Class Notes, Thursday

• Big Trends of the 18th Century
• 150 mil. -> 300 mil.: population doubled.
• What about the Qing empire allowed this level of population growth?
• Little Ice Age in Decline: good weather, more crops, etc.
• Rural Industry: Merchants, Tile Makers, Military, Household-sized enterprises. Sideline ("proto-industrial employments") occupations that allowed greater income per capita. More commercialization.
• Expansion & Land Reclamation
  
• North-West: subsidized farming in new areas. encouraged spread of population
• South-East: taking over Taiwan and farming intensively, at the expense of the natives.
• Lowland Reclamation: poulders. taking over lakes, rivers and other wetlands. Problems stemmed from the lack of water; people competed for a resource that had become more scarce because of their occupation of its space.
  
• Highland Reclamation: learned how to use steep mountains and hills to grow crops. Rice was not an option. Potatoes & Corn were grown on the hillsides. They were the "miracle crops". However, potatoes especially, depleted the minerals in the land rapidly, and erosion occurred.
  
• In the mid 18th century, people became so desperate for land that they reclaimed land that should not have been claimed for agriculture. Problems grew.
• Who recognized and attempted to deal with the mounting environmental issues from the mid 18th century levels of land reclamation?
• Qing Officials and other educated members of society attempted to deal with the issues that were overwhelming the people.
• Dunstan's viewpoint seems to be that there was potential for the officials to get things done and protect the environment. However, it fell upon the shoulders of the farmers to actually get things done.
• Crop Cycling, Natural Fertilizers (manure)
• Official's main goal was to prevent social unrest rather than trying to protect the environment. Some officials pushed for environmentalism, but most did not. Their jobs were not about helping the people, rather, it was about ensuring proper tax collection for the government, etc.
• Do we believe that the officials of 17th and 18th century China had an awareness of conservation?
• No. They worried about what they were forced to worry about due to social issues, but the environmental issues were so long-term in nature that it would not effect them during their lifetimes, so it was not their issue.
• The environment was seen as something to be exploited.
• Does Dunstan seem to believe that Chen actually cared about the environment? No.
• Dunstan is very cynical about the intentions of the Qing officials as far as the environment. She makes fun of them, and doesn't think that any of them have environmental issues in mind. It's disorganized, simplistic, unsystematic, etc. She implies that occasionally there was some environmental awareness, but it was usually an accidental sidenote.
• What does Dunstan seem to believe the officials worried about, if not the environment?
• Money, Order, Stability, Taxability, etc. Social problems. Human problems.
• Confucian trained officials were worried about human society, not the environment. The environment only mattered when it impinged upon or related to human concerns. On its own it was unimportant.
• Schoppa is of the mindset that the 18th century officials pushed for environmentally sound policies. Dunstan, by contrast, believes that any environmental care came as an accidental sidenote to other policies.
  
• Dunstan's sources are essays and things on state-craft. She reads them very carefully and looks for the concerns that motivated those writings.
• Were officials aware? What could they have done about it? If they weren't aware, why weren't they? Is there something between the idealistic and cynical viewpoints?
  

Source:
Dunstan, Helen. "Critical Thinking on Environmental Issues ant the State's Environmental Roles in Eighteenth-Century China." Sediments of Time: Environment And Society in Chinese History. Ed. Mark Elvin. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Save The Environment: Eat Less Meat

I'm not really sure where they were coming from when they declared that people should eat less meat. I suppose it makes sense, to a degree, but a single cow isn't as bad as a car all around. Cows don't use fossil fuels to move, nor do their emissions go on for the duration of a car's 'lifespan' (in as much as a car is alive), and, well, no.

Yes, it is probably healthier to eat less meat. But I'm not sure if they actually believe they'll reach the masses by saying this in a conference.

But... kudos for trying.

Restoring the Lake

Schoppa, Chapter 5

Now we move on to Chapter 5: "Restoring the Lake: Of Mud-Dredgers, Leeches, and Worm Officers, 1758-1809", in which things fall apart and are vaguely pieced back together.

"In many ways the eighteenth century- known generally as the height of traditional Chinese power and splendor- seems a watershed in the history of Xiang Lake." (120) Now, I'm not sure what a "watershed in the history" would be, but it sounds fascinating. Riveting image, unclear meaning. Perfect. Seems more like Elvin than Schoppa though.

"The preceding six centuries acquire the aura of a morality play; men seem almost larger than life: incarnations of vice who plotted maliciously, killed, and sized for self and models of virtue who worked tirelessly, preserved, and saved for others. Xiang Lake became the stage for grand battles between filiality and betrayal, obligation and irresponsibility, loyalty and surrender, chastity and impurity, and civic virtue and private greed." (120) I don't have commentary really, I just thought this was really cool. And "filiality" didn't come up in my firefox dictionary, so when I checked it was "bestiality" or "triviality", then firefox wasn't in my firefox dictionary, but fire fox was. Hrm. Oh firefox. Oh off-topic ramblings.

