New Village Movements

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From the course by University of Zurich

Asian Environmental Humanities: Landscapes in Transition

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University of Zurich

Asian Environmental Humanities: Landscapes in Transition

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In this course, featuring many researchers from the University of Zurich and international institutions, we will introduce you to some of the most vibrant cultural trends addressing landscape appreciation, degradation, protection, and rehabilitation that currently circulate in the Asian hemisphere. You will learn how they are critically reflected upon in the context of the environmental humanities, and observe how an interdisciplinary approach towards regional ecosystems past and present reaches out beyond pragmatic technological solutions to mitigate environmental damage. Environmental humanities strive to change people’s prevalent attitudes, values and behavioural patterns in order to redeem the rapidly globalizing crisis. Having acquainted yourself with the stories Asia’s landscapes – and landscape representations – tell about actual and possible human-nature relationships, you can compare and evaluate their potential to bring about the desired change and define your own range of actions as an informed stakeholder for creating a sustainable future. What is arguably no less intriguing: you will learn how to appreciate a broad range of eco-aesthetic forms that re-enchant our lives by creatively interacting with the more-than-human world. You can follow the five modules of the course consecutively or just study the modules that interest you the most. If you want to earn a certificate, you need to complete all of the modules including the quizzes at the end of each module. THESE ARE THE TOPICS OF THE 5 MODULES OF THIS COURSE: Module 1: Concepts of landscape past and present and their cosmological underpinnings. Module 2: Entangled landscapes comprising cultural flows of concepts and forms, contemporary gardens on the move, nostalgic elegies of demolished sites and rural reconstruction projects. Module 3: Discussion of two religious communities in India (the Parsi-Zoroastrians and the Auroville community) and their relationship with the environment. Module 4: Environmental debates tackling religious concepts and social practices and the problem of waste disposal in India. Module 5: Environmental movements and the impact of Fukushima on attitudes towards nuclear energy in Japan, creative activism including arts projects and documentaries to protest against pollution and landscape degradation and raise environmental awareness in the Sinosphere, and emergent concepts for sustainable community life on the planet.

From the lesson

Entangled Landscapes - Chinese Garden Concepts and Global Environments

Having assessed China’s ancient and modern conceptions of landscapes, and how they moved between cultures, social groups and societies, we will turn to the concept of entangled landscapes in the second module. Here, we will evaluate representations and narratives that explore the agency, conundrums and possibilities of applied transcultural aesthetic (and functional) paradigms in national politics of garden and park design. In a first step, the traveling concept of the Chinese garden will help us to evaluate the cultural and geopolitical affordances of gardens between Asia and Europe that are very often intimately connected to utopian visions of the ideal community. Next, we will encounter two different examples of a Chinese garden that bespeak their original sociopolitical functionality and conceptual underpinnings as much as the changes of these same when travelling across time and space. Our third theme of hometown nostalgia will study the turn of artists and intellectuals towards imaginary gardens of the past in view of large-scale heritage demolition in China. Finally, we will probe into the history of rural reconstruction and encounter two successful approaches towards the re-/creation of sustainable landscapes.

New Village Movements10:11

Modern Landscaping8:06

Shaxi Reconstruction Project8:37

Meet the Instructors

Andrea Riemenschnitter
Prof.
Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies

The concept of entangled landscapes deals with the intersection of history,

politics, utopian visions, and landscape aesthetics.

To make China’s villages modern and prosperous

was of central concern to generations of modernizers in China.

Their visions of the future differed considerably, however.

In this video, we will look at different phases of

rural reconstruction, from early modernity up to the 1950s to the 70s,

when Mao Zedong put his revolutionary vision of land reform into practice.

The second video of this lesson will introduce

the diversity of post-revolutionary models of village reconstruction.

Chinese peasants were not always poor,

as this painting of well-nourished rice farmers dating from the mid-14th century

or even earlier illustrates.

Since the late imperial times, however,

the countryside became more and more destitute.

The link between building a modern nation from

the ruins of the fallen Chinese empire by bringing

prosperity to the countryside was formed as one of the core concerns of early reformers.

There was broad consensus

that peasants should be led out of poverty based on education, institutional support,

economic investments, and a new social order that could

secure a harmonious coexistence among the different social segments of the nation.

The idea was picked up from Japanese models

during the early years of the 20th century.

A group of reform-oriented intellectuals from China

who were sent to study in Japan got acquainted with

the New Village project of the philosopher Mushanokōji Saneatsu.

Mushanokōji had been inspired by Western utopian humanism,

the socialist ideals of freedom and equality,

and Lew Tolstoy’s exemplary restructuring project on his own estate in Russia.

In late 1918, he initiated his New Village community in Japan.

This New Village, Atarashiki Mura in Japanese, was

designed to bring together artists and peasants in a social experiment.

Food, money, and education were to be shared equally

and as common goods among the group members.

Mushanokōji hoped that the community would attract international visitors, which it did.

Its founder’s utopian dream that

Atarashiki Mura would be emulated in large numbers worldwide

and that the New Village Movement could render wars and class structures obsolete

did not fully materialize, however.

Yet, the village is well and alive in Japan, after having been relocated in 1939.

But it must also be conceded

that from its very beginnings,

Japanese reactions were much less enthusiastic than the Chinese visitors’ responses.

Following the Japanese example,

reform intellectuals established several New Villages in China.

