2015 - GAROFF Ariane - Biomimicry in China by China Studio

Biomimicry in China Could Biomimicry be perceived as a transcultural concept by occurring in a Chinese background?

Ariane Garoff - Shanghai.

Biomimicry in China Could Biomimicry be perceived as a transcultural concept by occurring in a Chinese background?

AUTHOR’S EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND Ariane Garoff Bachelor’s Degree majoring ‘Interaction Design’ at L’École de Design(s) de Nantes Atlantique, France. Master’s Degree majoring ‘Interculturality in China’ in the school antenna in Shanghai, China.

On the left page, myslef listening to a local guide, in

虎跳峡Hǔ tiào xiá or Tiger Leaping Gorge. July 2014

KEYWORDS, ABSTRACT, DETAILED ABSTRACT FOREWORd, METHOD, people interviewed, Acknowledgements, CONTENT, CONCLUSION, REFERENCES.

1 Biomimicry in China 1.1 Biomimicry What is biomimicry To which field biomimicry can be applied? 1.2 Chinese favourable context Games of power between Human and Nature. Human indisputable historical dependence on Nature. Chinaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s modern dependency on nature. Nature superiority to men. Chinese government is not hiding ecological issues.

2 Biomimicry obstacles in China. 2.1 China: giant in the world ecological crisis China air pollution deadliest in world. China blamed. China victim. 2.2 City lifestyle pulls away people from nature Massive society adopting a city life Consumer nation 2.3 Nature seen as an exploitable resource Nature fulfilling human needs Landscaped transformed for mass tourism 2.4 Lack of knowledge Chinese have no education about biomimicry Lack of cross-disciplinary teams

3 Biomimicry process could be invented in China 3.1 Consistent values Enthusiasm and trust Traditional Chinese values in line with biomimicry. Artistic sensibility toward nature Philosophical compatible vision 3.2 Unconscious links Apprehension of natureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s finiteness Biomimicry, a transcultural ideal concept.

KEYWORDS

#EcoleDeDesignDeNantesAtlantique #InterculturalityInChina #SustainableInnovation #CreativeProcess #Anthropology #Biomimicry #Nature #China #Ecology #Lifestyle #Synergy

Abstract

Personal picture. Spider and its web in Yunnan province, China. July 2014.

Biomimicry is a sustainable concept to improve societies in which innovations are inspired from nature observations, understandings and studies. This essay explores the relation between Biomimicry and China from a transcultural perspective through face-to-face interviews with locals, observations and analysis in the country between July 2013 and January 2015. Motivated by a personal attachment to nature, the essay is discussing the possibility for Biomimicry to be transcultural by being valid in China. The first part underlines the favourable context in China to accept biomimicry, focusing on sustainable innovation. The second part is discussing obstacles for biomimicry to occur in China. The third part is revealing that Chinese culture already invented biomimicry in a way because of common ideologies. As a result, the essay is establishing biomimicry, a process of creation inspired by nature, as valid in Chinese culture despite some obstacles; indeed a favourable context is in place and furthermore, there are inextricable links between Chinese philosophy and biomimicry. Ariane Garoff, Student from l’École de Design de Nantes Atlantique. Bachelor’s Degree in Interaction design in France. Master’s Degree in Transcultural design in China.

DETAILED Abstract

This essay explores the relation between Biomimicry and China from a transcultural perspective. It is discussing the possibility for Biomimicry to be transcultural by being valid in China.

In the first part, the essay gives an overview about biomimicry movement, main ambassador, concepts and fields of applications nowadays. Biomimicry is the idea of getting inspired from nature solutions and adapt them to human problems. Then it introduces definitions of nature: one objective from a dictionary, and one more subjective from a Chinese point of view. Those definitions are inviting to a reflexion of the dependence and even a sort of fight for power from Humankind toward Nature. Above all, the first part underlines the favourable context in China to accept biomimicry, focusing on ecological innovation. This part identifies some of our modern society major challenges: how to improve people life and have less negative impact on nature.

Personal picture. Leaf with water drops. Yunnan province, China. July 2014.

Personal picture. Bund under the smog of pollution. Shanghai, China. August 2014.

The second part is listing different obstacles that China should overcome to fully incorporate Biomimicry in the mastered growth tools. The first incompatibility of biomimicry in China is that the country is responsible for a lot of pollution. At the first sight, it seems far-fetched for China to adopt more

sustainable

behaviours

such

as biomimicry. Another issue is the fact that a massive number of people are adopting a city life. The fact still remains that the highest the number of inhabitant of a city is, the hardest is it to manage for ecological solution. Mass market emerged to answer to answer to the biggest number needs but nature cannot regenerate as fast as people are extracting from it. The third hurdle is the vision of nature in China. Nature is perceived as an exploitable resource. The last obstacle discussed is a lack of knowledge and communication about biomimicry process. Those limits are not unbearable to reach biomimicryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ideal; however they are a reality that restrains biomimicry possibility to occur in China.

Finally, the third part is demonstrating that Biomimicry could have been invented in China for different reasons. Firstly, I found out that Chinese people are truly enthusiast about biomimicry and they trust in natural values. Secondly, their traditional values are fully consistent with biomimicry. Thirdly, history of Arts in China is indivisible from Nature and conveys a strong interest and sensibility for Nature. In a fourth point, we will see that I assume biomimicry could be invented in China because philosophical heritage from Chinese thinkers matches with biomimicry values. Philosophies are deeply intertwined with biomimicry essence. Moreover, there is a real unconscious fatality that sealed men to nature: death. In a last point we will see that some Chinese people already use biomimicry even if they never heard about this concept. To put this third part in a nutshell, it is highlighting that biomimicry is a transcultural concept by existing in China. Although people have to keep in mind that regarding to natural differences of landscapes and species, biomimicryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s manifestation will appear under different materialisations. That makes the richness of the world biodiversity.

Personal picture. Huge butterfly in Yunnan province, China. July 2014.

The essay concludes that despites some difficulties for Biomimicry to conquest Chinese territories and heart, there is a real foreground and enthusiasm that proves that the country is ready for it. Undoubtedly, China did not invent the name of Biomimicry but according to some traces of history we can say it invented the same process independently from the Western world. Because biomimicry is valuable in different cultural contexts, we can assume that it a transcultural concept or even more that it might be a universal utopia for innovation processes.

Lunar French plant that I am: head in the cosmos, feet in the ground.

Foreword

Inventive, curious and down to earth

experimentations, prototyping, video,

are three aspects of my personality that

websites data and networks. I have

lead me to become a designer. Designers

been passionate about theorisation and

should be rooted creative creatures; their

communication of this concrete and

art is to deal with imposed constraints

tangible world of wonders.

and client’s brief, to understand human’s need and to rack their brain. By mix

I lacked of nature during those hours

up those ingredients together, they can

with my geek classmates surrounded

practice shining brighter and developing

by wires, Arduino cards, screen and

their roots networks in each soil. The

other digital arts. Although, I always

design

human

felt close and connected to nature,

centred, but what about bio-centrism?

especially oceans, in which I enjoyed

Why focusing selfishly exclusively our

spending days longboarding, sailing,

similar type of genetic. What about other

swimming and diving. At the surprise

living organisms? After 5 years of study

of my carnivore family, at 11 years old,

in the design field, I can say my vision of

I decided to become a vegetarian. I

design is oriented toward nature.

believe this concern about nature has

current

tendency

been my leitmotiv. Everyday, I enjoy putting in practice acquired

What also matter for me is to understand

thanks to my scholarship. I grew all

the complexity of languages, patterns

the way from the nuns founded high

of behaviours and exchanges. I had

school “Sacré Coeur” I attended in

the chance to go abroad and catch

Brittany, Nantes, France, to L’École de

pieces of foreigners’ means of thinking,

Design de Nantes Atlantique antenna

doing, speaking, communicating and

in Shanghai, China. During two-year

behaving. Traveling is a source of

specialisation in interaction design, I

inspiration by meeting new creatures,

learnt about history of arts, drawing,

changing landscape and adapting to new

creation, users, interactions between

environments. Europe, Australia and the

humans and machines, code, connected

USA have been my warm up sceneries

devices and objects, augmented reality,

by the mean of observation, while Asia

the

structured

creativity

is my actual frame of research. Actually, I chose to uproot myself to the experience of expatriation for the two last years of the Master’s Degree in the Chinese antenna of l’École de Design de Nantes Atlantique in Shanghai. I came to Shanghai almost two years ago. As I did not know anything about Chinese culture, apart from few bad taste jokes, clichés and historical anecdotes, I cannot say that I had any particular interest for it. My motivation to join this two-year course in China was the craving for new experiences and discoveries. I got the travel fever when I was quite young from encouragement at home to explore the world and from many exchanges with foreigner’s students. Apart from short time travels, I already experienced living abroad: in Australia and in Singapore. However, I believe those two last years in China were the first time I was living in a country in which I was not able to communicate properly with the locals. Indeed, despites their strong accents, Australian and Singaporean are sharing very good communication skills in English. When I arrived in China, this communication issue was very problematic for me. Actually, after few months in Shanghai, I admitted to my relatives I had “the Shanghai blues”. I don’t remember if I made up this expression or if I heard it somewhere but I really remember how appropriate I found it was, and the recurrence of saying abundantly. With hindsight, I would say that my sadness and impossibility to adapt to this new culture with the same ease and confidence that I achieved in my previous expatriation is linked to two issues. The first barrier was incomprehension of local’s behaviours, gestures, facial, body and hands mimics, language and even sounds. I felt very offended and aggressed by their body language and proximity and I was unable to communicate with them. For instance, one day, in the packed subway, I was sitting next to someone; there was the space of two big apples between us. I was struggling to maintain my vital space when suddenly, a Chinese woman sat down half on the space between the girl and me and half on my knee! I was so chocked that I shouted and everyone around looked at me as if I was crazy; you feel you are insane when alone in a world that does not understand you and that you don’t understand neither. The second barrier to my adaptation was that I firstly did not find Chinese people lifestyles’s ideal consistent with my vision of what a happy life is. It might find cheesy but I missed nature’s beauty and respect, I missed outside activities. I was faded like an old flower. The sun was not showing up because of the pollution’s cloud, people were

