As a former journalist and a social changer who wants to make the world better and more sustainable, I am always interested in sustainable development challenges in China.
While I worked as journalist, I primarily covered global politics, culture development challenges in China and India. I have read, published and edited numerous news reports on cultural development challenges. For example, I attended the first dialogue between China and Switzerland on architecture and edited this article 那些曾经被质疑的中国建筑，将来会不会名垂青史？ which was published on ReferencesNews.com in 2018.
Moreover, I was born and raised in a village in rural China, later I was educated and worked in capital cities like Wuhan, Beijing, New Delhi. I have gone through both rural life and urban life in modern China, which inspires me to have many critical thoughts on China’s the urban-rural divide, uneven distribution of resources, urban citizens’ discrimination toward people from rural areas, some problematic policies in terms of rural development in China. I once conducted an interview on “Ghost Towns” ---Under-occupied property developments in China. The phenomenon was observed and recorded as early as 2006 by writer Wade Shepard(I interviewed with him in Beijing, published a relevant article 美国作家游历中国“鬼城”：完全没人住的很少).
What is interesting is that this phenomenon was subsequently reported by news media over the decades, often cast in a negative light. However, news stories around the topic have been criticized as hasty judgment. Some critics said that ghost cities did materialize into economically vibrant areas when given enough time to develop, such as Pudong, Zhujiang New Town, Zhengdong New Area, Tianducheng and malls such as the Golden Resources Mall and South China Mall. While many developments failed to live up to initial lofty promises, most of them eventually became occupied when given enough time.
At that time, I did mention negative impacts of “ghost towns” in the original article with 3800 Chinese words. The part of negative aspects was even deleted when it’s published online due to complex reasons. I did not dive deeply to study this controversial phenomenon due to time and money limitation. I hope that I could able to further research on this kind of topic in the future.
Furthermore, by combining being a journalist covering culture with my program on international development at MIIS, cultural sustainable development in China is perfect field I would like to work on.
I have some bonds with Bishan Commune. I have interviewed with Ou Ning, the prominent Chinese artist, who launched his project, the Bishan Commune a few years ago for International Herald Leader which I worked for six years. I started to pay attention to Bishan Commune when I read “the UNESCO Global Report on Culture for Sustainable Urban Development” in the UNESCO Vietnam Office in Hanoi in the summer of 2019. The Report examines the contribution of culture to urban sustainability and addresses a set of themes on the role of culture in ensuring a quality urban environment for all and making policies comprehensive and integrated.
Ou Ning, Zuo Jing and others intellectuals dedicated their time and energy to revitalizing the Bishan commune, working to save the village from social and economic collapse. They advocated to clean the river, build a library, install streetlights and create a platform to attract villagers who are working in cities to return home. They organized two big cultural festivals called“Harvestival”, created a Bishan magazine, invited Nan Jing Xian Feng(Herald) Bookstore to open a chapter in Bishan. They encouraged students of Anhui University to research on traditional handcrafts in Yi Xian, Bishan. Bishan Commune tried to revitalize public life in rural China.
Like Ou Ning, I hated rural village when I was young because there are not those fancy jobs, facilities, entertainment, library, bookstores, public life and other resources in poor villages. We speak dialect, instead of mandarin. Therefore, I was discriminated and made jokes of by classmates from urban areas in university. Even after I lived in big cities for near a decade, people can not tell where my hometown is by my mandarin without accent.I still have no sense of belonging in cities. I also believe that following distinguished scholar and doer Yan Yangchu’s career to develop villages and it is intellectuals’ responsibility to return rural homeland so as to revitalize rural China. This is also one of my dreams.
To some extent, without the government's support and with criticism of raising the local land prices and making profits, Bishan Commune failed to build an utopia. Ou Ning moved to the US and worked in East Coast in the US.
Besides Bishan Commune, Yang Meizhu Street in the Qianmen area, Beijing is also a good example of how culture contributes to urban sustainability, which I would like to explore.
What is worthy to mention is that, rural villages in China currently are going through huge transition. In some villages, ancestral architecture had been torn down to build modern facilities like cinemas, the roller skating. In my hometown in Wuhan. A tourism company built a scenic destination on a local mountain. In the past, locals can go hiking in the mountain for free. However, nowadays we have to pay the entrance fee to enjoy the nature or locals can show their IDs to enter for free. The government at local township level, “copy-clone” /renovated houses and buildings along the main street into a signature Huizhou-style roof, with black tiles and upturned eaves. I cannot recognize my hometown after I return to China this summer. My parents have complicated feeling toward these changes happened to my hometown, which provokes my reflection on issues of preservation and development.
In a nutshell, I would love to further research and work on China’s sustainable development challenges. I greatly appreciate if I was given any opportunity to work on this topic.
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