My home town

Jessica

      My hometown is Yancheng City which is in Jiangsu Province, China. It’s a prefecture-level city with the largest jurisdiction area in Jiangsu. Yancheng borders Lianyungang to the north, Huai’an to the west, Yangzhou and Taizhou to the southwest, Nantong to the south, and looks out to the Yellow sea to the east.
       Yancheng, literally “Salt City”, is named after the salt harvest fields that surround the city. According to historical records, collection and production of sea salt in the region began as early as 119BC during the Western Han Dynasty, when the settlement on the current location of Yancheng was named Yandu County. According to the 2010 Census, Yancheng has a registered population of 8,203,728 which along with 7,260,240 permanent residents. It also named after “Piao City” as the shape of the city looks like the “Piao” in Chinese. Just the shape of a ladle made from a dried gourd. And it is also have a name of “Hundreds Rivers City”, as it has hundreds of rivers.
       Yancheng was in the limelight during the Chinese Civil War  from the 1930s to 1940s. The New Fourth Army (N4A) led by the Communist Party of China was reestablished in Yancheng after being ambushed and battered by the enemy. After the revival, the N4A played a very important role in the war and finally the foundation of the People’s Republic of China.  Many monuments in honor of N4A heroes can still be found around Yancheng.
       The city flower is peony and crape myrtle. The city tree is ginkgo. And it has a large area of salt marshes, which is the home of some unique and endangered species, including Pere David’s Deer and the Red-crowned Crane. Yancheng determines to set a tourist place based on the wetlands. What’s more; it has unique opera show named “Huai opera”. It’s so famous but it appeals more to the elders like the Beijing opera. The young like me don’t like it so much. 
      Yancheng treats so many tourists every year. If you want to travel around the city, you can by the BRT, which cost you only 1 Yuan. And you can get changed without a second pay. You can go to the Yongning Temple, which was set in Tang Dynasty. And you can go to the Dafeng, to visit the famous author Shi nai’an’s home. He is the author of The Water Margin. And other famous people like Lu xiufu and Fan zhongyan and so on. They are all from Yancheng City. And it’s also famous for acrobatics. The group from Yancheng also received the invitation from the USA. 
      Yancheng is also famous for its education. And people here are so friendly and kind. They are so diligent and bright. And they will make the city better and better. As the slogan goes like, “better city, better life!”  Anyway welcome to my hometown.
   

Global warming

                        Jessica
     Have you ever seen the film in 2004 named “The day after tomorrow” or the film in 2010 named “2012”, which were all directed by the famous director Roland Emmerich? If you had seen the two films, you must be scared of the changes of nature would bring to our human beings. And it all points to the global warming.
     According to the statics from the NASA Goddard Institute, we can definite that global warming is the rise in the average temperature of Earth’s atmosphere and oceans since the late 19th century and its projected continuation.
     There are so many factors causing the global warming happened and continue. However we can divide them into two parts. One is non human factors, and the other is man-made factors.
     First of the non human factors, they are not directly caused by human beings. For example, the crustal movement comes first. The movement would cause the volcanic activities and would give a rise to the greenhouse gases, like Carbon Dioxide and so on. Also some nature changes and solar activities will push it, as well.
     Next about the man-made factors, it will be a long list. For example, we overuse the fossil fuel. We produce so many cars and use them in our daily life. The cars not only consume fossil fuel but also pollute the air. And more seriously, we do too much damage to our environment. The days have gone, when we used our hands to plant food and sew clothes. It all changed when the machine was invented. We paid so much to develop the industry. And the Industry Revolution has caused a dramatic rise in Carbon Dioxide. We cut down too many trees and polluted the air, including lost too much nature resources. Moreover, our agriculture activities also do some damage. We over exploit unfarmed land and overuse the pesticides and so on. They all cause a lot of problems. We also build too many buildings and cause the “urban heat island effect”. It made the city much hotter than the countryside. The list seemed endless.
    The two are all lead the greenhouse gases going up and finally procure the global warming.
    Global warming is so serious that it brings about a series of problems. For example, it leads the glacier melting away faster than usual and the sea level gets higher that drowned the cities and countries. It results in natural disasters like mud-rock flowing happening more frequently than before, as well. Besides, the infections diseases and desertification also counted. It breaks the ecological system and destroys the agriculture turning into famine…Our food supply and living environment is getting into danger. We must do something to stop for our time is running out!
    We are glad to see that many people are joining our team to prevent the global warming. Many people choose to walk to work or by bike instead of cars. And try to take the public transportation is also a good choice, I think. And many housewives bring themselves reused bags to the market instead of plastic bags. That will do a lot of help, I think. In a word, we need to cut down the emission of carbon dioxide, immediately. The way to stop the pace of global warming is to live in a low-carbon life. Not only you but also me and other people in the world, we need to cope together to solve this serious problem.               It’s our duty to move now! Let’s hand in hand, to stop global warming!