. When scaled up to the 40 million electric bikes currently on the roads, this is an astonishing amount of lead emissions.
Electric bikes certainly have fewer negative impacts than personal automobiles, although they currently displace primarily bus and bicycle users.
Source: Live Science
发展电动自行车须防铅污染
中国的上班族有骑车上下班的悠久历史，习惯了个人灵活出行和短途交通。但现在上班路程开始长到了非自行车可达，而且在发展规划不完善的城市里，公交车也往往需要同轿车争夺路权，难以满足市民的通行需要。
电动自行车应运而生，以远远低于私家车甚至公共交通的成本，提供了很高的个人出行能力。我发现电动自行车与脚蹬自行车相比，速度上快大约35%，行驶里程更要远得多。在昆明市，在20分钟内可抵达上班地点的，骑电动自行车的比骑传统自行车的多出了60%。
就在出行能力显著提高的同时，这种提高也需要付出代价，即电池使用造成的铅排放增加。电动自行车每年要用掉一块与汽车上体积相同的铅酸电池。每块电池都意味着在生产过程中，相当于它所含铅量的30%——40%释放到了环境中。也就是说，每生产一块电池，就有约3公斤的铅释放。如果扩大到目前行驶在路上的近4000万辆电动自行车，释放到环境中的铅的数量就颇为惊人了。
与私家车相比，电动自行车的负面影响显然要小得多，但目前它取代的主要是公共汽车和传统自行车，取代汽车的数量很小。