"In the decade 1759-1768, a number of leading figures from around the lake, led by Huang Yun... instigated action in the name of the public interest to protect the area from private nonagricultural threats." (121) But not agricultural threats, apparently. Brilliant, guys.

"The opposition's primary objection was that Ding "sought private interests with a black heart"; "not knowing the difference between life and death," Ding's activity "profits one household and harms ten thousand". This pointed stipulation of the clash between the public interest and private greed recalls Mao Qiling's dictum seventy years earlier that private interests (in that case, those of Sun Kaichen) could not serve as the standard for actions around the lake." (121-122) It's interesting that it's always one person leading the protests, while others sit back and watch, or blindly follow. Nobody has the drive or initiative to stand up for themselves... or maybe the few that do end up the leaders. It's a little odd, and a little confusing, but it seems like nobody cares but the occasional official.

"Though the issue of lake encroachment had always been basically an issue of public versus private interests..." (122) Gee, ya think?

"In 1768, continuing his efforts to restore the environment of and around the lake, Haung Yun, joined by unnamed petitioners, asked that the original dividing line between lake and mountain land be restored and that those living inside the lake land be cleared out. The prefect and magistrate, with the help of local leaders, began investigations. The survey of "lake-dwellers," completed in 1770, showed that 308 households were living in the lake land, an increase from the 210 households living there in the early sixteenth century. The inhabitants had increased almost 50 percent over a period of nearly 270 years." (123) The trouble is that they let anyone get away with living in the lake; it falls into the "give an inch, they'll take a mile" proverb, parable, whatever it's called. You can't let some people get away with it, or others will demand or assume that they can as well, and then it's like a snowball, it becomes a bigger and bigger problem. Well, vaguely like a snowball. Sorta. Not really.

"Encroaching on the lake was a risky business. If rains came, they might quickly inundate the developed land, destroying crops and flooding homes." (124) There were more issues than just these, but apparently the benefits for the individual outweighed the risks. Or else nobody thought about the risks until their home had been destroyed by a flood. It's not really clear, and we can't jump into the minds of eighteenth-century Chinese people yet.

"While Huang had asked that all encroachers and their property be removed, in effect calling for the absolute exclusion of all private claims on the lakeland, the decision of the local officials (ultimately corroborated by the emperor) carefully balanced public and private interests. The prefect indicated that many of the people had lived all their lives on the lake land and depended on it for their livelihood. If they were suddenly dispossessed, how would they live? And if, on the contrary, the land were recognized as private and the householders were required to pay back taxes, how could they produce the money? Either decision, the officials feared, might lead to social unrest, with the households joining together to fight for their interests." (125) because, of course, the inactive and essentially lazy Chinese people would suddenly bond together and get off their asses to protest something? I doubt it. I suppose I can see, vaguely, where they're coming from, but History says they'll just accept the governmental orders, or they'll kill themselves.

"Mao Qiling wrote the history of Xiang Lake primarily as a cautionary tale about encroachment on the lake; it praised the preservers and blamed the usurpers." (128) it's a pity not everyone believed that.

"The wretched state of the lake dikes and the continuing proliferation of illegal private outlets prompted Yu's concern. Both problems had been addressed earlier in the century, the latter, as we have seen, in 1719. Rectifying the state of lake dikes and openings had become the project of Zhao Yuziang and his son, Zhao Wijin..." (128-129) This issue was hardly new, and once again, only one person stepped up to do something. The actual citizens of the lake didn't care enough about their continued livelihood to actually do anything about their problems.

This is becoming yet another ridiculously long blog post. But it'll help with the paper to actually have my notes concentrated in one area rather than scribbled in the margins throughout the book. Plus, it gives me a chance to exercise my sarcasm. It needs to be taken out and used occasionally or it gets antsy and I become unnecessarily mean.

There's some more talk about the technicalities of the dikes vs. the sluicegates, and the fact that "worm" officials failed to do their jobs, etc, etc. It's a bit repetitive, and just says what the rest of the chapter already says.

I guess it's especially irritating to read this because it proves time and again that it takes an official working their arse off to get anything done. The people don't give a damn about their own livelihood; they'll live IN the lake if they damned well please and think they can get away with it be content to live in the lake and get rid of the water. It's moronic, and annoying, and I don't see any proof that the Chinese peasants weren't complete idiots.

Image & Remembrance

Schoppa Chapter 4

I suppose it's high time for me to actually catch up with the Schoppa blogs, especially because this is going to help me get my thoughts together for the paper, so, here we go. Some very far back-logged blogging. (Because you know you wanted more! BWAHAHAH!... no, really. xD)

Chapter 4 of Schoppa's book, "Image and Remembrance. 1644-1705" represents the transition from the Ming dynasty to the Qing dynasty.

"Xiang Lake was a reservoir, storing water to pour forth in drought-destroying streams. Xiang Lake was a source of food, of fish and plants pulled from the depths. Xiang Lake was a transporter to gravesites, tree-shrouded pavilions, and crumbling shrines. Xiang Lake was a source of pleasure, intensifying the giddiness of a wine-induced reverie." (89) The lake was a source of life for those around it; it offered many things to fulfill the needs of the townships that surrounded it.

