Abstract
The post-reform revival of fengshui and related indigenous spiritual practices in China has revitalized traditional village management of “ fengshui forests” (“ fengshuilin ”). This study examines the cosmological principles, landscape ecology, conservation status, and floristic diversity of forest patches that comprise important biological refugia in China’s subtropical broadleaved forest region. From 1949-1979, fengshui was prohibited by the state, but many lineage villages continued to protect fengshuilin through nontraditional means. The restoration of fengshui has enhanced fengshuilin preservation traditions, but lack of state recognition has impeded systematic research and conservation planning. We assess the status of fengshui practice, fengshuilin management, enforcement of harvesting bans, and tree species selection in seventeen villages associated with over 40 forest patches. There is little evidence of utilitarian criteria for tree species selection, thus fengshuilin contain diverse taxonomic assemblages. This suggests strong local institutional capacity for maintaining and enhancing forest diversity and unique traditions of indigenous landscape ecology. We would like to express our deep gratitude for the generosity of the Freeman Foundation and ASIANetwork for funding through the ASIANetwork Freeman Student-Faculty Fellows Program for Collaborative Research in Asia. Without their support for field research in the summer of 2011, this project would not have been possible.
Highlights
This research focuses on village fengshui forests, known as fēngshŭilín (风水林), which are common but understudied features in the rural landscapes of southern and central China’s subtropical broadleaved evergreen forest region and southern China’s tropical monsoonal rainforest region
As Liu Xiaobo notes, “In more than twenty years of urban modernization and across a ‘great leap forward’ in real estate values, officials wielding the power of the state and invoking government ownership of land have colluded with businessmen all over the country to carry out a kind of Chinese Enclosure Movement.”[16]. Citing a series of “manifestos” written by Chinese farmers’ organizations that demand what Liu characterizes as rural land privatization, he states that “At last farmers are speaking for themselves, loud and clear, and a silent nation is hearing a cry from deep inside its heartland.”[17]. While it is beyond the scope of this article to examine the likely mechanisms and possible ramifications of full-scale land privatization in China’s countryside, an historical political ecology of fengshuilin management requires an account of how fengshui principles and practices have long served to constitute lineage villages in cosmological terms that are inextricable from both the habitus of everyday socio-ecological practices and the political struggles and clashes that define the modern history of China’s countryside
RESEARCH Preliminary research indicates that the Chinese lineage village can be viewed, from an historical perspective, as a wind-water polity based on an indigenous landscape ecology intended to sustain life by attending to vital flows and currents
Summary
This research focuses on village fengshui forests, known as fēngshŭilín (风水林), which are common but understudied features in the rural landscapes of southern and central China’s subtropical broadleaved evergreen forest region and southern China’s tropical monsoonal rainforest region. As a grassroots protest against allegedly illegal sales of long-term leases on farmland and forests to private developers for the construction of industrial parks and apartment complexes, the case is emblematic of an enormous wave of land tenure conflicts across China, with estimates of “mass incidents” ranging in number from an official figure of 10,000 since the mid-1990s, to a Chinese sociologist’s estimate of 180,000 in 2010 alone.[15] As Liu Xiaobo notes, “In more than twenty years of urban modernization and across a ‘great leap forward’ in real estate values, officials wielding the power of the state and invoking government ownership of land have colluded with businessmen all over the country to carry out a kind of Chinese Enclosure Movement.”[16] Citing a series of “manifestos” written by Chinese farmers’ organizations that demand what Liu characterizes as rural land privatization, he states that “At last farmers are speaking for themselves, loud and clear, and a silent nation is hearing a cry from deep inside its heartland.”[17] While it is beyond the scope of this article to examine the likely mechanisms and possible ramifications of full-scale land privatization in China’s countryside, an historical political ecology of fengshuilin management requires an account of how fengshui principles and practices have long served to constitute lineage villages in cosmological terms that are inextricable from both the habitus of everyday socio-ecological practices and the political struggles and clashes that define the modern history of China’s countryside. GPS data were recorded and will be incorporated into a geographic information system after more field data have been collected
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