living in their grey urban jungle. As far as I am concerned, I lacked of two substantial elements just like a plant needs sun and water. I missed some tools to understand my surroundings and I needed to find out if Chinese people were really insensible to all the damages they were producing on Earth. Where they only interested in primary needs and earning money? My change of perspective has been a long path because now I can say I love Chinese culture and I even find that they can be better ‘bons vivants’ than French people… I now find the city of Shanghai very colourful and bright. My journey was oriented toward the wish to understand in any ways what was the relation between Chinese people and nature in this incredible context of booming cities. As well as my choice of research subject was seeking to establish a bridge between my values and the one of a culture that I did not understand at the first sight thanks to a transcultural, more open minded and tolerant approach. Hereby, this dissertation is bringing to a close my Master’s Degree in design by presenting the result of preliminary researches and the appropriation of methods and experiences abovementioned. The essay is establishing a bridge between my personal interests in nature and cultures. I hope you will enjoy reading the thoughts I am sharing through each page of this book. With love, Ariane Garoff.

METHOD

What you will discover in this book is a personal reflexion as a design student concerning the relation between Chinese people and nature. I am trying to search if biomimicry is possible in China. This reflexion is based on observations of Chinese people behaviours in several environments. This research brought me to diverse places in China such as 上海

Shanghai province including 崇明崇明 Chóngmíng island, 广西 Guangxi province,

福建 Fujian province, 云南Yunnan province, 陕西 Shaanxi province, 江苏 Jiangsu

province, 河南 Henan province, 安徽 Anhui province, 北京 Beijing province and also to other Asian countries including Philippines and Vietnam. However, during the researches for my Master’s Degree in Design, I mainly stayed in Shanghai, and this from July 2013. In my opinion, the most relevant research method according to my subject was to escape from the city to find out how Chinese people were behaving in natural surroundings. Thanks to traveling in different provinces of China, I collected more authentic visions of what is nature for Chinese people than if I stayed in Shanghai cosmopolitan city. I am delighted with the brand new perspectives and landscapes discovered through this adventure. I am amazed that this experience of expatriation reached higher findings than my expectations before moving to Shanghai. Let us consider that what is good about research is that you don’t really know what you will find. Answers of researches obtained by interviewing people and observation lead you to surprising and unexpected conclusions.

Personal pictures. from interviews, China, 2013-2014. On the first line: Richard He and 周健翔 Jain Xing Zhou or Sylvain, On the second line: 高兴 Gaoxing or Amber, 郭光普 Guangpu Guo.

I also practiced active researches and analysis, particularly with a brand new tool for me: anthropological interviews. I interviewed about 20 people for at least an hour and a half (up to 3 hours). It was a difficult exercise for me as I felt shame about bothering strangers. At the beginning of my researches, I had to face many situations of interview refusal for “no time” issues as well as communication problems; indeed I found difficult the task to find random strangers in the streets of Shanghai with ability to have exchanges in English. This was the beginning of some frustration and culpability not being able to speak mandarin with them. The positive outcome was a real wish to learn mandarin, but unfortunately, I believe it requires at least 4 months of full time intensive courses and I had no time. As a result I started to learn the basics with a personal teacher, but that was of course not enough to be able to interview people in mandarin. After unsuccessful attempts and thanks to perseverance, I finally met Chinese’ and foreigners’ communities that both speak English and have interests in nature and sharing thoughts. My spots of interviews were mainly universities: Shanghai University and Tongji University, but also design labs such as D&I in Shanghai (Design and Innovation Lab). I also interviewed people in long distance transports such as buses and planes, in cafés in Shanghai like Costa Coffee, Starbucks, Baker and Spice and Sunflour because I found people are relaxed and have time to talk. In my opinion, my research cannot be generalised as it only conveys personal insights based on few collections of opinions and situations observed on a very short labs of time. In this research, my weakness was the not very diverse people I interviewed. As mentioned before, I mostly addressed Chinese who could speak English and that is for sure not the major part of Chinese. I collected interview from people who had learnt English. Whereas my strength was the on-field experience from traveling in China and observing. I found important to both observe Chinese people in real environment and then asking them how do they feel when they are in nature.

PEOPLE INTERVIEWED

郭博文 Born Guo Bowen or Inner, 24 years old,

last year student in Digital Design in Shanghai University. Eriksson Aldina, 26 years old, Swedish student in architecture in Shanghai. 伏天 Fu Tian or Tracy, 22 years old,

majoring graphic design in Shanghai University. 高兴 Gaoxing or Amber, 35 years old,

seller in a clothe shop in Shanghai. 郭光普 Guangpu Guo, 46 years old,

researcher on mammals behaviours, teacher in ‘Science and Technology’ in Tongji University, Shanghai.

Guiltbertson Aaron,

Lee,

27 years old,

35 years old,

iving in a farm

local tourist guide

near Melbourne, Australia.

in Fujian province, China.

He Richard,

宋怡然 Song Yiran,

50 years old,

20 years old

tourist and local guide

student in biology

in Yunnan Province, China.

in Tongji University,

周健翔 Jain Xing Zhou or Sylvain, 24 years old,

junior architect at “Frederic Rolland International” in Shanghai.

Shanghai. 俞晓丽 Yu Xiao Li or Iris, 24 years old,

majoring industrial design in Shanghai University.

Jiang Yoyo, 30 years old, secretary for China Shipping in Jiangsu Province. 蒋珺 Jiang Jun, 27 years old,

student in China Studio, L’École de Design de Nantes Atlantique in Shanghai. 刘静 Jing Liu,

大尾巴狼 Zhao Yuanxing, 21 years old,

student in environmental design, in Tongji University, Shanghai. 孙芝华 Zhihua Sun or Tiffany, 24 years old,

student majoring wood painting

23 years old,

in Shanghai University Fine

student majoring architecture

Art.

and landscape design in Shanghai University.

acknowledgements

I wish to thank Karolina Pawlik for her advice and supervision at each stage of progression as well as all the people that gave me of their time through more or less formal interviews.

Personal picture. Guest House in Guanxi province, China. July 2014.

1 Biomimicry in China.

1.1 biomimicry

What is biomimicry? Biomimicry takes origin from the Greek words: Bios: life and Mimesis: imitation. Biomimicry is the ability to observe and then to imitate natureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s best ideas in order

to innovate. In 1997, Janine Benyus 1, the most famous contemporary biomimicry ambassador wrote the pioneer book for the discipline: Innovation inspired by nature, biomimicry.

Janine Benyus - Deauville, France by Daniau Mychele/AFP/Getty Images 1

Janine Benyus is the co-founder of the most influencial institute for biomimicry : biomimicry 3.8 http://biomimicry.net/about/our-people/founders/

BENYUS, Janine. Biomimicry, Innovation inspired by Nature. New York: Harper Collins books, 1997. Preface pages

BENYUS, Janine. Biomimicry, Innovation inspired by Nature. New York: Harper Collins books, 1997. Preface page

She defined Biomimicry in 3 nouns. Biomimicry is a model, a measure and a mentor.

model First, biomimicry is a “science that studies

nature’s

models

and

then

imitates or takes inspiration from these designs and processes to solve human problems.”

measure Second, Benyus asserts that nature is a measure in the way that it is the judge from an “ecological standard”. According to her, “after 3.8 billions years of evolution, nature has learned: What works. What is appropriate. What lasts.”

mentor In addition, biomimicry is a mentor because it introduces a “new way of viewing and valuing nature”. It is an eco-friendly way of innovating as it ‘introduces an era based not on what we can extract from the natural world, but on what we can learn from it.

