6/6/13

6/6/13, 4:00pm, The Beijing Center
Today in class we talked about the first two chapters of the textbook, "When a Billion Chinese Jump." The idea of Shangri-La ends up to be kind of ironic when you look at the reality of it. It's the idea that the area is nature that is untouched by people, but when an area has been called "Shangri-La" a lot of people want to go there, and end up negatively affecting the environment. At that point it is no longer untouched. 

We also discussed the Tibetan Plateau and how valuable it is for a lot of people, more than just the people of China. It produces important weather patters, such as the monsoons that bring water to communities that would be too dry without them. The plateau also has fertile soil and minerals. Unfortunately, these resources will probably be depleted someday. It is now ingrained in our culture to use nature for the benefit of ourselves, as opposed to conserving it for its intrinsic value, so to speak. 

We also had a guest speaker in class from the University of Toronto. She teaches geography and specializes in China specifically. She talked about urban spaces in China specifically between 1990-2010. Many futuristic plans have been made for green cities, but not carried out. There have been some "eco-cities" created around China, but they might not be extremely successful. This is something I'm going to learn more about later. I love the idea of green cities, when it involves the production of food. A lot of the green space showed in the pictures in class were just grass and bushes. I think it would be much more productive and useful if there was food planted there instead. There is less arable land in China than in the United States, and China has 1 billion more people than the states. Using the space for food could be more sustainable and efficient.