We're excited to welcome Cheng Li, one of our former students and currently a PhD candidate at Yale University in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures. His research intersects with modern Chinese literature, the environmental humanities, and environmental history. The title of his presentation as you can see is Modern Chinese Environmental Challenges. In the first part of this lecture, Cheng Li offers a brief overview of the environmental history of modern China from the late Qing era to the present; describing the devastating impacts of famine, flooding, deforestation, and drought. He then discusses key themes from the environmental literature of modern China which have galvanized an emerging ecological consciousness in the world's most populous country. This talk provides an excellent overview of key ecological issues facing China in our present moment. We hope you will enjoy it. This lecture will discuss China's environmental challenges. We'll first explore China's environmental history, then we'll move to the key themes of modern Chinese environmental literature and film, and finally, we'll examine some representative works. When it comes to modern Chinese environmental history, we usually start from the middle of the 19th century during the late Qing era. Ancient China, saw famine that caused millions of deaths because of drought and floods, especially in Northern China. In fact, the story about environmental degradation has a long history in China. Environmental historian Mark Elvin argues that China has a 3,000-year war against nature. For three millennia China has suffered serious deforestation, famine, and drought, and ancient China is only part of the historical trajectory. In the Republican era, equal degradation continued and even became worse when military conflict arose. We'll examine the Yellow River and Yangtze River's flood. In 1938, Chiang Kai-shek the top leader of China broke the dyke of the Yellow River to stop the Japanese enemies from moving forward. This man-made flood has caused a serious pain for local residents, almost one million people lost their lives. Yet in the Yangtze River in 1931 in Wuhan which is actually the epicenter of coronavirus which was firstly widely observed in 2019. Due to the flood in 1931, poor families had to sell their babies to make living, the poor by the brand of the natural disaster. In 1949 Mao came into power. There are three major movements Great Leap forward, Four Pests Campaign, and Greening the Motherland. Will examine them one by one. Mao launched a war against nature, according to Judith Shapiro. Judith Shapiro argues that Mao rejected both Chinese tradition and modern Western science, regarding nature as a utilitarian object to be shaped and exploited. No local knowledge was fully ignored. Recently people began to have a more impartial and balanced way of the Mao era. Mao era scientists actually had a connection to western science. They knew the discussions of DDT is instead of using chemicals and fertilizers that promoted biological control of insects which appear to be more environmentally friendly advanced than the West. Scholars also began to notice the public health dimension of environmental alternations that is getting rid of the snails. Snails are types of worms that made people unable to work. People in Mao era used water and fire to eradicate snails. It turns out this campaign was highly successful during the Great Leap Forward and even more successful during the Cultural Revolution. This discovery is cross counter-intuitive given that previously people consider the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution as the period of chaos and death. Actually, Mao era scientists endeavor to protect pandas at this time as well. Policymakers felt a sense of national pride and duty to protect the species that were unique to the China. Panda as iconic figure of China was well protected during the Mao era. Now we have a more balanced way of Mao era China, we should consider both equal degradation of Judith Shapiro as well as the three scholar's work on the scientific farming, firm house, and animal protection. After Mao passed away China began its open-up and reform when Deng Xiaoping came into power. Economic development has urbanized a vast region of China. In the 1950s, 20 percent of the people living in the city, in the 2000s around 50 percent of the population living in the city. Given that China has 1.3 billion people 50 percent of it is a really stunning number. China began to build Three Gorges Dam in 1994. The dam was supposed to generate power, adjust water soil and stop the flood. The effectiveness of the dam is still debated. Recently the flood of the Yangtze River reflects that limitation of them. This project has caused dramatic environmental alternations. In addition, more than one million people have been forced to migrate because water would flood the region after then was being built. Finally, I would like to discuss China's role in Africa and the world. China at large has built a Road Initiative in 2013 aiming to increase its influence of the globe including Africa. Is China a new colonizer in Africa? The answer is yes and no. a professor at UCLA has done remarkable fieldwork in Africa. He claims that China indeed extracts natural resources, like minerals in Africa. However, compared with the British and French colonizers in the 18th and 19th century China focus on the long-term benefits. The Chinese build railways and roads to help local residents. At the same time, they also focused on the long-term rewards. Therefore we need to situate China's environmental impacts on the globe from a more balanced perspective to consider both its long-term effect and the short-term goals. Right now we are going to cover some key literary works in modern China's environmental literature. The first one is Shen Congwen and Border Town. Shen Congwen is considered to be one of the greatest modern Chinese writers. Regional culture and identity play a much bigger role in his writing, published in 1934 