"The lake, the river, the well became agents of death for the horror- and panic-stricken, to escape the fury of the Manchu army. The depths of the lake became the apartments of the dead, the corpses mingling with the tangle of water plants, then floating to the sunlit surface, where their stench, like nature's fury itself, destroyed every possible image of fragrance, leaving only the nauseating smell of death." (92) With the invasion of the Manchu, the lake was no longer a source of life, but rather a place of death; the view of nature shifted. It was a place to escape forever the rampaging armies of the fallen Ming and the ascending Qing.

"For most, escape meant traumatic flight, leaving home and most possessions to venture into an area less likely to experience the ravages of war. Becoming a refugee, however, was not easy... [(Sidenote: DUH. Thanks for stating the obvious, Schoppa.)] Away from home, how would one live? Away from home, how would one speak to villagers whose dialect (so different it might as well be a foreign tongue) might differ from village to village? Away from home in a culture in which outsiders were considered as threats or as nonpeople to be ignored, how would one cope? Only staring into the face of the specter of rape, pillage, and murder could the choice of flight become feasible." (94) This was not a fun time to be from Xiang lake, obviously.

"Many stayed to farm, fish, dig mud, carry on trade, and live as though the world around them were peaceful, ignoring the turmoil if it did not affect their own personal interests." (94). I'd like to point out that this is probably the key to the issue of environmental problems and everything that plagues China today. Nobody gives a damn, they stick their heads in the sand and pretend it's okay, because that's what Mao would want. Well, maybe not... but still. If people would stop ignoring the problems around them, in China and elsewhere, things could be better worldwide.

"Most important, however, was the growing disaffection [for the "administrator of the realm"] of the populace. The military had become omnipresent. The people were continually expected to provide more soldiers and send more provisions. Assaulted by the seemingly inevitable military plundering- some of the worst of which occurred around Xiang Lake and Long River near Fang Guo'an's garrison- the populace saw the confiscation of the wealth first of those who had thrown in their lot with the Manchus, then of the very wealthy Ming supporters, and finally of the commoners themselves." (96). The fringe group of Qing that were trying to hold their power just kept screwing up with the populace. They were doomed to failure and merely needed to get their acts together and accept it themselves. Things weren't going to turn around, and their constant failures and demands all but guaranteed that people would turn to the Ming.

Then the Qing fall, and the Ming take over. Yes, this was inevitable. It's also history, so we knew it was coming. No huge plot-twist here.

So, then we've got a bit about the poets that Schoppa is so enamored of, followed by the climax of the chapter: the Sun lineage's encroachment on the Lake. (OMG! Encroachers! With money! What do we do?!)

"The climactic attempt of the Sun lineage leaders to turn a public reservoir into a private preserve came in the early fall of 1689." (105) The Sun family continued to be self-serving and went so far as to slice the already-ruined Lower Xiang Lake in two via a dike that allowed them to reach the "county seat" with greater ease. Lazy bums. Mao Qiling took action, thankfully.

"Disgusted with the deciet of the Sun clique, he called for an immediate meeting of officials and people to discuss the problem. But even now, with this special emissary from the governor, there was only silence: no one would discuss the case. Mao returned briefly to Hangzhou for medical treatment but tried a few days later to sponsor a meeting; again no one came. A second attempt brought people together, but they simply sat and stared: those who knew about lake matters dared not set forth formal legal complaints. Even though the Sun's actions were endangering the livelihood of those irrigating from Lower Xiang Lake and ultimately would affect all irrigators, area people feared immediate retaliation by the overreaching Sun clique, whose arrogance before the community and officialdom apparently knew no limits." (106-107) Nobody would help Mao deal with the Sun. They were cowards who were terrified of confrontation and ultimately had nobody to blame for the ruination of the lake but themselves.

"The passivity of the Chinese around Xiang Lake may be charged to intimidation and fear, but it points even more to the immobility that stemmed from submission to authority, the trait inculcated in family training and through the various government ethical-political strategies that promoted officially prescribed virtue." (108).

I was going to put chapter 5 in here as well, but this is actually a very long response, so I think it may be more appropriate to put it into its own post.