My definition of biomimicry would be â&#x20AC;&#x153;fauna and flora best sustainable ideas and solutions applied to human problems.â&#x20AC;? I believe it is a very smart movement

our

modern

society.

Indeed it infer that people should come back to their roots: nature and be more respectful toward their surrounding. Moreover I find important especially for designers to integrate respectful process of creation as they belong to the one who build our future.

To which field biomimicry can be applied? During my researches, I noticed that all the innovations inspired from nature are summarized into three categories of innovation: shapes, materials, processes or ecosystems. Here some examples to explain what each category means: -shape In Japan scientist worked on fast trains connecting Osaka to Hakata. Their issue was to maintain speed in tunnels in which air is densest and consuming more energy. They found a solution by observing nature. Indeed they studied one specie of birds called kingfisher. Those birds have the particularity to catch fish very fast from diving in the water and coming out very quickly. For that purpose their beak have an ergonomic shape. Designers and scientists designed the nose of the train according to the beak structure of the kingfishers. They gained 15% in electric consumption and 10% speed increase.1

Tom McKeag for GreenBiz.com How one engineerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s birdwatching made Japanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bullet train better. October 19th, 2012 article

Personal illustration, train from Osaka to Hakata in Japan, inspired by the Kingfisher beak

http://www.velcro.com/

Personal illustration, La Bardane plants that inspired the Velcro innovation.

- material The most famous example in France is the “scratch” also called Velcro®. This material is used a lot in the textile industry for being very simple and efficient. The story started when Georges de Mastral was walking in the French Alpes Mountains with his dog. After the walk, the visionary man noticed some plants hitched to his dog’s fur. After studying the plants hook, he developed and commercialized the smart fabric. Now

Velcro

technology

used

worldwide for gardening, in the house or for clothes and shoes. 2

http://www.velcro.com/

- process and eco-system For instance mushrooms or mycorhizes are working in symbiosis with tree roots. This process is known from more than 150 years but another more recent discovery shown that the same mycelium network can join a young and an elder tree together. The common knowledge

that

smallest

trees

are

competing with the tall ones to get some light is to be reconsidered. Indeed, when high trees are producing enough sugar for themselves, they transfer it to the young trees by the mean of mushrooms’ networks. It as also been demonstrated

The Kamchatka Peninsula is located in the northeastern part of Russia. http://www.airpano.com/360DegreeVirtualTour.php?3D=Kamchatka-Uzon

that the concept also works between different species of trees. Forests are massive and complex eco-systems in which trees and mushrooms are enjoying a mutual cooperation. For instance the Siberian forest is a continuum material network from Kamchatka to the Ural Mountains’ regions of Russia. Moreover some bacteria are implied in the ecosystem. Biomimetic or bionic design processes or eco-systems are the most successfully completed one.1 1

This example is translated from: CHAPELLE Gauthier, Biomimétisme, l’intelligence du vivant. Alternative Management Observatory, Paris HEC, Majeure Alternative Management, 1st of February 2010. page 26.

Ural Mountains, in west-central Russia and the major part of the traditional physiographic boundary between Europe and Asia. Extending some 2,500 kilometres. Encyclopedia Britannica. Ural. picture source: http://www.godinanutshell.com

In her book, Janine Benyus is referring to

another

type

categorization

for biomimicry. She organized the knowledge we could get from nature by different human needs.

BENYUS, Janine. Biomimicry, Innovation inspired by Nature. New York: Harper Collins books, 1997. Preface pages

1.2 Chinese favourable context for biomimicry

Games of power between Human and Nature

Through the social media Wechat, I got the chance to meet Inner, a 24 years old Chinese student of Shanghai University Fine Arts College in Digital Design. Inner, a curious and vivacious student, interview was one of the richest exchanges I could get with Shanghai university students. First because his very good languages skills in English made communication easier so he could express his Chinese vision fluidly. It is true that English is neither my native language neither Chinese people native language so it gives limitations in the nuances and perspicacity of ideas conveyed. Second because his interest and frank responses amazed me. As many Chinese I met, Inner is so frank that it could be interpreted in a French perspective as rude. In reality, franchise is a characteristic that I found in most of interviews I conducted with Chinese people from January 2013 to December 2014. As soon as you say something wrong, Inner would ask you: â&#x20AC;&#x153;why do you say that? It is not correct.â&#x20AC;?

Inner post-it answer about “what is your definition of Nature?”

I found Inner post-it answer about “what is your definition of Nature?” very surprising and interesting. Actually, Inner defined Nature as “human’s master and servant.” He explained further is point: “If nature is like river, then human is like a boat. River can not only lift the boat, but also turn over it. So human can be the master, at the same time, and the servant of nature.” My answer to this question is very pragmatic and is quite similar to what you can find in dictionaries. For me Nature would be: “all the elements that exist without any intervention of people, like mineral, animal and vegetal kingdom”. Cambridge dictionary is also defining nature in the same idea with the definition “element happening or existing independently of people”. It is also all the processes, features and forces and is has to be considered on the scale of macrocosm and microcosm. I am influenced by a scientific point of view probably inherited from biology in school and influenced from main contributors of the encyclopaedia or from the enlightenment period.

Inner vision shared through a metaphor is way more personal. Actually, his definition reveals a philosophical influence as well as a high sense of hierarchy or power distribution, which I find very present in the Chinese heritage. Indeed, I find Chinese people very influenced in their everyday life by hierarchy and power. For instance, on the 19th September 2014, when I was invited to a government-owned shipyard in Jiangsu province for the launching ceremony of a bulk-carrier vessel, I noticed during the business dinner that Chinese people had very special rituals to clink their glasses to show respect to the others. Indeed during the diner, Chinese businessmen, stoop-up one by one, turned around the table until they could reach the person they wanted to make a toast with. Then the other man would stand-up and “play” the game of bending more than the other in order to clink his glass on the lowest part possible of the other man’s glass. I asked to one of them why they would do this, and he said: “to show respect, you have to reach the lowest part of the glass.”

Lauching ceremony of a vessel in Jiangsu province, picture with the foreigner investors preceding the diner mentionned. September the 19th, 2014.

Personal picture. The lift of my former apartment where floor 14 is missing, Shanghai. August 2013

Also I notice the importance of numbers in China. I have the feeling Chinese love to rate things for instance through websites like Dianping, 大众点评, literally ‘public comment’, which is the largest website for location-based food and entertainment services in

China. I can say that this website’s database is full of different marks as I worked on a data visualization with an extracted database from this website. Chinese are sometimes

giving number to people instead of names, for instance in Yu massage on 五原路 Wû yuán lù or Wuyuan Road, the staff is named by numbers on badges. I was surprised

by a masseur answer one day. “What’s your name?” I asked, and he replied: “wo shi wo” meaning 55. It is the same case in all the luxury watch shops such as IWC brand on 南京路 Nánjing lù or Nanjing road. Chinese also love to count. One day, I bought

some antique furniture in Shanghai and I was surprised that the seller designed all furniture by numbers while talking to anyone about those furniture instead of saying: bench, table, armchairs… I found Chinese are also very superstitious about some number. The greatest example is that in many buildings you can’t find number 4 or 14 in the lift because it sounds like the word death in mandarin. I think this love for numbers is linked to a culture of performance and to hierarchy heritage from their history. Power etched into the memory. This might explain why Inner perception of nature is focusing on power.

I agree that yes, indeed, Nature is human’s master and servant. I think Inner definition is a very smart vision of Nature. I believe this importance of power in Chinese culture, that can also be found in Inner’s definition, make a favourable context for biomimicry. Indeed, biomimicry is re-introducing the importance of Nature. It’s not expressing its value directly as a game of

power.

Instead,

Biomimicry

indirectly, by expressing the benefits of learning from nature, expressing human dependence toward it. Dependence belongs to the idea of a dominant and a dominated. So this notion of nature’s power is also inherent to Biomimicry. I believe some Chinese people have this sense of hierarchy and have in mind nature’s power so Chinese context and biomimicry are sharing the importance of nature.

Human indisputable historical dependence on Nature

In my opinion, the image of a person rowing in a river illustrates human dependence on nature. The boat is vulnerable to the river strength or to the storm but as soon as human understand the water flow and currents, harness the wind and knows how to build a ship he becomes the master of this element. In a way, I think that inner definition goes further than dictionaries by introducing a powerful metaphor of nature’s meaning. I believe that humankind evolution success is heavily linked to the understanding of natural surrounding to harness natural elements by keeping in mind a power balance to maintain. Many illustrations of humanity’s need for nature to evolve exist in history. Indeed fire control that emerged with the Homo erectus great example. Fire discovery date has been reconsidered recently from archaeological skulls found in China in near the village of 周口店 Zhoukoudian in Beijing municipality. Actually 42 km southwest from the city, the site is protected from the UNESCO world heritage. It is most commonly known as The Pekin Men site because there is the largest collection of Homo erectus skeletons (altogether 40 incomplete skeletons).

