Grasslands are
the skin of Mother Nature. When they flourish, the face of nature shines; once
they fade, her face glooms. I learned this first-hand when I visited the great
grasslands in Inner Mongolia for two weeks in my second college year. In those
areas where few people live, plants blanket the ground and extend to the
horizon. In the areas where many people live, over-grazing has turned the
grasslands into semi-arid land. This trip had a great impact on me. I began to
hold a great concern and a strong feeling for the grasslands on our planet. My
dreams belong to the grasslands. I want to be a grasslands ecologist so that I
can contribute in taking care of them.
My interest in
ecology started with a child’s curiosity in observing the magical powers of
life and nature. How do the external forces influence the activities of lives?
What are the internal changes going on inside lives? How are they related with
and to each other? While thinking about these questions, I developed a hobby of
field adventure. I compared different patterns of plant distribution in
mountains. I tried to figure out how trees compete for sunlight in forests. I
have watched weeds wildly take control of abandoned farmlands. I noticed that
the forms of energy and material are changing continuously like a big stream.
All lives thrive through the current of these transformations, and are driven by
the forces of this current.
These thoughts
led me to a deep interest in chemistry. I first discovered it in middle school.
Chemistry satisfied my thirst for knowledge about how materials and energy can
change, based on some basic rules. I was so passionate about chemistry that by
the time I was in high school, I had learned the first two years of
undergraduate chemistry courses all by myself. I took part in the national
Olympic Chemistry Competition and got the first prize in the Fujian Province
division. Although by just one point I was unable to take the international
contest, I had already built up a solid basis in chemistry, which later helped
me enormously in studying the biological sciences.
My most
exciting experiences were those trips to many places in Western China, including
the Inner Mongolian Great Grasslands, the Takla Makan Desert, and the Tianshan
Mountains. I have traveled through a great variety of landscapes, lived with the
natives, and gotten close to wild plants and animals. What shocked me most was
seeing the beautiful green grasslands sharply contrasted with the endless yellow
sand dunes in the desert, especially in those areas where they were very close
to each other. There were so many interesting phenomena and important issues
regarding the grassland ecology that even after the trips I could not stop
thinking about them. What kind of good land management can conserve prairie
lands? I wanted to know if the desertification of grasslands was due to global
climate changes or local human activities? How could we prevent invasive plants
from ruining the grasslands? I read books, went to lectures, discussed what I
thought with professors, trying to find the answers.
More and more,
I realized the real interest in my heart is in grassland ecology, not in the
sciences that mainly focus on the microcosmic world of life, like molecular
biology. What I would really like to do is put my views on the ecosystem level,
not only paying attention to the individual organism itself, but also its
interaction with the environment and other organisms.