Class Notes, Thursday

• Taiwan was controlled by the Dutch for a very short amount of time. But not the whole island.
• Ming Loyalists who fled to coastal regions during Qing invasion.
• Zheng Chenggong - one of the people who sought to take advantage of the Qing invasion and “Ming Loyalists” to forward his own political agenda. Qing forced people to move off the coast in the areas near Taiwan in order to fuck up his economy. Zhang had nobody to trade with.
• Qing conquest of Taiwan took place in the 1680s. Controversy is over whether people from mainland China were allowed to (or supposed to) go to Taiwan. As population exploded, mainlanders immigrated to Taiwan.
• Aborigines = “Mountain People” – considered not PC, it stemmed from them “taking to the hills” in order to avoid the people who encroached on their island. They originate from Polynesia. They resemble Filipino people more than Chinese. However, due to several generations together, the appearances aren’t so separate anymore.
• Initially the Han were not supposed to go to Taiwan. The Qing government actually tried to protect Taiwanese Aboriginal land rights. The Han “leased” land from aborigines, then they sublet it. This gave de facto ownership to the Han settlers.
• What kind of place did the Han encounter when they came to Taiwan?
• Disease-ridden; miasma of tropical disease, etc.
• It’s a tropical island; it was very overgrown.
• The land wasn’t agricultural.
• Deer and other animal populations declined sharply as the Han moved into the area. (Poor Elephants). There was a market for deer skins, the Dutch East India Company sold them to Japan. Since the Japanese were willing to pay exorbitant prices, the profits caused deer massacres. There was also trade in deer products between Taiwan and the coast of China. Deer Products traded to Han Chinese for Iron, Salt, and other things. Deer = Common Resource. This pillaging of the Deer causes the deer population to decline, and the Deer Products also disappear, making people unhappy. This trade was a huge source of profit to the Han, but was actually fairly damaging to the aborigines. Once there were no more deer to hunt, Commercial Agriculture rose as an important economy.
• Aborigines had two choices: assimilate or retreat. “Raw Aborigines” retreated into the hills to avoid assimilation into commercial agricultural system of the Han. “Cooked Aborigines” adopted the Han system of intensive agriculture. {This can be used to tie common resource issues into longer term social and economic issues}

Class Notes, Tuesday

• Period we’re talking about was during Qing Empire.
• Qing is Manchu, they took over new regions such as Tibet, Shinjian, and other empiric extremities.
• Geographical extent of Chinese empire doubled during the Qing. (150 mil->300 mil) The geographical expanse of China grew to the extent that China actually was not overpopulated.
• Chinese expansion was Militaristic, not settlers moving individually. They charged forward with the intent of building a great empire.
• Manchu were definitely different from the Han Chinese. But they were so influenced by the Chinese emperors of old that they became ‘sinified’, like the Chinese. But the new theory of sinification is that it never actually took place for the Manchu. The Qing empire was an amalgamation of ruling styles; they used ideas from everyone, from the Han to other multi-ethnic groups that influenced them.
• “How does Nationalism effect the environment in China?”
• Created national identity. Big theme of book: construction of national identity.
• Where did the national identity come in?
• Forcing people to identify with the national government/ethnicity will lead them to follow the group.
• They integrated the Muslims; they let them keep their religion, but they favored certain groups over others.
• “Beg”: Muslim term, Qing gave “Beg” title to key Muslims.
• “Jasak”: Mongol term, Qing gave “Jasak” title to key ____.
• Imperial system trying to tie in huge variety of ethnic groups.
• Qing did not enforce assimilation into the Qing ethnic group. They just required that the outer groups look to the Qing gov’t for leadership. This allowed them to manipulate identity and maintain control at the local levels.
• "Does Chinese History (or any history) mirror its environment?”
• Cultural shifts stemming from climate change.
• Would he say that climate change is the most important socioeconomic factor of China?
• No. Claiming it’s merely climate change eliminates other social changes.
• Geographical Determinism; could play a role in nationalism. People identified strongly with the location of their birth.
• Environmental Determinism; cold play a role in nationalism. Peoples livelihoods were determined entirely by the environmental.
• Determinism is a theory that explains everything in monocausal terms. This lacks the complexity required to actually explain anything. Leaves certain people/things out of history. Takes out the ability of people to make their own history, deprives people of Agency.
• Manifest Destiny; parallels between China’s Qing history and North America within this time period.
• The Turner Hypothesis: The Frontier is the shaping force of American History. European expansion is the key. Very euro-centric.
• Expansion of an empire westward was just as much a part of Chinese history during the 1700s as in America during roughly the same period.
• GLOBAL EXPANSION during the 1700’s. Russia, US, China, etc.
• Frontierland Colonies designed to milk resources from the frontier and support the motherland. (wohoo). Military Agrarian Societies.
• These colonies were meant to be both self-sufficient and to be a place to get resources and send them back to the capital. Soldiers who farm. Cheaper for the government to support their troops that way.
• Agricultural Colonies, in practice, were a place to exile their criminals to, a place where soldiers were sent for a bit until they deserted, and whichever common people they could convince or force to go out there. Merchants went to get and make money, etc. Expanded trade routes. Deserting soldiers would rent/lease their land, rather than giving up their land rights.
• Government setups for soldiers often attracted Civilians who would come in and fill the gap left by the soldiers
• Still required huge investments from the gov’t in order to create the areas where an agrarian society was possible. They had to pay to clear land and set up the (water system). Public Good & Free Rider issues. Nobody but the Gov’t was willing to pony up the money to pay for this. In the 19^th century, the Qing government had other priorities, so they stopped investing in the inland region and the area fell apart.
• “Overall, what did the Qing expansion do to the environment of Central Asia?”
• Deforestation (“But there weren’t a lot of trees in this part of Asia”)
• Overgrazing (“there might not have been a lot of trees, but there was a lot of grass”) - huge flocks of sheep and goats would wander through an area and devour the grass. Overgrazing was a huge problem in central Asia during this time.
• Disease (“the contact between central Asian populations- like Mongols- and Chinese populations led to the introduction of things like smallpox.”) the spread of diseases decimated the groups that had not acquired an immunity to the disease.
• The type of farming that they were doing required a huge amount of governmental support, and when the gov’t withdrew their support, the system fell apart.