We can read in an article1 published by Encyclopaedia Britannica that

“Excavators also claimed to have uncovered ash deposits consisting of charred animal bones and stones indicating that Peking man had learned to use fire for lighting, cooking, and heating. This discovery resulted in a drastic revision of the date for the earliest human mastery of fire.” The date is unsure, however the archaeologist are assuming that

“many of the fossil-bearing layers have been dated, and the results suggest that the site was first occupied more than 770,000 years ago and then used intermittently by H. erectus until perhaps 230,000 years ago.”

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/114721/Zhoukoudian

Personal picture. A monk doing a fire in the middle of the road in Jiangning Lu, near the Jade Buddha Temple entrance, Shanghai. October 2013.

Even is the date is unsure men mastered fire and that discovery is a proof that they became more sophisticated. Indeed fire helped them to cook and protect themselves from animal. How would any civilization look like if men had not mastered fire? There would have been no Metal and Iron Age and any following invention because this discovery is a starting point for many innovations. On the other hand, fire devastated many forests, cities and humans’ constructions. Fire is so strong that it might also cause Earth finiteness. As some astronomers or ancient tribes predicted it, the sun, that is constantly expanding may collapse with our planet in billion years and fire could destroy every kind of life. In the same ways, without water and wind control, civilisations could not be healthy, wealthy and grow in the way they did. Irrigations technics are indivisibly linked to earth cultivation that participated to feed populations as well as increase greatly their human social and political organization and expand

towns. For instance in China, some areas around the 黄河 Huáng hé or Yellow River, were heavily depending on river floods and their sediments to cultivate lands1. The

idea that Middle Age, is an obscurantist period in which no significant innovation emerged has to be nuanced as men better mastered natural elements like wind. Many mills were used for grinding grain and gradually able to weave cloth, sawing wood and crushing vegetable seeds for oil, whereas another example of wind harnessing is

experimentations in sailing1. In a way we can infer that wind control technics were a lever to progress for commerce and land discoveries. It is obvious than men evolution depended on harnessing natural resources1.

”technology, history of.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2014.

Chinaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s modern dependency on nature

It is obvious that in ancient time, harnessing elements helped human societies to develop. However we will now talk about the modern context that reveals that Chinese society is still relying on nature to live. Human progress has always depended on their natural surrounding. I would even say that their surroundings are conditioning their economy and their social organization. For instance in China, I noticed from traveling across the country that there are many landscapes influencing the way people would live. This dependency for nature demonstrates the indivisible link that tight together nature and Chinese people. Chinese are sharing strong links with nature. This is a good step toward biomimetic approach as something more than a simple interest is already in place: a strong dependence that conditioned their life.

A village in Fujian province, personnal picture, 8th July 2014.

土楼 tûlóu and the mountains of Fujian province, personnal picture, 4th July 2014.

In 福建 Fujian province, on the southeast coast of China, I discovered that artisanal tea production of high quality is the main activity in the region. Fujian is also the most

heavily forested province of China, with a forest coverage rate of about 63%1. The area

is also well known to visit some 土楼 tûlóu which are “vast, fortified earthen edifices

that have been home to both the Hakka and the Minnan (Fujianese) people since the year dot. Today, more than 3000 survive, many still inhabited and open to visitors”.

In 2008, UNESCO recognized 46 土楼 tûlóu to be protected. I was astonished to see

that in the less touristy buildings local people would always live there in communities like they used to do in the past. They would often be sitting around a very typical table made of wood to master the ritual around tea and drink it. Most of the time, they would invite me to join and try to communicate in Chinese about their culture of

tea drinking. To my understanding, drinking tea in the first floor of 土楼 tûlóu is very important to the Chinese people, especially Fujianese people to chat, exchange and socialize. I also saw tea ceremonies in cities but never as much as in this province. 1

Forestry in Fujian Province, State Forestry Administration, Peoples Republic of China, Jan. 21, 2010.

土楼 tûlóu in Fujian province, personnal picture, 4th July 2014.

土楼 tûlóu in Fujian province, personnal picture, 5th July 2014.

Tea importance in the 土楼 tûlóu of Fujian province, personnal pictures, 4th July 2014.

土楼 tûlóu walls made of rice Fujian province, personnal picture, 4th July 2014.

Common areas in the court of a 土楼 tûlóu in Fujian province, personnal pictures, 4th July 2014.

Shared kitchen in a 土楼 tûlóu of Fujian province, personnal pictures, 4th July 2014.

Another interesting fact about 土楼 tûlóu is the characters meaning. Two characters separately mean 土 tû earth and 楼 lóu floor. Indeed, I learnt from Lee, a local guide in the area, that those buildings were made “of mud and glutinous rice. The structure

was reinforced by bamboo and wood”. I could not believe they resisted to time, storms and tropical rains. It seems that they were built to last and moreover with sustainable materials. The first impression I got when I touched the surface of the walls was that it seemed to be rock, but then I noticed it is also friable. Communities built rectangle or round massive buildings to accommodate all of them. The first floor, especially the courtyard that is always the central part of the 土楼 tûlóu is often used during the day

for activities, cooking, eating whereas the others floors are bedrooms and bathrooms. In the courts, there were often some animals like an inner farm and in the center a well to draw water. Now some of them are changed into vivarium for turtles. I believe in the area, forests and mountains provided tea shrub, rice, bamboo and wood and the Fujianese people based all their amazing constructions and their lifestyle around what nature could provide them with. When I visited the area in June 2014, I experienced

living with a community in a 土楼 tûlóu for few days. I felt those mud houses belong to Chinese heritage a bit like castles in France. I also felt architecture, lifestyle and

business around tea of Fujianese people were built from what nature could provide them in the province.

Scenic in the 虎跳峡 Hǔ tiào xiá Tiger Leaping Gorges, Yunnan province, personnal picture,21th July 2014.

Another example of Chinese still relying on Nature to live that get them closer to biomimicry is in 云南 Yunnan province. I went for few days trekking in the 虎跳峡

Hǔ tiào xiá or Tiger Leaping Gorges in July 2014. The main goal of the trip was to

observe how Chinese would live and behave in this natural surrounding. I chose a 50

years old guide, named Richard He for his knowledge. He was born in a village so he knew a lot about the local folklore. Moreover he was previsouly an English teacher in a village so he spoke a good English. Colours of nature were marvellous. Leaves, fruits, insects, animals, rocks were changing colors acording to the four seasons. In winter rocks were dark grey and the water of the 长江 Chángjiang or Yangtze river was clear

blue. In the summer during the monsoon, heavy rains bring along a lot of dust and mud so the river is brown and the lush vegetation is bright green. The summer colours are brighter even if the river is brown. The fauna and flora flourish in one month thanks to the sunlight the fresh air and the water. One interesting part of the trekking brought Richard and me to the “Walnut Garden”. Along the cultivated land I found so many species of trees and plants. I was really impressed of seeing all of those species in such a small area. There were not only wild species but lots of them planted by very few villagers living there. In this wonderful garden at the highest point of the mountain, there were many types of vegetables: corn, tomatoes, marrow, squash, gourd, some fruits: apples, pears, citrus, figs, strawberries but also many other plants like cactus, Tabaco leaves, hemp, sunflowers. Hips of animals were also around, I saw a lot of dogs, chicken, crickets, butterflies, worms, spiders, birds, donkey, horses, lizards, and snakes…

I met some elder farmers, they were cultivating the land. Richard asked their age. They were 86 and 78 years old. They looked healthy and were gardening. Richard told me: “they live from what they cultivate, they don’t need anything more.” I understood from those villagers, that some Chinese are still living heavily depending on their harvest and crop, on the weather and on their manual work.

Farmers and farmer old lady in 虎跳峡 Hǔ tiào xiá Tiger Leaping Gorges, Yunnan province, personnal picture, 21th July 2014.

Leaves that are studied by biomimicry for their properties of repelling water. in 虎跳峡 Hǔ tiào xiá Tiger Leaping Gorges, Yunnan province, personnal picture, 21th July 2014.

We continued out trek when, suddenly, the monsoon rain started. We stopped for a while under a porch. A group of kids ran to their house with a lotus leaf upside down on the top of their head to avoid getting wet. I was very surprised to discover that they were using very special leaves. Indeed, biomimicry is currently focusing on research on gourds or lotus leaves properties that have the particularity to repel water. I found incredible that those kids were using those special leaves as umbrellas because they probably knew they were more efficient than any other leave of their garden…

The day after, we came back to the garden and we saw two teenagers sitting in this incredible place; they were concentrating on something we could not see from far away. Richard approached them and spoke in their language before he explained to me what they were doing. He said: “They are 纳西 Naxi people, my people. They just got married. They do their ritual. They killed a bird. And they are eating it without cooking it to celebrate their wedding”. This moment will always stay in my mind. My emotions were shared. As I am a vegetarian, I found the situation of this young couple eating religiously the flesh of the inoffensive bird both cruel and touching. They celebrated their joy, silently in this incredible landscape, by a ritual of eating a bird. I though: “it is unusual. I have never heard of that but the couple seemed very close, respectful and grateful to nature.” It was a bit like a symbolic sacrifice to seal an alliance. Later on, when I interviewed 宋怡然 Song Yiran, a 20 years old student in biology in Tongji Univeristy in Shanghai, I

had another surprising answer to the question: “what is your definition of nature?” that recalled me of this just married couple situation. She said to me: “Environments can make people please. They feel relaxed when they are in nature. They put themselves in the situation of origins; they connect to the ancient world. Before we were feeling safe and relaxed. Nature gave birth to us so I feel relaxed in nature”. The link between the couple of farmers living in another part of China in the mountains and this student living in the city of Shanghai (who were probably about the same age) was their connection to nature. They viewed nature as something they need. I felft in those two situations there were a bit of sacred in the people relation to nature.

