Chinese poets lament environmental degradation
The voices of Chinese poets are rarely loud, but when they speak, their conviction is powerful and they share a voice on one issue: the environment.
Actually, they do not label themselves environmentalists. The concept they use is Nature, which they mostly identify with Taoism. Our universe is made up of Heaven, Man and Earth, expounds Taiwan-based poet Yu Kuang-chung. When you destroy Heaven and Earth, then Man has no space for existence.
"In the past century, we have been destroying the civilization bequeathed to us by our ancestors," bemoans Yang Jian, who was just named "Poet of the Year" at the Media Awards. He recalls the mining area where he grew up. "The mountains were blanketed with azalea. Now it's a mess."
Life was poor then, he admits, but "poverty is not a shame". Nowadays, people desire so many material things and use them as a yardstick for happiness. "Industrialization and urbanization have caused the loss of our most valuable things. We are losing our roots. It's not just China's tragedy, but that of our globe. Urban buildings don't have roots. They are made of cement."
Yu Jian grew up near Dianchi Lake in Yunnan province. "I swam in it and drank from it. I wrote many poems to eulogize it. But when I read out the poems now, young people think I fabricated the scenes. They have never seen the lake clean and pristine."
Yu, who received the ecology award, has penned many elegies for his hometown lake. His nostalgia and loneliness seep out from his rugged lines. "The Tao follows Nature," he quotes as his principle. "This may be a conservative and outdated stand, but paradoxically I'm seen as an avant-garde."
Yu Jian used to revel in the scenery depicted in classic poems. But that kind of harmony between man and nature is hard to find now. In 1979, he ventured out of Yunnan for the first time. He followed the route taken by ancient scribes. Twenty years later, he took the same journey and found that many of the scenes had vanished. "The water level on the river is so high that thousands of years of civilization are submerged."
When he brought up the topic of cutting down the rain forest to make way for rubber trees in Xishuangbanna in southern Yunnan, his voice was tinged with sadness. "Ecology is not just about the environment. It's about our existence. It's about the state of Mother Nature. If Mother Nature dies, our civilization will no longer make sense."
China Daily
(China Daily 04/17/2008 page18)