transformers Border Town depicts a serene natural environment in the ethnic mural region in China's South in a rural setting. The story depicts two brothers fall in love with a young girl almost at the same time. Realizing that he cannot succeed in chasing the young girl, the elder brother has departed and accidentally killed himself. The younger brother feels guilty about his brother's death and leaves the town. The young girl at the end of the novel is waiting for the younger brother to come back. Situated in a rural setting, the peaceful natural landscapes starts in sharp contrast to the chaotic wartime environment outside. In the 1930s China was suffering a military conflict from the Japanese invasion. Under Mao, the Chinese themselves, the natural landscape depicts are a distinctive dimension of nature as we can see from this episode. "Wind and sun had tanned the growing girl's skin, the eyes resting on her green hills as clear as crystal. Nature is her mother and her teacher making her innocent, lively, and untamed as some small wild creature." As clear nature serves other healing factor and cultivate a gentle mild and innocent personality of the young girl and portrays a serene and pastoral-like pattern. It further shows that the simplicity and vitality of rural life function as an alternative to wartime chaos. The second novel I'm going to talk about is Jiang Rong's famous novel Wolf Totem. In China, the novel was first to receive at the reflection of the height of the cultural revolution. After it has been translated, the environmental dimension of the novel is highlighted. The novel has been translated into more than 30 languages and is a typical example of world literature. The novel itself is semi-autobiographical. Chen Zhen was similar to the author himself Jiang Rong who was sent to rural Inner Mongolia when he was young during the Cultural Revolution. Other Han Chinese, he began to become fascinated with wolves because of all their volatility, determination, and vitality. His love for the wolves, is closer to Inner Mongolia who regard wolves as spiritual and even holy. Yet the leaders of the Han Chinese regard wolves as a threat because they hunt sheep and other livestock. Finally, the wolves are killed by the Chinese. The novel dramatizes two different versions as seen in the natural landscape between Han Chinese and Inner Mongolians. It is also a story that can be found elsewhere in the world, for example in the United States, Native Americans have different versions of nature from European settlers. In this regard John Snow's novel allows us to see how the incoming dominant groups affect and erodes indigenous understandings of the natural landscape. Karen Thornber from Harvard argues that there's ambiguity between the protectionist changes, actions, and his attitudes towards nature. In the novel he is deeply fascinated by the wolves, however, the protectionist admiration of wolves does not stop him finally killing the young wolves. His intoxication with wolves and assistance on the understanding of these animals come at the expense of the well-being and life itself. In other words, there is tension between the real actions and their attitudes. The third book I'm going to be talking about is Yan Lianke's The Passage of Time situated in a village in Hunan Province in the middle part of China. The novel dramatizes how local farmers suffer from soil erosion and are doomed to death. Although leaders from four generations try to find various ways to fight against soil erosion they all fail. The farmers cannot live more than 30 years old because of the pollution. Soil chateau lot pound what Princeton Professor Rob Nixon calls small violence. When we talk about violence we usually consider crossfire, gang shooting, and robbery as violence. In fact, according to Rob Nixon, environmental degradation such as soil pollution in the novel toxic drift and climate change can also be regarded as violence that is called slow violence. It has attritional, invisible, and enduring. Slow violence occurs gradually and out of sight but its delayed destruction is often dispersed across time and space. Now, what dramatizes slow violence by using a flashback at the beginning of the novel the leader or the force generation village tries to find clean water but fails to solve soil pollution. At the end of the novel, the first-generation leader is born. The flashback shows not only how inevitable but also how tragic that death is demonstrating the effect and trauma of slow violence. Finally, in the past decade, China's air pollution becomes a very serious problem. The photo shows the air of Tiananmen square in consecutive 10 days in Beijing. It shows that the air is only clear for one or two days. In most cases, the sky is like this is just murky, full of polluted particles. The Chai Jing documentary explores China's air pollution in depth. Chai Jing was a journalist of China Central Television. Her documentary under the dome had triggered public attention, attracting meanings of this within a week. Under the Dome uncovers underlying social and political problems in China especially energy problems and how Chinese state-owned enterprises refused to make further reforms to use clean energy. In many ways Chai Jing's documentary is comparable to Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth and Rachel Carson's Silent Spring like An Inconvenient Truth which also shows we're responses. Chai Jing this documentary records will bureaus actions you've seen that view as well protecting live engagements with host in the documentary like Carson, Chai Jing also was to trigger public awareness and attention of the Chinese environmental degradation. The documentary is an immediate success probably realizing its political implications of mass mobilization. It was taken down by the Chinese government within a week. I love to invite you in to watch two episodes and Under the Dome. Please keep in mind we're narratives strategies are used to represent the air pollution in the documentary do feel that effective.
