Terry - Deng Yawen - #0505030026

Can you imagine a life without electricity and tap water for half a month in the extremely cold winter and the only entertainment is to watch the falling snow? At the beginning of the year of 2008, most provinces in the southern part of China went through a snowstorm and experienced such a life.

The storm happened only one week after I arrived home. The weather had been rainy and damp for a long time; meanwhile the temperature was much lower than usual. I was playing poker with my friends one afternoon. The wind was roaring outside. It was only 4 o’clock in the afternoon but it was like the evening already. The darkness fell early. We turned the light on and sat around the fire - stove. All of a sudden, the light went out and we were in the dark again. We waited and waited, hoping the light would be shining again. However, the whole town was out of electricity for almost half a month.

In those days without electricity, we just felt like we were going back to the primitive ages. We got up late in the morning because it was cold; went to bed as early as 8 o’clock in the evening because we were bored. We had a lot of oh - so - romantic “candle - light” suppers. The most ridiculous thing was that the price of candles went up and up at the speed of a rocket! The first night of darkness it cost 1yuan each; a few days later it went up to 8yuan each; one week later 20! How ridiculous!

The snow kept going on and on, and the temperature kept going down and down. Waking up in the morning and looking out of my window, I found that everything was painted white and shining with a sort of silver light. It felt like we were entering the world inside of a wardrobe, leading us to Narnia: trees were covered with crystalline clothing made by nature; mountains were covered with large thick white blankets. Everything looked so beautiful.

Just then, when we were thinking that the cold would leave us and we waited hopefully, we heard of the news that the electrical towers in some places had collapsed so that we had to keep our “candle - light suppers” for more days. On hearing the news, many supermarkets and stores bought generators to keep the business on the run. The government bought a huge yellow generator to support the power on the main street. On my first sight of it, I called it the “Bumblebee” and I was totally in love with it!

Although the storm caused traffic jams, and brought inconveniences to our lives, still we did have quite a special Spring Festival that we will never forget. What’s more, the storm brought the whole country together and the people united together to fight against the disaster. We believe that we can make the rest of the year to be the best.