The Ecology of Functional Society

It’s not that often that we see a clear view of our surroundings in Beijing. The combination of gray buildings against the gray sky adds to the tensive and bustling city mood, which somehow makes us forget the beauty of nature.

When beijingkids arrived at the old house of John Denver Liu, just northeast of Beijing’s center, we were treated to a blissful and calm refuge with birds chirping and the wind playing with the branches.

The setting is very telling, as Liu himself is an ecologist. He shared that when he was young, his father had reminded him of the importance of nature and knowledge through the courtyard of their house in Beijing. “My father told me this as he made a circle, ‘Everything inside it is what you know. Everything outside is what you don’t know.’”

Born in the US, Liu moved to their family’s Beijing home in 1979 as a journalist for Columbia Broadcasting System. Just as Liu focused his beginnings mostly on political and social issues, the budding journalist began to notice the huge industrial development happening everywhere in China.

“There was a lot of pollution coming and the people didn’t know anything about it. It’s odd to have this information [and]somebody has to do something for the environment,” he said. In 1995, the World Bank asked Liu to go and make a film about the Loess Plateau, a massive stretch of plains that covers five provinces in northwestern China. Over centuries, deforestation and population increase have resulted in the gradual degeneration of the plateau, impacting communities and ecosystems there.

He called that experience a critical moment for him. “It was extraordinary because [the plateau]was so destroyed. Basically what we’re talking about there was a dysfunctional system.”

His observations prompted him to start studying to get an academic perspective of the changes in ecological systems. Two years after his Loess Plateau assignment, he started the Environmental Education Media Project (EEMP) in Beijing to tackle what he said as a “need for a collective movement and consciousness” for the environment.

The project grew soon after, with Liu saying that they have produced hundreds of books and films about ecological conservation. He said these media forms and images were just a tool that allowed for a “collaborative interpretation” of what was happening in the environment. “But the real issue is what you understand and it’s rather important that we have a change in consciousness,” Liu said.

He explained that the dysfunction he saw in the Loess Plateau and the widespread pollution in China made him want to know more about ecological function, that is, how every part of the ecosystem benefits each other.

He emphasized that people – individuals, families, and communities – play a big part in ecological systems. But he said one dynamic that underlies within society and the environment is the “economics of materialism.”

“So right now, with your throw-away society, overconsumption, waste, pollution, how do you get rid of them? How do you do something else? You can analyze why they are possible. So when you study them, you find out that the reason is people value materialism higher than life systems. But that suggests the answer: if people value the natural life systems higher than material things, it becomes impossible to pollute and impossible to degrade.”

That alone sounds a big task. We wondered how could we not pollute in the world we live in today.

“The acceptable level of pollution is zero,” Liu continued, “and pollution is something that we allow because we value materialism higher than ecology.” But he poses a challenge, telling everyone to understand and be conscious of their part in the ecosystem.

“The result of my research suggests that ecological function is the basis of wealth. When you increase ecological function, it benefits everybody, every family, every community, every individual, the entire country. The community becomes robust and resilient. If you go to functionality, you’re going to have joy and a better situation.”

In the middle of the interview, we were interrupted by a rather welcome guest – two woodpeckers that repeatedly struck trunks somewhere in the courtyard. We were once again reminded of the beauty of a functioning environment, despite being boxed in a megacity.

Outside his house, he said there’s a bigger home for everyone: the Earth where there’s no difference in the pollution in the air, in the water, in the soil, or in the food. A change in consciousness in today’s society, as he explained, would mean ensuring the future generations would enjoy a reality different from the degraded Loess Plateau or any other over-polluted cities elsewhere. “I think this is the great work of our time … so that the next generations will have water, air, and fertile soil, and that they won’t be just covered with toxic substances,” he said.

Photos: Uni You

Meet Other Beijing Community Pillars

Inspirational Talk

In a megacity as bustling and energetic as Beijing, it’s easy to become so preoccupied and busy, especially with the laidback and satisfying way of life many expats are accustomed to. Besides the fun lifestyle, there’s another face of the city that is as much as vibrant and present: volunteering and charity work.

“This [is]just an opportunity to go see and be part of Beijing… and learn so much more about the city,” said Lorna Snuggs, who volunteers for the Migrant Children’s Foundation (MCF) as its education coordinator.

Volunteering is nothing new to Snuggs, a university lecturer who hails from the UK. She said community work has always been a part of her life. When she first set foot in Beijing six years ago, she looked for charity groups and organizations to volunteer with, but it was not until 2015 that she found MCF.

“And to be honest, I just got lucky because one of my friends said, ‘Oh, I know someone who runs a charity,” Snuggs said, elaborating that that “someone” was Helen Boyle, the founder of MCF.

For over two and a half years, Snuggs, along with Boyle, have been the faces of MCF. Snuggs leads the foundation’s education focus, planning curricula for teacher volunteers and running programs together with local and international schools. Boyle oversees the charity focus where the foundation finds donors and raises funds for comprehensive health checks for migrant children it supports. So far, MCF has already covered 2,000 migrant children from two schools, with a thousand others from a third school in line for health checks.