From then on, the spirit of

experimental village reconstruction can be observed throughout the 20th century.

The Chinese emulation of Atarashiki Mura quickly

developed into a movement with hundreds of new villages,

as well as educational, developmental, and health projects

to modernize the countryside in a sustainable way.

Built upon ideas that were published by Mushanokōji and Chinese reform intellectuals,

the concept evolved into the rural reconstruction movement

launched by Christian educator and philanthropist James Y.C. Yen,

the philosopher Liang Shuming,

and others during the 1920s.

The movement went through several phases of ruptures,

reorientation and growth, and is currently active in various institutional contexts.

The largest of these institutions is

the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction that Yen founded in 1950.

Its headquarters are in the Philippines,

another branch continued in Taiwan,

and a third was reanimated in Mainland China in the 1980s.

The latter inspired the foundation of

the James Yen Institute for Rural Reconstruction in Dingzhou

as recently as 2003,

which became the headquarter of China’s New Rural Reconstruction Movement.

In-between these intellectual initiatives,

Mao Zedong enacted his vision of a revolutionary transformation of the countryside.

The Maoist land reforms were based on the expropriation of rich landlords

and the consolidation of many small farms in large agriculture commune structures.

Barefoot doctors and midwives stepped in to

replace the traditional medical and religious authorities,

and industrial plants, intended to spur the local economic development,

completed the new landscapes of Mao’s revolution.

On this revolutionary propaganda poster

you see an oil refinery.

The inscription reads: “On the banks of the Yangzi River, Daqing blooms.”

The design style is a fusion of the aesthetic principles of socialist realism

and traditional shanshui landscape painting.

Communes were the core of Mao’s rural utopia.

This poster, designed for schools in 1958,

shows how they were imagined.

We see agricultural industrial production sites,

modern roads with traffic,

communal buildings, and the people’s militia

all united harmoniously in an affluent village.

The revolutionary way of life was to produce wealth and happiness for everyone.

Even the pigs were supposed to be happier

and would grow fatter in this new society.

The peasants were moreover taught to read and write,

trained in Mao Zedong thought,

and entertained with cultural performances that aimed at anchoring

the socialist doctrines in the hearts and minds of the nation’s population.

Many propaganda posters showed Mao surrounded by

happy, carefree villagers on occasion of his visits to the countryside.

The reality behind the brave new world of the propaganda posters was very different.

Landlords were expropriated, paraded as criminals through the streets, and even executed.

Moreover, the exorbitant expectations of

the political centre concerning the country’s capacity for economic growth

brought about a man-made famine of

unprecedented gravity during the Grat Leap Forward in the years between 1959 and 1961,

and a first wave of serious environmental degradation

due to large-scale unsustainable farming,

deforestation, and industrial pollution.

On our picture, women peel the bark from a tree trunk,

which in many places was the only available food substitute.

This image stems from the 1942 Henan famine,

which yielded a death toll of one to three million people.

The situation was much worse during the Great Leap Forward famine,

when between 15 to 45 million people died from starvation.

Mao had announced that a ‘war against nature’ should

forcibly extract better harvests and resources from the land.

What resulted from the campaigns

was the beginning of an environmental crisis that became

increasingly serious during the post-revolutionary economic opening and boom.

Although people were entitled and actually encouraged to destroy cultural heritage

symbolizing the old society

in this earlier period,

the damage was insignificant as compared to

the devastation brought about by private investors during the reform era.

The same holds true for deforestation and pollution:

environments came under more pressure since the beginning of the economic miracle.

After the euphoria of the 1980s,

more and more people were disillusioned with the capitalist excesses in the country.

Intellectuals worried about uncontrollable development of cities and villages,

and bemoaned the disappearing landscapes.

Middle class activism grew in urban contexts,

and even peasants began to be aware of, and protest against polluting industries.

This is the gloomy side of the picture.

At the same time, Taoist,

Buddhist, and Christian associations

were newly founded or returned to the former village headquarters.

While traditional humanitarian institutions

came to resume their welfare and religious activities,

artists and modern recluses began to flock

to the countryside in search for a better life, too,

and in many places are ready to resume the spirit of the early modern social experiments.

Many of them are attracted by the peaceful, unhurried way of life,

and seek the harmonizing spirit of traditional Chinese culture.

This image from Luc Schaedler’s movie “Watermarks.

Three Letters from China”,

which was released in 2013,

shows the disappearing spirit of frugality,

which nourishes rather than pillages landscapes.

In the film, three different visions of China’s rural problems were

merged with alluring views of its beautiful rural landscapes,

which to a great extent are the result of

small-scale farming that the contemporary government considers outdated.

When President Xi Jinping in late 2014 announced

his decision to resume Mao’s policy of rusticating intellectuals,

he thought about short-term outings

to make them understand life in the hinterlands

and bring their aesthetic pursuits in accordance with

the desires and expectations of the rural grassroots.

At that time, several art and eco-villages were already flourishing.

One example is multimedia artist and filmographer

Ou Ning’s experiment at Bishan village in Anhui province.

He and his family came to live there permanently.

They renovated some of the old buildings,

founded a bookstore, and established the Bishan Harvestical,

a yearly festival where artists and peasants

joined forces to trade manufactured artifacts,

artworks, and rural products.

Meanwhile, Ou Ning has moved to New York,

but other reconstruction experiments continue,

which will be the topic

of our next video.

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