Chinese Shock of the Anthropocene

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xv

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2. Introduction: Impoverishing Anthropocene with Chinese Characteristics

   • Kwai-Cheung Lo

   Pages 1-17

3. Disposing and Recurring

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 19-19

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   2. The World Besieged by Waste: On Garbage, Recycling, and Sublimation

      • Carlos Rojas

      Pages 21-36

   3. The Environment and Social Justice in Chinese Documentaries: Crisis or Hope?

      • Jessica Yeung

      Pages 37-55

   4. Recognition, Reinhabitation, and Recreation: Engaging Nature in Hong Kong Literature

      • Enoch Yee-Lok Tam

      Pages 57-79

4. Nonhuman and Mythic Spectres

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 81-81

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   2. The Eternal Return of Mythology: The White (Green) Snake Legend in Maoist China and Colonial Hong Kong

      • Kenny Kwok-Kwan Ng

      Pages 83-107

   3. Magic Realism as a Critical Response to the Anthropocene

      • Wai-Ping Yau

      Pages 109-129

   4. Expansionist Ethnic Ecology: On Reading Jiang Rong’s Wolf Totem

      • Howard Y. F. Choy

      Pages 131-149

   5. Too Inhuman to Die; Too Ethereal to Become a Ghost: Children Are Not Afraid of Death, Children Are Afraid of Ghosts

      • Victor Fan

      Pages 151-175

5. Ethnicity and Im-purity

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 177-177

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   2. The “Nature” of Ethnic Tensions: Under the Flaming Mountains as Xinjiang’s First Novel

      • Pang Laikwan

      Pages 179-201

   3. “Original Ecology” Style of China’s Minority Performing Arts: Examples from Uyghur Music

      • Chuen-Fung Wong

      Pages 203-223

   4. Animals, Ethnic Minorities, and Ecological Concerns in Chinese Digital Cinema

      • Kwai-Cheung Lo

      Pages 225-248

   5. Pristine Tibet? The Anthropocene and Brand Tibet in Chinese Cinema

      • Chris Berry

      Pages 249-273

   6. Conclusion

      • Jessica Yeung

      Pages 275-277

6. Back Matter

   Pages 279-281

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This book examines China’s role and its cultural productions in the process of environmental destruction and transformation, focusing on how various cultural media play a significant role in shaping and reproducing Chinese subject formation in relation to changing ecological conditions. It argues that China under the leadership of Xi Jinping vowed in 2017 to play a leading role in preserving the planet for the future, but many of its actions such as its “Belt and Road” initiative have aroused apprehension rather than inspired confidence. Against this backdrop of environmental concern, this volume brings together a cutting-edge critical analysis of Chinese literature, music and cinema, offering a transdisciplinary and comprehensive vision of Chinese arts and literature under the current conditions of the Anthropocene. This volume sets a high scholarly standard in the field, and constitutes a valuable reference for scholars and students of Chinese cultural studies, Chinese studies and Anthropocene studies.

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• Anthropocene in China
• Shisanling Reservoir
• White (Green) Snake Legend
• Chinese Magic Realism
• Independent Chinese Documentaries
• Hong Kong Fictions
• Uyghur Music
• Children are not Afraid of Death, Children are Afraid of Ghosts
• Brand Tibet
• Animals in Chinese Digital Cinema
• China's environment

• Department of Humanities and Creative Writing, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong

  Kwai-Cheung Lo

• Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong

  Jessica Yeung

Kwai-Cheung Lo is Professor in the Department of Humanities and Creative Writing at Hong Kong Baptist University. He is the author of Excess and Masculinity in Asian Cultural Productions (2010), and Chinese Face / Off: The Transnational Popular Culture of Hong Kong (2005), and the editor of a Chinese-language anthology entitled Re-Sighting Asia: Deconstruction and Reinvention in the Global Era (2014).

Jessica Yeung is Associate Professor of Translation at Hong Kong Baptist University, and the author of Ink Dances in Limbo: Gao Xinjian’s Writings as Cultural Translation (2008) and Hong Kong's Third Way: The Anarchist People's Theatre of Augustine Chiu-yu Mok (2019, in Chinese).

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