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.