“If you’d asked me five years ago,” Snuggs said, “… to get up early on a Saturday morning and go spend it at a school, I might have been, ‘Ah… it’s a Saturday morning.’ But now, by noon on a Saturday, I have taught or organized sessions, given out lesson plans to many volunteers, or taught lessons to hundreds of children. And that’s all by noon; I did a lot in the morning!”

The sense of fulfillment when Snuggs shared that is overflowing. “It’s just like ‘Wow! I can do that.’ You realize the things you’re capable of,” adding that she feels like it’s always been a great challenge working at MCF because of the opportunities it brings and the things it teaches. But she explained that charity and volunteering is not just about giving cash. “It’s about sharing your time, energy, skills, experience, perspectives. It’s about making connections with people. It’s about people coming in and inspiring the children that they’re working with and also being inspired by them,” she added.

Snuggs has met a lot of people who are open and willing to help others through MCF. Currently, the foundation has approximately 100 volunteers from different fields, schools, and countries. She said she finds it amazing how volunteers donate their intangible resources in the most ingenious and inventive ways possible.

As she and Boyle have always told prospective volunteers, there are many ways people can help others. But what is important, they said, is placing the volunteers in the right task and asking them if they are truly dedicated and ready to set aside time. The foundation also wants to share with the volunteers the idea of learning from experience. And as an addendum, Snuggs says volunteers not only feel satisfied but also get a broader understanding of the city.

Despite Beijing’s overwhelming size and differing lifestyles, Snuggs believes that communities in the city can be connected by charity groups like MCF. “It’s very easy to get cynical and hard-hearted, especially when you live in a big, busy, crazy city like Beijing… maybe because you are shut off, or perhaps isolated, or because of so much noise. So that’s why it’s good to have MCF to connect you to what’s going on,” she said.

Snuggs said the vibrancy of the volunteering life at MCF, and in Beijing in general, extends beyond social and family circles. For example, the foundation has a mother-and-daughter pair who come together and volunteer every Saturday morning. Snuggs says it’s lovely to see how the mom and the daughter inspire each other, and how their dynamic rallies other volunteers and families.

For the foreseeable future, Snuggs said she doesn’t see herself leaving MCF, calling it a “big part” that has inspired so much of who she is right now. “Seeing what other people do just inspires me to become a better person. Look at all these people [volunteers]can do, it’s fantastic. And it’s such a desire to help others especially with so many things going on in the world at the moment,” she said heartily.

Photo: Andy Penafuerte III

Meet Other Beijing Community Pillars

A Life of Love for Education

The Chinese saying, 三岁看大,七岁看老 (Sān suì kàn dà, qī suì kàn lǎo), states the way someone behaves at three years old predicts the type of adult they will be in the future, while someone’s behavior at seven tells how they will be when they are elderly.

Keren Wong, in a sense, personifies the adage. She has always shown an interest in education since she was a child, including playing teacher to her younger brother. It’s not surprising though, as Wong is inspired by her family, which loves education.

After graduating college in 2012, Wong moved to Beijing to pursue a master’s degree in international development at Tsinghua University. Since then, she has co-founded Bridging Education and Mobility (BEAM), a Beijing-based educational organization that uses WeChat to provide materials and tutorials to rural primary teachers instructing grades three through six to increase their English phonics teaching performance.

“The interesting thing is that rural areas and lower-tier cities in China leapfrogged across PCs and desktops. So their entire online experience is on mobile,” the young entrepreneur said. By taking advantage of WeChat as a platform, Wong believes BEAM helps fulfill rural teachers’ needs in an accessible way.

On BEAM’s official WeChat subscription account, the organization gives access to step-by-step tutorials for classroom exercises, video tutorials, and advice blogs. But more than simply phonics materials, Wong realized that teachers needed a community of other educators to share ideas, so the organization made different WeChat groups, now serving 1,500 teachers and counting.

Currently, teachers discuss lesson plans and other classroom-related topics through comments on BEAM’s articles or through its WeChat groups. BEAM makes use of the app as a space for collaborative and cooperative learning, as teachers can draw from each other’s experiences through direct discussion, especially on topics like implementing new learning methods.

More than supporting teachers in their daily lives, Wong says she also hopes to show the world that China is innovating in its education landscape. For example, Boya Yang, a teacher in Yunnan Province, has been named one of the top ten finalists at the 2017 Global Teacher Prize. The award, hosted annually by the UK-based non-profit Varkey Foundation, recognizes outstanding teachers around the world. The winner of the prize gains recognition and an award of USD 1 million. Prior to this year, no Chinese teacher has ever risen higher than the prize’s top fifty educators.

It was Wong’s efforts that helped Yang reach the nomination, and ultimately, the finals. Wong said she realized that information about the award was not easily accessible to Chinese teachers when she browsed through the Global Teacher Prize website. So last year she initiated a local PR campaign and circulated a Chinese translation of the Global Teacher Prize competition information to teachers throughout China.

Wong hopes that more exposure for Chinese educators like Yang can give the world a more comprehensive understanding of China’s educational innovations, as well as the hardships that teachers can often face.