I interviewed 郭光普 Guangpu Guo, a 46 years old researcher on mammals behaviours

that also teach ‘Science and Technology’ in Tongji University, Shanghai. I think Guo stories are fascinating because he is well instructed and has a great sense of humour. I think I was very lucky to cross Guo’s way because I was delighted to spend time listening to him. After he expressed his view about Chinese dependency on nature, I asked him: “In your opinion, what is the relation between Chinese people and Nature?” he replied: “Yeah. No. (Laugh.) Hard to say but… It’s a negative answer. China is walking on the road of urbanization. Many people want to live their hometown, their land to go to the city, the buildings. Before in history, they did not leave. The land is where they come from and what they can rely on. I think in the future, they will think about their land. In the future it will happen that they will think a lot about their loss land. You know in China, there are 1 billion farmers, and the total population is 1.4 billion. 1 BILLION ARE FARMERS! Some of them leave the farms to enjoy the modern civilization. Like me, actually I also left. But I want to go back to the land sometimes. I have some friends working in some education about nature for kids. They want to make the kid feel nature. It becomes more and more popular in China… There is a huge market. Chinese life in nature is a new trend. It becomes common.” Actually I am not too sure about the exact numbers that Guo advanced but even if China’s rural population has declined, there are still many farmers. In 2011, China’s National Bureau of Statistics quoted1 that total population counted 1347 million people, whereas the rural population was 657 million and the agricultural labor force 266 million. Many of Chinese farmers are directly depending on nature to live. From traveling in China, I can say that nowadays, Chinese people especially in the countryside are directly relying on nature. Without it they could not live. That is a very important context to recall to readers. Nowadays, lots of Chinese are truly dependant on nature. This dependence is known from the people and that makes a favourable ground for biomimicry. Most Chinese people reckon they need nature and they are grateful for what nature gives them. 1

2001-2012 Statistical Year Book of China, China’s National Bureau of Statistics

Nature superiority to men

Through Inner definition and some examples, we already discussed about the importance of power for Chinese people. Now we will see that some answers I collected in interviews revealed that there is a conscious of nature’s superiority compared to men smallness. Recognizing nature’s strength is also a good clue that nature is valued, just like in biomimicry. Guo explained that he spent quite a lot of time in Tibet and that he keeps very good memories of this moment: “In Tibet you feel power of nature. You will feel you are not great. Most of people say: ‘we are great’, ‘we can talk’. No. You are not great. There you feel small and you feel you can’t conquest. You are conquered. I had the feeling from a photograph. Snow Mountains gives me a strong feeling.” Actually, in Yunnan province, in the 虎跳峡 Hǔ tiào xiá Tiger Leaping Gorge, I felt small

compared to the beauty of nature. That is why I agree with Guo’s vision. I rarely saw as stunning scenic beauty than in those Gorges.

Rock that felt on the main road at the starting point of the trekking in 虎跳峡 Hǔ tiào xiá Tiger Leaping Gorges, Yunnan province, personnal picture, 21th July 2014.

“Gingerly stepping along a trail swept with scree to allow an old fellow with a donkey to pass; resting atop a rock, exhausted, looking up to see the fading sunlight dance between snow-shrouded peaks, then down to see the lingering rays dancing on the rippling waters a thousand metres away; feeling utterly exhilarated. That pretty much sums up the unmissable trek of southwest China. One of the deepest gorges in the world, it measures 16km long and is a

giddy 3900m from the waters of the Jinsha River 金沙江 (Jinsha Jiang) to the snowcapped mountains of Haba Shan 哈巴山 (Haba Mountain) to the west

and Yulong Xueshan 玉龙雪山 to the east, and, despite the odd danger, it’s gorgeous almost every single step of the way. The gorge hike is not to be

taken lightly. Even for those in good physical shape, it’s a workout. A few people – including a handful of foreign travellers – have died in the gorge.” Ebook version, Chapter Yunnan, edition 2011

虎跳峡 Hǔ tiào xiá Tiger Leaping Gorges, Yunnan province, personnal picture, 23th July 2014.

The 长江 Chángjiang or Yangtze river

generates at certain turns of the canyons so powerful strong current that you feel you are of the size of an ant. Richard my tourist guide explained that the current is so strong in the river at this season that it destroys every year the tourist wood bridge for sightseeing. As Richard tells it:

“nature is so powerful compared to human abilities. The bridge is washed away like a piece of tofu in a hotpot”. I believe from those examples that Chinese people know about natural forces operating around them that can wash them away. This power recognition is a mark of respect in keeping with biomimicry, which is trying to reestablish more equilibrium of power between men and nature. 71

Chinese government is not hiding ecological issues

I believe it is important to write about the political context in China that is quite favourable to more sustainable trends, lifestyles, behaviours and industries. Before moving to China. I had no ideas about how the country manages the ecological crisis. I thought they were closing their eyes on it for the sake of the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s growth. All things considered, it is true that Chinese government is nowadays very concerned about pollution and this is a good step toward biomimicry that spread sustainable values. Managing the country growth while maintaining the lowest level of pollution is a massive challenge.

A proof that government is not ignoring this issue is for instance the youth awareness through conferences. Nicolas Hulot, a French ambassador for ecology and the president of an NGO called « Fondation Nicolas Hulot pour la Nature et l’Homme » since 1990 was sent by the French president François Hollande to give a conference in China. In his conference, that I attended, he started by comparing the highest skyscraper in Shanghai with the time elapsed until our Era. The foundation of the tower corresponds to the Big Bang, whereas the top of the building represents, on the scale of time, the beginning of Earth. He explained that if we place a sheet of paper on the tower’s roof, its width would be at a good scale to correspond to the start of humankind on Earth. The main idea is that our presence on Earth is extremely recent in our cosmos history compared to all the massive damages we are responsible for. Hulot explained that men became their own factor of evolution and he expressed a certain fear by quoting a French philosopher called Julien Offray de La Mettrie:

«Je déplore le sort de l’humanité d’être, pour ainsi dire, en d’aussi mauvaises mains que les siennes.”

By authorizing such messages promulgation to the youth, we can presume that the government is careful about the issue. Another proof that the government is willing to communicate more on pollution is that before, China used to manipulate and fake the air pollution rates but now they are crossing their pollution data with the US Embassy and the US Consulate in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Shenyang. This is a case for a free mobile application that I use everyday in Shanghai to see the pollution level. It records PM2.5 and PM10 particles that are very hazardous for lungs, 03, NO2, SO2 and CO. Also some law are established in order to limit pollution. Chinese government has, for example, introduced strict fuel-economy standards for new cars. It has also enacted a renewable-energy law that sets ambitious targets for using wind 1 and solar energy 2.

CN air quality application screenshot on a smartphone.

1 James Ayre for clean technica: China Aiming To Install 1,300 MW Of New Renewable Energy Capacity A Week. November 19th, 2014 article. 2

Bloomberg News: China Targets 70 Gigawatts of Solar Power to Cut Coal Reliance May 16th, 2014 article.

October 18th 2014, windmills on the way to Chongming island, Shanghai. Personnal picture.

August 31th 2013, near Nanpu Bridge area, Shanghai. Personnal picture.

Through interviews, I also discovered that official press talks a lot about pollution. As Guo, the researcher on mammal’s behaviors putted it:

“Chinese press talks about environmental problems very much. But however what they do is not very much like what they say. The press did very good thing to push the government to do some things about environment. Many problems showed in the newspaper were be resolved by government but not all of them. Some very serious problems are showed on television like CCTV channel, but it has not been resolved yet. Like water pollution. I think it is a process of our development. Just like other countries. In London there was fog but in China it not very easy to do it.” I think that official press and government are not ignoring the ecological problems. They are communicating on them even if they are not always taking actions as much as they should. In my opinion, acceptation of ecological problems and making people aware about them is the first step to resolve them. A considerable stake is on the current agenda of many local and international organization in the world. The issue is not about repairing all damages that human did to Planet Earth because it seems impossible, but about limiting human activities’ impact and each person carbon footprint and about increasing standards of living of an always growing population.