This Endangered Planet: A Chinese View

I was getting paid to tag videos on this site, and I noticed this title. I haven't watched it all yet, so I don't have any commentary, but it seemed interesting.

Stripping at Funerals, a new trend?

So, this has nothing to do with the environment, but it's really funny.

Apparently a Taiwanese guy hired a stripper for his dad's funeral. I'd say more, but that's about all the article says. It's got absolutely nothing to do with the environment, but I stumbled across it, and decided it was giggle worthy.

Of course, that article led me to this article. Apparently there was a spree of strippers at funerals to boost attendance? This is pretty amazing. My night just got a lot funnier.

Obligation & Death, Strange Fruit

Schoppa, Chapters 2 & 3

- The Mongols invaded. Things were not good. People of Xiang Lake prayed that Li Di would protect them again. He did not.

- "Wei's treatment of human activity is remarkable: the world of nature is for human use and profit- a contrast to earlier (and later) descrptions that render humanity inconsequential amid the awesome power of nature." (Schoppa 41)

- "Finally, during Wei's retirement, the situation had reached the point where area elders petitioned the county seat to clear away households that had reclaimed the lake and to figure an appropriate fine of grain per mu of reclaimed land to be placed into an official fund for relief purposes" (Schoppa, 43)

- Of course, with the construction going on around Xiang Lake at this time, flooding became even more of a problem than it had been before. "The irony of the situation is readily apparent: Xiang Lake could have a distinguished array of upholders of the lake- Yang, Zhao, Gu, Guo, Zhang, Wei- whose energy and diligence preserved the lake as a reservoir. But government decisions to resolve another water control problem, seeming perhaps as arbitrary to the Xiang Lake community as nature's might itself, placed the effective long-term functioning of the lake in jeopardy and cut off all access to the lake water for some." (Shoppa, 44)

- "Increasingly serious for the viability of the lake as a reservoir was the level of encroachment reached around the lake by the 1460s. In most cases, encroachers simply planted rice or lotuses in a small area near the shore that had grown shallow over time. In some cases sheep were pastured or willows planted on dikes. Both practices eroded the dikes, making leakage or outright breaks more likely... taken together, the amount of the lake destroyed by encroachment was 7,318 mu (over 1,100 acres), almost 20 percent of the original size of the lake" (Schoppa, 46). Alright, time for a small rant... How hard of a concept is this? Yes, we have a whole pie sitting in front of us. Yes, everyone wants some. But I'm just gonna take a small nibble, nobody will notice. Then the next person does that, and the next, and so on until you have nothing left and everyone is screwed. I mean, really? It's not that difficult of a concept. Mess with your neighbors and you mess with yourself. Destroying the lake destroys your own livelihood. Geez.

- We then move on to talk about the Sun tyranny and other such issues. While interesting, they're not terribly important. Well, they are, but not for what I'm focusing on. It would be easier to focus on something, of course, if I had pondered it, but I didn't. So I'm going to arbitrarily claim that I'm not focusing on the Sun's tyrannical control of the lake. Nope. Not I.

Moving right along, we're onto Chapter 3. Wohoo! Of course, saying the Sun lineage is not my focus was not my most brilliant plan, considering Chapter 3 could be retitled "The years in which the Sun lineage were masters of the lake"...

- "The historical record indicates that in 1551 plum trees in Xiaoshan county bore oranges. It was a bad portent: an agricultural handbook explained that when "trees produce strange fruit, there would in reality come a great calamity." More specifically, it warned: "When trees produce what is inappropriate, the farmers and all the people will be robbed."(Schoppa, 64)... and so on. Obviously they'll be robbed of the fruit they expected. If you have plum trees and you're expecting a plum crop, but you get stuck with a load of oranges, you're robbed of profits. Though if oranges are more valuable than plums, and you don't mention the oranges are from plum trees, you might get to rob others, though the "portent" still holds true in this case. Someone gets robbed.

- The Emperor's New School just started on TV. This doesn't relate in the slightest to China, but it means that it's friggin late. I'm not going to be very awake in class at this rate. Oh well.

- "Proper timing for encroachment was of the essence. Petty encroachers dug illegal drainage holes in the dikes at night. For more widespread intrusions into the lake, choosing a time when official attention was diverted to other problems allowed encroachers to present those around the lake with various faits accomplis."(Schoppa, 70) I had no idea what that word meant, so I had to look it up...

- Then the Sun bastards build that stupid bridge because things are starting to fall apart, and it signals the beginning of the end for Xiang Lake.... okay, not quite, but still. That stupid bridge does mess things up.

Earth Hour & China

In what is apparently a worldwide movement, people around the globe are shutting off their lights and various other electronics for an hour tonight.

Well, while that's all fine and dandy, and sounds, honestly, a little bit silly, apparently even China plans to be involved. And really, if China is involved, it officially becomes a little bit cooler. Because China doesn't seem to really give a damn.