The inspiration for Wong’s work in the Chinese education system stems in part from her own family background. As a woman of Chinese heritage, Wong says that she wants to stand on stage and be proud of China’s accomplishments in the education sector. Wong recognizes that a lack of funding and resources in certain parts of China has left teachers to make tough calls especially when allocating available materials. However, she believes that China has much to look forward to in terms of educational innovation, since entrepreneurial spaces in the big cities are becoming more and more established.

Wong tells budding entrepreneurs to “spend time with your users and don’t make assumptions.” As for her own journey, it hasn’t been without struggles. In her five years in Beijing, Wong said she has developed an emotional fortitude. “As you get older you gain wisdom and understand that things are going to be fine. You learn to deal with crisis as an entrepreneur,” she said. Wong also attributes part of her organization’s success to being unembarrassed and being ready to face 30 or 40 rejections before getting that one sweet yes from clients and other contacts.

And that’s one thing that she said she would tell her younger self.  “It’s only until you defy expectations that the status quo is changed.” Rather than letting fear lead the way, Wong is shaping the world in her own vision, helping teachers take the reins. While she may not be the kid-teacher handing out assignments to her brother anymore, her childhood passion for education has surely enlightened her adult pursuits.

Photos: Courtesy of Keren Wong and BEAM

Meet Other Beijing Community Pillars

Home of Strays

“Oh, those giant pandas are cute!”
“What a cuddly cat, I want to hug him!”
“That dog is so intelligent! I’d like to have the same…”
…and more of those praises when we see animals, probably from friends or colleagues on WeChat Moments or someone else’s Facebook wall. It’s not unusual to get a euphoric feeling when we see animals, though they may be as massive and feral as bears or as tiny and harmless as butterflies.

People take in animals as pets for companionship or protection. But nowadays, saying that pet-keeping is just as akin to commodifying animals, that is, they are “products” that can be easily bought and then disregarded, is quite a contentious issue. It is a sad reality, though, that we often see abandoned animals on the street, or people posting social media messages like these:

“Please help me find a new home for my cute dog. *sad face emoji*”

“Heaven is looking for new parents as we’re moving out of Beijing next month…”

Beloved pets they truly are.

When no one responds, either the pets end up on the street or, when they’re lucky enough, rescued by animal shelters. Ripley Frances, who launched a new shelter called Cat-Kind in Shuangjing in Chaoyang District, believes it is unacceptable for locals and expats going back to their home countries to just leave their pets dying.

When Frances arrived in Shanghai in 2015, she was welcomed by an unexpected family at the door of her flat – a mother cat and her three kittens. Rather than expelling the felines, Ripley found herself feeding them every day.

“I was calling up people, asking what do I do.  Then I found online a few places that said, ‘We do animal rescue,’ but it was only for their own group members, they wouldn’t just take animals.” Frances, who has always been interested in animal rights, adopted the kittens instead.

Back in the UK, Frances had worked for a human rights organization that focused on asylum seekers. She went to Shanghai to tutor students in law and debating. But after finding a new family with the felines, Frances decided to stay in China and go to Beijing to launch Cat-Kind. The shelter, named in honor of the cats Frances rescued, also accepts stray puppies and dogs.

As a millennial, Frances utilizes the power of social media, and in this case, WeChat, to make her shelter known for people who want to rescue strays. “That’s when I realized this is working and it got a lot popular than I expected. It was just in Beijing at first and there were people going like, ‘Oh do we have something like this in Shanghai?’ So I made one. ’Do we have this in Shenzhen?’ Well there is now!”

The volunteer network in those three cities soon grew to more than 70, half of which are from Beijing. Frances describes the tasks done by her and the other volunteers as stressful but meaningful. “There’s this sense of fulfillment when animals find new homes. After the rescue, after they’ve been to the shelter, after they get adopted, then just seeing them in their new home and the impact that they’ve made on a life, I’m like, ‘Okay, I’m proud to have been a part.’”

She said that Cat-Kind, like any other shelters, is a community that finds solutions for the welfare of abandoned animals. Big cities like Beijing, Frances says, have a lot of strays but also have a high rate of adoptions. It’s not merely about adoption, though, as she says by doing so, people provide a sense of care for another living being.

“When you made a choice to adopt a pet, you will view more of it as a family member whereas if someone buys a pet, then it will be more likely viewed as a commodity – something that, ‘Okay, I’m leaving. Why would I want to bring this with me?’ Or more so, ‘That looks cute, I’m going to buy one.” Frances is concerned most about the type of buying where they didn’t do any research, and, when unhappy with their purchase, they just abandon the pet.

Though it will be a hard thing for most people to rescue strays, and Frances describing it to be a “problem” for many, it’s wise to seek help from authorities and call shelters. “A lot of people just leave an animal on the streets just simply because they don’t know what resources are available,” she said.

There’s a lot of work to do for the welfare of animals in cities, and it’s not mainly one community network heading the effort. Just as animals tell us how amazing nature is, and pets providing that much-needed companionship, it’s time for people to appreciate these creatures as an indistinguishable part of daily living.

Photos: Courtesy of Ripley Frances

Meet Other Beijing Community Pillars