In the first part, we saw that despite clichĂŠs and commonplace ideas that can be engraved in people brains without justifications (like I could also have before I came to see whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s happening in China), Biomimicry has a favorable context in China. First there is a sense of power and hierarchy in Chinese culture that recognizes nature as a powerful entity. Second men evolution has an indisputable dependence on nature in history. Third we have also seen that in the contemporary world, some Chinese farmers and citizens are heavily depending on nature to survive or to live well. Fourth, in the first part, we have seen that some people interviewed admitted nature superiority to men. The last reason that is favorable for biomimicryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s toward taking root in China is that the government is not hiding ecological issues. It is admitting it, and communicating around it for people to be aware. There is a growing concern for biomimicry to participate to cleaner and more perennial innovations in a country that has many issues with devastating the environment. Now, in the second part, we will see that unfortunately, there are some obstacles for biomimicry to arise in China.

2 Biomimicry OBSTACLES in China.

2.1 China: giant in the world ecological crisis

Temple in Fujian province, 2014. Personnal picture.

The whole world is nowadays concerned about ecology. We can assume that humankind absolutely do not live in symbiosis with other organisms and their surroundings. They do not behave well regarding the other species when they live in such a selfish way, when they pollute so much, when they destroy and when they take more than they need. Human is destructing other species. Many ecological issues take origin from those behaviours. Earth is currently experiencing crisis of deforestation, sea level augmentation, air and water heavy pollution, large-scale climatic changes, melt of icebergs in other words a global ecological degradation. Examples of people living in harmony with nature is only assumed to be in low-scale population society, in which indeed no harm is made because the quantity of resources uses is reasonable. In those cases, nature could grow and regenerate faster than humans were using resources and producing wastes. In the actual context of human overpopulation, especially the booming China and its following development, over exploitation and over pollution is a real danger for the planet and its people. China is a very alarming case among other countries. It is now “driving the consumption and production of almost everything, threatening to deplete the world’s resources.”1 1

Study Warns - Stefan Lovgren - China’s Boom Is Bust for Global Environment,

for National Geographic News - May 16, 2005

“China’s economic boom is dramatically changing [its] environmental landscape— polluting the water and air, desertifying the land, and diminishing the country’s natural resources at terrifying rates,” Elizabeth Economy, the director of Asia Studies at the New York City-based Council of Foreign Relations.

“China is becoming the sucking force, taking raw materials from across the planet, because it alone doesn’t have the resources it needs to sustain its growth,” Lisa Mastny, project director of a study of Vital Signs 2005, Report by the Worldwatch Institute, Washington, D.C.-based environmental non-profit.

“China is in the middle of the largest rural migration in human history, with millions of its people leaving for mushrooming cities. With factories multiplying and car ownership surging, the cities’ air quality has plummeted. Sixteen of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are in China.” Stefan Lovgren - Study Warns - China’s Boom Is Bust for Global Environment, for National Geographic News - May 16, 2005

One of the numerous Shanghai peaks of pollution, 2014. Personnal picture.

China air pollution deadliest in world In 2007, as a National Geographic journalist wrote it in an article commenting the same report, Chinese air pollution is the “deadliest in world”. Air pollution is mainly composed of sulfur dioxide, ozone and nitrogen dioxide. According to Krzyzanowski, China accounts for roughly one-third of the global total for these pollutants. It is obvious that water, soil and air pollution, contaminates food and any kind of living species and causes some organs dysfunctions and illness. To quote the author: “air pollution can trigger or worsen a wide spectrum of respiratory and cardiovascular ailments.” Kevin Holden Platt in Beijing, China for National Geographic News - July 9, 2007 http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070709-china-pollution.html

In January 2013, I met a Danish sporty 26 years old guy that lived in China for 3 year. He explained to me that he used to be running one hour every morning

along the 黄河 Huánghé Yellow River of

Shanghai to stay in good shape but that

he stopped as soon as he discovered the state of his lungs. When he came back to his country, Dan, did a global health medical check-up. His doctor was very concerned about the results of his lungs scanner. He said to Dan that if he does not quit smoking as soon as possible he is going to develop a lung cancer, because his lungs were in a terrible state. Dan was shocked. He never smoked in his life. They found out together that the damages in his lungs were caused by outdoor sports in Shanghai. Indeed while doing sport, lungs alveolus open up and hazardous particles get inside them more easily. After sport, particles set up in alveolus that retracts after efforts... Hips of similar stories can be heard in China. This is scary. From my side I also experienced heavy pollution. Shanghai CBD towers were hidden in the fog, there was no visibility under 10 meters in the streets of the city centre, every single person was wearing a protection mask, most schools were closed, people were avoiding to go outside or to open their windows... it seemed apocalypytic.

It is hard to find accurate figures about number of death caused by pollution, as the government of China is not wishing to communicate on this. However it is possible to find numbers from China thanks to Internet with a VPN connexion, changing your IP address to another country. A report from a World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that “diseases triggered by indoor and outdoor air pollution kill 656,000 Chinese citizens each year, and polluted drinking water kills another 95,600.” “To compare with a Western country, in the USA, premature deaths from toxic air pollutants are estimated at 41,200 annually.” “Air pollution is estimated to cause approximately two million premature deaths worldwide per year,” said Michal Krzyzanowski, an air quality adviser at the WHO Regional Office for Europe. Kevin Holden Platt in Beijing, China for National Geographic News - July 9, 2007 http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070709-china-pollution.html

It sounds absurd to me to develop biomimicry in the most polluting country that destroys so much nature... Indeed, it is true that it also puts China in the position of the country that needs the most some clean innovation. But well, it is non-sense.

China blamed, China victim

Kids playing in the streets of Shanghai, August 2014. Personnal picture.

In the West, China is perceived as the most careless country that also damages the most the planet. This vision, which is also mine is shared by many countries because of concrete facts and images that people can read, see or hear through medias. For instance in France in the news in December 2013, reports revealed an historical world record of pollution peak in Shanghai. “China is polluting the world.” as Aaron an Australian friend said when we discussed about ecology on a cruise in HaLong bay in Vietnam1. Aaron shares a very strong relationship with nature as he chose to marry his

wife in the garden of their, just recently, owned farm with more than one hectare of land. They chose to experience living in Australia’s “bush” as they were “fed up with the city life, especially about the lack of nature and the high cost of life in Melbourne”. He explained that they enjoy “simple pleasures” and a “simple life, living surrounded by lands, trees, grass, dogs, sheep, chickens and an impala”. They are considering getting a cow and they wish to avoid paying it by exchanging it against something they have. They were defending their ideals by explaining to me about the way they managed and organized their wedding in nature without spending much money. I believe what mattered for them is to escape a materialistic and capitalist system in which nature do not have enough importance. They preferred setting their rules closer to the way people would live in alternatives societies such as the Hippie community in the sixties with their famous motto: ”flower power”.

Dec 24th 2014, interview with an Australian couple of friend in Vietnam

One of the numerous Shanghai peaks of pollution, 2014. Personnal picture.

Shanghai appartments, February 2014. Personnal picture.

After I finished the interview, Aaron started asking questions about China: “how bad is it to live in China with the pollution? Chinese don’t give a fuck about pollution right? Man, they are destroying everything and they don’t care”. Actually before starting my Chinese exploration I would have totally agreed with him and blame China for being responsible for so much pollution; but today my answer is different. As Chinese factories and houses are highly using fossil fuel and more especially coal and charcoal, which is producing heavy air pollution ref, I still believe that China is responsible for massive damages. Cars and expanding megacities are also responsible for air pollution. However, from my experience, nuances are to be putted on the table about the term “careless”. It could seem obvious but I only got this understanding after two years living in China: Chinese people do care about solving pollution problem. People of Republic of China do participate to creation of pollution and this is inconsistent with biomimicry but of course they hate it, and even more than any one else on earth because they are also the main victims of it. Mothers are worried for their children; families are experiencing losses of relatives that die directly or indirectly from pollution. Richard He, the tourist guide I already mentioned above is truly conscious that men are responsible for nature pollution and disturbance when he said: “last year I took an American scientist on a tour. He said vehicles spoil the world. This is true.” China is responsible of pollution but is also the first victim of it. Pollution is a big obstacle to overcome in order to reach a more sustainable transition. This is possible through mastered growth with sustainable ways of innovations like biomimicry.

2.2 City lifestyle pulls away people from nature

Fireworks everywhere in Shanghai, Chinese Spring Festival 2014. Personnal picture.

Farmer in Guanxi Province, July 2014. Personnal picture.