So... ... we'll see how it goes and what actually happens.

Micah-isms

Rather than actually blogging today, I'm just going to post some highlights of class discussions: (and by "highlights of class discussions", I actually mean "silly things Micah has said")

- "I'm insane. That's why I think I get emails from supermodels when I actually don't..."
- "If you don't know the difference between boys and girls you should take another class that they should have given you in 5th grade."
- "They're taping my conversation! They're taping me! The aliens... when I come to class with tinfoil on my head, you know I've lost it."
- "I can just watch the news and see people getting shot. Why would I watch a movie where people pretend to get shot?"
- "You can't password-protect a lake. You can't just say "this is a firewall". You would literally have to make a giant wall of fire."
- "Look at me! I love you all, and that is why I've given you all wireless internet!"

The Beginnings, 1112-1214: Four Servants of the People

Schoppa, Preface & Chapter I

Schoppa's Song Full of Tears represents a Microhistory of China. It focuses on Xiang Lake, "a six-thousand-acre reservoir ten miles from scenic West Lake in the city of Hangzhou" (xi) It isn't an important location, just a place to start. But that doesn't mean nothing happened there. Lots of key events occurred.

Some events, of course, were more interesting than others.

Schoppa, of course, seems to feel the need to lead each chapter with a "view" of the lake, and then throw a bit of poetry into the mix. Poetry was a key aspect of Chinese society; understanding poetry was a sign of culture, and a part of the civil service exams.

In Chapter I we are introduced to patriarchal lineages, key groups in the culture of the lake. Lineages were important economically and culturally; political and local leaders frequently came from lineage lines. The same names recurred throughout history.

Xiang lake became a more important area when, "In 1127, with the establishment at Hangzhou of the refugee Song court, Hangzhou became the imperial captisal. The city's changed status transformed Xiaoshan county into an area of great strategic importance for the court." (17) This importance would wax and wane through time as political groups shifted. But it is not the main point of Schoppa's work.

(Schoppa, by the way, is a much better, if cheesier, writer than Elvin. He manages to follow his topic... which is great progress by way of authors).

The struggles experienced at Xiang Lake for thousands of years are explained in a few sentences: "At the crux of the problem was the relationship between population, land, and water. Water nourished the rice paddies, which in turn supported people. As the population increased, land per capita decreased and more land was sought; but as land was reclaimed and increased, water to nourish the rice paddies decreased." (19) Essentially, the more people the were, the greater the demand for land and water. The more demand for land, the more likely people were to encroach on the lake, and the less water would be available to go around. When there wasn't enough water to go around, there was no point in having the land because crops could not be grown to nourish the people, so fewer people would survive to need the land and water. Thrown into this mix were the officials who sought to regulate usage (such names as Yang, Zhao, Gu and Guo) . They were key in the first years of this history.

Anyway, Chapter I is really just setting the stage for the rest of the book.

The Taihu Lake Crisis

Before even reading the article, I was curious about where Taihu Lake was. I'm still not very clear, but a page from an online tour guide seemed to explain it vaguely well. But then google maps solved the mystery.

It sounds like the government (of this area at least) is cracking down on industry. And some industry is actually trying to improve. Hopefully this will lead to actual improvement rather than a crash of industry in favor of less expensive industries. (Wow, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense...)

Anyway, it's good to see that there's improvement being attempted.

Solar Energy Firms Leave Waste Behind in China

With an entirely ironic article, the Washington Post has written about the pollution caused by solar energy firms in China.

To sum it up: "Green" industry in China is responsible of blatant pollution. Instead of dealing with the highly toxic byproducts of the silicon used in Solar Panels, they're just dumping it on the ground in the nearby town. It's dangerous to humans, prevents plants from growing, and is just some really nasty stuff.

"Shi, chief executive of Pro-EnerTech, a start-up polysilicon research firm in Shanghai, said that there's such a severe shortage of polysilicon that the government is willing to overlook this issue for now." (page 2). That's just wrong. The government (and the people) should be doing something about it.

"Made from the Earth's most abundant substance -- sand -- polysilicon is tricky to manufacture. It requires huge amounts of energy, and even a small misstep in the production can introduce impurities and ruin an entire batch. The other main challenge is dealing with the waste. For each ton of polysilicon produced, the process generates at least four tons of silicon tetrachloride liquid waste." (page 2) That means that 80% of their production is hazardous waste, and they're not disposing of it safely. EIGHTY PERCENT of what they create is thrown out into the environment to kill plants and sicken people.

Instead of whining about how they can't go outside because of the pollution, they need to do something about it. The people in China collectively outnumber their governmental officials. They can force the government's hand.

Water and the Costs of System Sustainability

Elvin, Chapter 6

Subtitled: "Dihydrogen Monoxide and China", because having a silly name like that made it interesting.

Actually, I think by Chapter 6, Elvin had perhaps warmed up a bit to this whole "writing a book" thing and was getting better at making interesting points.

