China Daily (Hong Kong)

Let’s not deny them childhood memories

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There’s a tendency as we get older to look back with nostalgia on our childhood. Some of my dearest memories come from the brisk winters of my youth.

Seen through the prism of the years, I remember the snow at that time as being deeper, the cold colder and the sky bluer than they are today. I can still feel the excitement of ice skating, sledding or playing in the snow with my friends. And to this day, I can think of nothing so blissful as after coming home half-frozen, caked with frost, to sit down to a cup of hot chocolate.

President Xi Jinping’s recent trip to Switzerlan­d, the

This Day, That Year

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The medical cure in China has developed rapidly over the years. Doctors, with the aid of new technologi­es, have performed surgeries that have drawn global attention.

In 2006, a partial face transplant was successful­ly winter sport wonderland, got me thinking about those winters again and how nice it would be now to visit the Alps.

Of course, the president was much too busy to indulge in wintry pastimes.

After attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, he visited the United Nations Office at Geneva. He gave a wide-ranging speech on the theme of nations working together to build “a shared future for mankind”.

One topic he addressed was the environmen­t.

“Industrial­ization has created material wealth never seen before, but it has also inflicted irreparabl­e damage to the environmen­t” he said. He spoke of the necessity of countries working together to strike a balance between man and nature.

On the day of Xi’s speech, Jan 18, the World Meteorolog­ical Organizati­on, also in performed on a man from Yunnan province who had been mauled by a bear. It was a first for China and only the second time the operation had been performed worldwide.

Guo Shuzhong, who works for the First Affiliated Hospital of Xi’an Jiaotong University in Xi’an, Shaanxi province, was the surgeon responsibl­e for this milestone. To date, the surgery has been performed 39 times worldwide, mostly in the United States and France.

But in a recent interview with China Daily, Guo said that he has been waiting Geneva, announced that 2016 was the hottest year on record.

Temperatur­es worldwide were 1.1 C higher than the pre-industrial average.

For those who might think 1.1 degrees is negligible, CNN meteorolog­ist Brandon Miller put it into perspectiv­e. “That means we are already a majority of the way to the 1.5-degree warming goal set at the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015.”

Miller presented statistics, in an article on CNN’s website, to show it was no fluke, but part of a global warming trend.

For 105 years, 1911 has reigned as the coldest year. Yet each of the past three years set a heat record — and 16 of the 17 hottest years since record-keeping began in 1880 occurred in our new millennium.

Miller quoted Michael Mann, director of Pennsylva- years to help a second patient but cannot find a donor. He said unwillingn­ess among families to donate a loved one’s face after death is potentiall­y holding back progress in the field.

At the moment, he is busy tending to a patient waiting for an ear transplant. In two or three months, the “engineered” ear, now growing on the patient’s arm, will be transplant­ed to his head, he said.

Doctors earlier buried a skin expander in the nia State University’s Earth Science Center: “The effect of human activity on our climate is ... as plain as day, as are the impacts ... it is having on us and our planet.”

NASA, the US space agency, noted in July the impact on the polar ice cap. Five of the first six months of 2016 set records for diminished Arctic ice, and during the summer melt season the ice cap covered only 60 percent of its early 1980s area.

NASA attributed the Arctic warming to greenhouse gases.

I guess the skies really were bluer and the winters colder in my childhood.

Xi is right. If we want our children to retain great memories of playing outdoors, we have to take sustained, resolute action against climate change.

Contact the writer at lydon@chinadaily.com.cn patient’s right forearm and regularly injected water to expand the skin in the first phase.

 ?? MIAO JIAN/ FOR CHINA DAILY ?? A group of entertaine­rs performs a dragon dance as fireworks light up the night skies during Lunar New Year celebratio­ns in Wuhan, Hubei province, last week.
MIAO JIAN/ FOR CHINA DAILY A group of entertaine­rs performs a dragon dance as fireworks light up the night skies during Lunar New Year celebratio­ns in Wuhan, Hubei province, last week.
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