Massive society adopting a city life “Like any other developed country, the journey of China’s development and modernization is the journey of industrialization and urbanization with a reduction in the number of farmers. Indeed, this industrialization and urbanization is the strong powerful force that pulls farmers out of their farms. From 1978 to 2012, the rate of urbanization in China was 52.27%, an increase of 34.4%. During that same period, the rate of rural population dropped from 82.10 % in 1978 to 47.43% in 2012, or a decline of 34.67%.” Asian Social Science; Vol. 9, No. 7; 2013 - ISSN 1911-2017 E-ISSN 1911-2025 Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education Demographic Changes in China’s Farmers: The Future of Farming in China Zhengzhou Yang, Graduate School, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China

As this publication exposes it clearly, China is experiencing a massive transition in demography with the rural exodus. At the scale of this country it represents huge movement of population. Chinese governments plans are gargantuan in number of persons concerned and on the ecological impact that it will lead to.

The NY times published on June 15, 2013 a video that is helping people visualizing how huge the government project is to move farmers into cities. “China is pushing ahead with a sweeping plan to move 250 million rural residents into newly constructed towns and cities over the next dozen years — a transformative event that could set off a new wave of growth or saddle the country with problems for generations to come.” “The ultimate goal of the government’s modernization plan is to fully integrate 70 percent of the country’s population, or roughly 900 million people, into city living by 2025. Currently, only half that number are.” IAN JOHNSON for the NY times, June 15, 2013 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/world/asia/chinas-great-uprooting-moving-250million-into-cities.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Actually I have seen while traveling around China massive and similar towers built to host those farmers at least 10 times in different provinces. I was incredibly astonished to see so many constructions areas, bulldozers, workers building everywhere modern towers. I must admit I found it, in one hand, fascinating because they are colossal construction areas in the middle of deserts, and, in the other hand, extremely scary for environment. Populations may reach higher standard of living but at which cost for our planet? Those monumental changes are drawing away China from adopting better quality and efficient innovation such as biomimicry rather than massive polluting productions to satisfy quickly needs of this booming population in cities.

Jiangsu province, many modern and similar buildings were built in few year. Personnal picture, October 2014.

Consumer nation

One coin on Buddha’s head in The Buddha’s Jade Temple, Shanghai. Personnal picture, April 2014.

The world economy expanded in 2004 at a rate of 5 percent. According to the report, Chinaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s economy grew by a staggering 9 percent. Economic

reforms

have

undoubtedly

benefited hundreds of millions of Chinese people, providing them with a better standard of life. The boom has also turned China into a huge market for companies worldwide. China is still a manufacturing giant. It now produces 27 percents of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s steel, an essential input in industrial infrastructure.

Steel

production

has

increased by one-third in the last five years. Chinese have money, they want to have more and spend more.

101

2.3 Nature seen as an exploitable resource

Bamboo sticks used to hang clothe is some lane house in Xuhui, Shanghai. Personnal picture, May 2014.

Men relaxing near trees. Shanghai. Personnal picture, May 2014.

Nature fulfilling human needs I noticed in my research that Chinese people share a very pragmatic vision of nature. During my stay in China, I had many chances to see that Chinese people are pragmatic. What comes first to their mind when talking about nature is often in which ways nature can be useful for them. I believe nature is seen in China as an exploitable resource. In my opinion, this is an obstacle to biomimicry because biomimicry is trying to put in people minds that nature is not infinite. Nature has a lot of fossil resource. Nature smartness, brainy systems and technologies should be imitated in order to make humankind progress; but people must consume nature goods with care and consciousness that it is not endless.

103

Bamboo sticks used to cook steamed rice. in Guanxi Province. Personnal picture, July 2014.

Utilitarian view of nature is very practical; it is what humans can extract and use from Mother Nature to feed and cure someone, build a shelter or something useful to accomplish any tasks. When asking to Chinese people that I interviewed in Shanghai about how nature could be useful, the most common spontaneous answer I heard was to serve human needs of the very well-known base of Maslow pyramid. In other words, through nature, it was clear that people wanted to fulfil physiological needs such as food, water, and shelter. Actually, during interviews, I questioned Chinese people about in what way animals could be useful. Answers were such the following ones: “Animal are definitely useful in practice: we use them for food, for clothes or we can ride them… like use them as a transportation mean; they were also used in wars”. The most common answers was: “to provide food” or “to feed ourselves”. Even while asking an open question on bacteria: “what do you know about bacteria?” I was surprised to get answers related to cooking. For instance Lee, the tourist guide of Fujian province said: “Bacterias is used for yogurt, or to produce alcohol and another one… yes bread.” 高兴 Gaoxing or Amber, a 35 years old, seller in a clothes store

in Shanghai, answered me in the same way by saying: “yes I know bacteria. I made yoghurt in my home. With bacterial things I can make some [yogurt].” She even went further by saying: “I think our life will be quite different without it [bacteria] cause we have a lot of food coming from it, like soya sauces.” Also while asking: “Would you agree on the fact that nature is smart and why?” The topic was brought again to what humans can extract from nature to feed themselves. “Yes nature is quite smart. I will always be amazed about how nature recycles and creates chain of life. That is quite amazing! […] According to Chinese traditional medicine theory, in summer we should eat something and in autumn we should eat another thing.” If we eat “something from summer in winter it’s harmful. I think it’s quite magical. Right?”

105

On the 18th of October 2014, I joined a Chinese students school trip in 崇明崇明 Chóngmíng Island in Shanghai area. Located on the estuary of Yangtze River,

Chongming Island is the third largest island in China. We went to Dongping National Forest Park the “largest man-made forest in Eastern China” and to “DongTan Migratory Bird Protection Area”.1

The purpose of the trip was to observe nature and to practice biomimicry for real. Sherry Ritter, a biologist from Montana, USA, that worked for ‘Biomimicry 3.8’, a famous organisation2, was our guide.

I joined a chinese school trip, in Chongming island, Shanghai area, October 2014.

Before there

entering was

the

National

massive

stone

Park, with

Chinese Characters inscriptions on it : “崇明东滩湿地”.

means

Chóngmíng

wetland. I have seen such stones on many

sites of natural interests such as in the 黄山 Huángshān: the Yellow Mountains in Anhui

province. I asked to one of the student around: “What is the meaning of this kind of stone for you?” and he answered: “This

kind off stone is just a mark. Like a signage to say where you are.” I then asked: “Do you think it has any aesthetic interest?” He glanced at the stone, shrugged his shoulders and said: “No it’s just a stone.” I continued by commenting: “So why a stone instead of a normal signage?” He then replied: “it is just like that, tradition from ancient time.” Here the stone is seen as a simple support for human orientation. I thought while seeing such stones that they are well integrated in

the

landscape,

imposing,

grandiose

and original, but the Chinese student I interviewed just saw it has a tradition that is useful for men. As if they just wrote on this stone randomly and it has no other interest for him than orientation purpose. 1

http://www.chinahighlights.com/shanghai/

attraction/chongming-island.htm 2

http://www.asknature.org/user/Sherry

107

Guo, teacher in Tongji univeristy, that I quote a lot in the present essay. Chongming island, October 2014.

Scenics, Chongming island, October 2014.

109

Guo, the teacher in Science and Technologies in Tongji University answered to the question: “Do you have ideas on how plants can be useful for people?” by: ”I will try to say something special because everybody knows about desk and chairs or roof, buildings. So... I will say: eat, drink, buildings and move.” I was surprised and asked: “Move?” He replied: “Yes move like in ancient time, carriages. The most important things for a human to live in the world according to a Chinese saying are: 衣食住行 yi shi zhu xing. Respectively it means: - Clothes - the thing you wear - Food - the thing you eat - Live - the house you live in - Walk - transportation. Those needs are not only linked to the plants but also to people. It means the more basic is the most important.” I found out

that this saying is known by many people

as a common saying, but actually it comes from a book: 民生主义 people’s livelihood

written by a revolutionary figure that is considered as the “father of the Nation” as it was the “pioneer of Republic of China”: 孙中山 Sun Yat-sen. This saying that defends

people’s right and defines human’s priority were stated to build a prosperous and strong country. It is very interesting to notice that when I asked Guo about his vision of how could nature be used, he thought about those basic human needs. It conveys the idea that nature is approached with an utilitarian view. 1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Yat-sen http://sun.yatsen.gov.tw/

孙中山 Sun Yat-sen

Richard He, the tourist guide that showed me some small villages in the Tiger Leaping Gorge, answered to the question: “what is your favorite insect and why?” in an unexpected way: “I like worms. One day I ate one. Just like this, without cooking. It was very good. It is very high in proteins. 纳西 Naxi people eat them but fried and it has to be before they get wings or other things”.

Chinese guy working in the silk worm industry admitted to eat the worms as well when they had already been used for silk. Yunnan province, July 2014.