To sum up a few major points:
- The upper class was the only group within cities to get the good water; the lower class people were further downstream where there was a higher concentration of pollutants. (116)
- The "controlled flooding" that seemed to happen fairly frequently in the nineteenth century led to actual battles; nobody wanted to be on the side that flooded. (116)
- Efforts to maintain the elaborate irrigation systems were solid; everyone got in on it because everyone would suffer if things went wrong. (118)
- Maintaining China's irrigation and water-control systems was expensive in terms of labor, money, and resources. (119)
- "And while hydraulic systems are hydrologically unstable, they are also economically inherently static." (Elvin, 120) ~ Just... it's a funny sentence. He's so serious, and it comes out as absurd. It's the best thing he says in the entire chapter.
- Dredging was necessary to keep water flowing. (122)
- There was fierce competition for water; China's environment could only offer so much, and there was either too much or too little in most places.
- Elvin then uses "faustian", a term that the Oxford English Dictionary defines rather uselessly.
- Page 124 can be summed up rather simply: Despite the fact that better water-management systems existed, it was too expensive in terms of manpower and money to change technologies, even if the new system would be more effective.
- Also, there would not have been such sediment problems if they hadn't deforested China. Just had to say it.
- Maintenance of these systems though, as defunct as they might be, was a community effort and a matter of survival. (124).
- "Essentially, what had been happening was that the increased loads of sediments carried by the Miju River, because of land clearance and deforestation upstream, had raised its bed, and made it necessary both to keep dredging it and building the dikes higher and higher... by some time not too far into the Qing dynasty, a substantial proportion of the course of the Miju immediately south of the gorge was running above the level of the rooftops of houses on the surrounding land, as it still does today." (126) This is the most interesting thing that Elvin says; due to mankind's meddling with nature, a riverbed was raised above the surrounding land rather than cutting a new gorge or canyon into the earth as would normally happen.

Honestly, that's about as far as I got. I think Elvin did a much better job at getting interesting information across this chapter, or else I just got used to his repetitive system of speech. Whichever.

China's Hottest New Export: Storms of Deadly Pollution

In this article from the UK Guardian as well as one from Environmental Graffiti, we discover that dust storms in China pollute Korea.

Interesting. How does this work?

Dust storms start in the Gobi Desert, pick up pollutants on their way East, and cross the Yellow Sea to Korea. Poor Korea, they don't even get to kill themselves, the Chinese are already making sure they die of poison.

"Though the storms have been occurring for many years, they have increased in both toxicity and frequency in recent years. Some have blamed this on global warming effects, but a more likely explanation is China’s rise as an economic and industrial powerhouse." (environmentalgraffiti.com)

It's apparently responsible for the deaths of about 165 Koreans per year. Ironically, the same winds which sent these storms East to Korea have apparently cleared up the air around Beijing.

War and the Logic of Short-term Advantage

Elvin, Chapter 5

On page 89, Elvin mentions: "The horse appeared some time probably in the early second millenium BCE... Divination based on the shoulder blades of large animals, or the undershells of turtles, and interpreting the cracks that appeared when they were pierced with a heated instrument.... The technique was most refined along the east coast. There was thus no single key factor that emerged in one priviledged place." (Elvin, 89)

Now, perhaps I'm wrong, but I think this makes absolutely no sense. What does the domestication of the horse in China have to do with divination by piercing hard parts of animals with hot rods, and then what do both of those have to do with military advantage? Seriously, Elvin just wrote whatever came to mind, didn't he? His next paragraph begins with "Let us anchor these comments in some evidence" (Elvin, 90) and he still fails to anchor anything in evidence.

P. 90: "It also instructed subordinate states/ That their enfeoffment was good fortune's basis", firstly, why on earth would he spend a whole page mentioning the rhyme scheme of the poetry and his system for marking it if he isn't going to use it. Secondly, the definition of enfeoffment as in the Oxford English Dictionary. (Wow, they're as bad as Elvin...)

On a slightly more serious and less rant-y note, I'm mostly confused about where Elvin is taking this. It feels as though he's cramming a lot of non-sequiturs into one chapter.

There seems to be a vague thread of logic that he's following, most notably that the rise of the agrarian city led to the rise of militarization, which led to the concept of war. At least, I think that's what he's trying to say. The key phrase seems to be "the militarized urban-agrarian state". But where the domestication of horses in China and the divination via animal bones fit in, I still don't know.

No More Plastic Bags?

Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiits News Article Time kids! Today's article is a feature about the plastic bags in China! (ZOMG! I think Ari might be rubbing off on me in a bad way... or else it's just the fact that it's 1:21 am...) It relates to the last article I posted about Factories closing in general.

China's Biggest Plastic Bag Maker Closes After Ban

There were, of course, a half dozen articles about this "shocking" news. I don't really see how it's shocking though. I suppose the surprise is more rooted in the fact that China is doing something than the fact that it's a factory closing when its product is banned.

I'm not sure what it is, particularly about these "ultra-thin" bags (which are referred to in one of the articles as the source of a company closure) that makes them bad. Is it that the processing makes them non-recyclable or is particularly harsh on the environment via chemicals? Because it would seem that "ultra-thin" means "less plastic per bag" which would be a good thing, wouldn't it? Because less plastic per bag means that there's more product for less resource.

