[By Zhou Tao/Shanghai Daily]

The night before Hurricane Sandy's landfall, we were asked to evacuate our apartment as it was in New York City's flood-prone area. My husband was traveling. Like hundreds of other families in our compound, my son Zhouzhou and I moved to a friend's place.

At nightfall, the wind howled and raindrops splashed on the windows. Zhouzhou remarked that the wind in Astana (capital of Kazakhstan where we lived before) whistled the same way. However, I was worried that the rain could leak through window seals and damage our carpet and new piano.

The next morning, the devastation that Sandy left behind was unfolded in front of our eyes on TV: blown-away roofs, fires, flooded communities, blackouts for millions of families, and worst of all, casualties. Zhouzhou realized that, unlike Astana's winterwind from Siberia, the wind the Sandy brought to New York was unusual.

On the morning of the third day, when the rays of the sun finally pierced through the thick clouds, I took Zhouzhou home to have a look. Without electricity or water, our building was eerily quiet. The moment we entered our sunshine-flooded apartment, we decided to stay despite the difficulties we were faced with.

Home was the best place of all, I thought to myself while making sandwiches.

Precious water

However, when night fell and when bottled water was running short, the reality set in. It became so cold that we had to put on winter clothes.

Zhouzhou's toy - miner's headlamp - was the only light we had. And we should have long ago flushed the toilet but we couldn't!

The water left in the cistern before the water cut became extremely precious, and we planned to use it only at a critical time. So each time Zhouzhou used the toilet, I reminded him not to flush. However, unfortunately, I myself habitually flushed it soon afterwards.

Hearing the water all gone, Zhouzhou was very upset, while I was filled with remorse. At 8:30pm, we went to bed after briefly brushing teeth and washing faces with as little water as possible. We moved back to our friend's the following day.

On the 9th day after our building was evacuated, power was restored and we could finally go home! Sitting on the bus, I asked Zhouzhou what impressed him most during the past week.

He came up with the spooky corridor, toilet without water, and building strong muscles by climbing the stairs. When asked why we got Sandy, he burst with laughter about the same story of the bus driver Sandy.

I furthered our talk with climate change and reminded him of a documentary we watched at the Museum of Natural History. He vividly remembered the colossal chimneys puffing out huge columns of smoke, hills of garbage and extinct animals. I told him if we human being were harsh to our environment, we would suffer the consequences, like Sandy in his story. I was not sure whether our talk made sense to this seven-year-old.

One night when I was in the bathroom, Zhouzhou rushed to the door and called at the top of his lungs as usual: "Mum, I need to pee!"I quickly flushed the toilet. He looked at me seriously: "Mum, you shouldn't have flushed. We should save water!"

The author is a freelance writer based in New York.

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