I suppose it's probably the chemical thing, though these articles don't actually clarify. Darn it. But it is apparently, a worldwide issue. Hmm... I shall have to look into this.

Factory Migration

The Wall Street Journal: Factories Closing in Southern China

Cracking down on environmental and labor issues is forcing factories to close down. Admittedly, what you get from the Wall Street Journal is going to be financially focused, but it is in there. What are the long term consequences going to be?

Is the pollution going to spread elsewhere, or will it genuinely get better? What about the price of goods? I'm curious to see.

Humans v. Elephants: The Three Thousand Years War

Elvin, Chapter 2

First off, I have to say that I love the title. It sounds hugely important and very fancy. Indeed, the subject of the chapter is interesting. It's a pity the writing is a bit dry and circumspect.

Elephants are hardly the only animal to suffer through generations of farmers struggling against nature, trying to find some sort of balance that allows them to eat. Unfortunately, the events related in this chapter were hardly about balance; it was all about surviving. The Chinese farmers didn't care if the Elephants went extinct; they merely cared if their crops would survive or not.

It's not that the individual's attitude today is all that different, but there are a lot more conservationist groups that would get in the way.

Landmarks and Time-marks

Elvin, Chapter 1

Boxy China (p.4) looks like a confusing apartment complex, but does successfully make a point.

Page 7's discussion of the sale of children during economic crises is interesting; obviously it happened, but what was the result when nobody could afford to buy children?

The Retreat of the Elephants

Introductory Remarks

"classical Chinese culture was as hostile to forests as it was fond of individual trees." (Elvin, xvii)

On page xxiii, Elvin seems to be suggesting that Western influence is unimportant?

The "Introductory Remarks" are confusing and seem in general to be an overwhelming and rather over-complicated form of a table of contents. I mean, if we're going to read the whole book, then this section really doesn't have a unique purpose; the table of contents or index could have done the work in a far more comprehensible way.

No More Disposable Chopsticks?

What with SAGA suddenly switching over to "asian" dishes which include disposable bamboo chopsticks, I found this particularly entertaining. If a cafeteria that's trying to go "green" can't even keep up with China... we're not in good shape.

NPR: Bring Your Own Chopsticks to China

Also, though I'm not particularly experienced with wood, I've always been under the impression that even these "quickly regenerating" sorts of trees that they speak of don't grow back that fast, and I doubt that they're replanting at the same pace as they're cutting them down.

I didn't realize China had much forest left though... I hear more about the South American rainforests being chopped down for cows than any trees in China. Hmm... interesting.

Moving along, I happened to be looking around at the rest of this site, and I spotted a "featured blog" called The Carrot Revolution. Lo and behold, the latest post features Mao. While not precisely environmental, it is entertaining.

New Natures

Weller, Chapter 3

Linguistically, it's interesting that ziran is "nature", considering that there are so many other words (as we discovered in Chapter 2) that can represent nature. Of course, I had no idea who on earth the Jesuits were (besides being a Christian group), so I had to look them up.

On p.46, the excerpt from White's opinion that the environment was merely there for human exploitation is crazy. Within the Bible (something all Christians should be working from) God tells Adam that he is to care for God's other creations (animals, plants, etc.). Considering it to be something that is to be exploited is actually really strange.

The Great Leap Forward seems to mark the point where China began disregarding nature/the environment in favor of human superiority. Even with the more advanced technologies, they lacked the philosophical environmentalism that shows up from time to time in Western culture.

Obviously nobody can agree either on man's relation to nature, or which word (tian & ziran seem to be in the lead) is best.

Night of the living dead fish

Weller, Chapter 2

Chinese Words for "Nature":
ziran: "self-evidently"+"spontaneously". The most recent word for nature, though not directly related to the western ideas; this is more along the lines of "within something's nature", I think.

tian: "Tian comes closest to the meaning of nature as an inherent force directing the world" (Weller, 21).

sanshui: "mountains and water", far closer to the Western concept of nature than most of these.

benxing: "the inherent quality of something" (Weller, 23)

Of course, with so many ideas of nature, it's clear that there will be different ideas about how man can (or should) interact with it. Most of the concepts discussed in chapter 2 feature religion and nature; Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, and Fengshui each have their own concepts of man's role in nature. It's more than a little confusing.

Also, the huoyu and dongchong xiacao sound completely disgusting. Just had to say it. I don't think I could bring myself to eat that, even to be polite.

What Am I?

I am a blog that has been created to earn participation points in my Chinese Environmental History course. I am not something that is meant to be taken out of context, or considered to be an authority on anything.

For, if I were authoritative, I would be a book, rather than a blog.

So, as a blog, I ask that you remember that I am not always right, nor am I always unbiased, and I'm likely to be rather awkward at times. Especially if you're not in my author's class.

My author, by the way, is Erin. Probably the only person in the class who is odd enough to write from the perspective of her blog.

And that, my friends, is all for now.