In the same way, when I asked: “do you like plants?” Richard said: “yes, I grow some herbs in my garden. All the plant I grow can be eaten or medicine. They have two functions. I learnt a lot from village people. When Village people are sick, sometimes they don’t need to go to see the doctor. They have their own herb medicine. Traditional. They learn from their grandparents. It is still given to the young people. Chinese medicine uses all the leaves, the flower, the root.” 111

It is true that for more than 2000 years, Chinese people have learnt to cure themselves

with natural drugs. The earliest trace of written record is the 黄帝内经 Huángdì nèijīng,

or Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon, that dates to the 3rd century before Christ. Chinese TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) is considered as a medical engineering or system

that prevents or heals disease by maintaining or restoring 阴阳 Yin-yang balance. According to TCM, a person is healthy when harmony exists between the two forces of

the passive yin and the active yang; illness, on the other hand, results from a breakdown in the equilibrium of yin and yang . Practitioners find correspondences between the patient illness and the five-elements, including wood, fire, earth, metal and water (五行Wǔháng), to heal an unbalanced relationship. Herbal therapy are aiming to

strengthen organs through stimulations or adjustments thanks to plants properties, essence and energy vibration. Concoction, that really bases on combinations of nature products are like food for TCM doctors: they carry different energies and can regulates the body harmony. Food categories of ‘cold’ and ‘hot’ are very important to Chinese people to maintain their inner organs balance. Cold and Hot categories have nothing to do with the temperature of the meal but with TCM properties of the

aliment. I have seen one of the better pharmacies according to 伏天 Fu Tian or Tracy,

a 22 years old, student majoring graphic design, in Shanghai. It was like a cabinet of curiosity with plenty of dry species such as animals (worms, snakes, scorpions…) and plants (mushrooms, algae...). For westerners, this vision of cure based on plants can seem a bit obscurantist but current study are trying to prove its efficiency. Moreover, nearly 200 modern drugs have been developed from the 7300 plants species used in TCM. Nature has always been a source of benefits in traditional Chinese medicine,

中医 Zhōng yī, until the first Western Doctors came to China around 1920 to defend western medicine, 西医 Xī yī. A national medicine system was though re-established in

1949 to defend, pursue and promote again those traditional practices. Today a balance

has been found and China tends to accept both kinds of medicines 中医 Zhōng yī and 西医 Xī yī are combined together into an integrative medicine : 中西医结合, Zhōng xīyī

jiéhé. TCM could also explain why Chinese believe that nature is useful and must be extracted for human needs.

李時珍 Lǐ Shízhēn, Bencao Gangmu, (compendium of Materia Medica), 1578. listing 1892 drugs and 11000 prescriptions. source: en.unesco.org

113

LandscapeS transformed for mass tourism

Every visitor gather to see the sunrise in the early morning. 黄山 Huángshān or the Yellow Mountains in Anhui province, 5th november 2014

Another obstacle to biomimicry in China results in how untouched nature is transformed for mass tourism. Mass tourism is denaturing and polluting some marvelous places. In my opinion, the more this type of tourism will expand, the more Chinese people will lose their traditional and pure relation to nature. As Guo, the researcher on mammal behavior, mentioned it in our interview: “People travel to nature. Their ideas are not very good, they just want to go to see, eat, sleep and come back.” I believe this side of tourism is meaningless and polluting beautiful places. Nature becomes a vulgar tourist attraction producing lots of waste and a pretext to run businesses. Similarly, as Feng HAN, a doctor in Tongji university, puts it: “Nature is an economic resource

and represents the possession of wealth.”1 Aside from damages caused by the massive

visits, nature face has been changed for human practicality. 1

HAN Feng, The Chinese View of Nature: Tourism in China’s Scenic and Historic Interest Areas. p217.

Path of wood built in Chongming island, Shanghai area, October 2014.

115

workshop organised with 10 Chinese students on the 1st of November 2014 in Shanghai

In a workshop organised with 10 Chinese students on the 1st of November 2014 in Shanghai, I found out that an image of barefooted feet in the grass generated comments and interests. The Chinese participants expressed two positions. In the one hand, the first was a feeling of commuting with nature and accessing peace, related to holidays or childhood positive memories. On the second hand, a painful sensation coming from previous memories of walking barefooted and hurting rocks recalled them. That lead to very typical settings in China: most points of interests in nature are completely organized to comfortably host hordes of tourists. Chinese turned nature into commodities. Wilderness is transformed into landscapes with infrastructures such as roads, stairs, bridges and hotels. Urban elites want to use the countryside for recreation such as vacations or hunting. Nature became a luxury for people seeking to escape their routine and city life and pressure. I found that in China, nature is more appreciated when it is organized and structured by men. From my experience, I have seen four places of incredible natural interest in China concerned by this issue: - 黄山 Huángshān or the Yellow Mountains in Anhui province.

- 崇明东滩湿地 or Chóngmíng dongtan wetland protected park, in Shanghai area. - 虎跳峡 Hǔ tiào xiá or Tiger Leaping Gorge in Yunnan province.

117

Those three places have in common their extraordinary charms and their unbelievable flow of visitors for whom facilities are built. I was surprised and interested in the way Chinese people would organize their natural areas for visitors. I told myself it must also be linked to the massive crowds and the need to protect sites wildlife. For instance I found that 黄山 Huang Shan, or the Yellow Mountains you cannot walk in some path

made of mud, you climb through men made stairs. They are picturesque and quaint, however it surprised me compared to trekking I could do in French mountains such as in the area of Jura in France. In 黄山 Huang Shan, the visit experience is spoiled by the number of visitors. UNESCO

estimated “one of the most popular scenic landscapes in China …annual visitation at 2.74 million and increasing at 8.96% per annum”. One of my friends wanted to visit those extraordinary mountains at the peak season. He came all the way there. He was so shocked by the number of people queuing to start the ascension, that he took pictures to show to his relatives and he left! I find this story so terrible compared to the meaning of the Yellow Mountains in Chinese history, indeed. It attracted many hermits or artists and even monks who wished to retreat in nature alone in order to meditate and go back to original beauty. We can see in the following excerpt that previously, visitors were not coming to see, eat and sleep… they were deeper interests for the inner beauty of the place.

“The cultural value of Mount Huangshan’s scenic landscape first entered the Chinese imagination in the Tang Dynasty and has been held in high esteem ever since. The mountain was named Huangshan (Yellow Mountain) by imperial order in the year 747 黄山 Huángshān

Yellow Mountains Anhui province, 5th november 2014

and from that time on attracted many visitors, including hermits, poets and painters, all of whom eulogized the mountain’s inspirational scenery through painting and poetry, creating a rich body of art and literature of global significance. During the Yuan Dynasty (12711368), 64 temples were constructed on the mountain. In 1606, the monk Pumen came to Huangshan and built the Fahai Meditation Temple.” http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/547

119

121

I read on the UNESO official page that a lot of efforts for conservation are made by the government. Mount Huangshan World Heritage property is a National Park protected under the laws of China. These include: the Law on the Protection of Cultural Relics (1982), the Forestry Law (1982), the Law on the Management of Scenic and Historic Interest Areas (1985), and the Law on the Protection of Wildlife (1988). I have seen details that show government willing to keep the place natural such as the bins made of rock to better integrate landscapes. However, many bottles of waters, plastic bags are trashed everywhere. Moreover, at the top of the mountains, some area are covered by concrete platforms, there are many restaurants and hotels and even an ATM machine… UNESCO website is communicating about scenic protection but also about tourism promotion. “A Master Plan for the property is currently under implementation. Objectives of this plan are to balance conservation of the property with tourism promotion… to raise conservation management standards by ‘digitizing, systematizing, refining, and humanizing’ the property’s management regime”. I found the protection initiative laudable but I feel all those facilities are terrible compared to the raw beauty of those gorgeous mountains in their sky of clouds. While going in nature I expect to enjoy a quiet and unique experience rather than crowded roads. For me, retreating in nature has to be authentic and unique. Some Chinese people agreed with me like 宋怡然 Song Yiran, the student in biology in Tongji University that I interviewed. She asserted: “The best nature I have seen is in Australia at the

Great barrier of reef. I saw it from a transparent tunnel. I wanted to be closer to it. For instance today in Chongming wetland area, I would have preferred to walk through the wood rather than staying on human constructions. I think buildings are convenient. But I don’t like to see to many people in nature. Original and quiet environments would be the best way to observe nature. In Eastern China there is less people. Land is interesting. You can ride horse. In the North, I also like 内蒙古 Nèiménggǔ Inner Mongolia or 新疆 Xīnjiāng.”

I agree with Guo about the fact that most Chinese people are travelling with controversial objectives. They just want to see, eat and sleep without immersion in nature. The problem of number is another big issue in China. I found again those typical Chinese huge infrastructures in places where I did not expect any human construction. Here is an example of the starting point for the usual trekking in the Tiger Leaping Gorge in Yunnan province, it is so packed with Chineseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s and foreignerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tourists that it makes me want to run away despite the landscape marvel.

Starting point of the trekking, so overcrowded.... Yunnan province, July 2014.

123

Lac Erhai, 洱海 ěrhǎ in Yunnan province. July, 2014. Personnal picture.

I believe that Chinese natural areas are transformed because of people values. Those values of nature’s exploitation for making money are completely against the values that biomimicry is defending such as sustainability and respect of nature. Here, an excerpt illustrates well my opinion and the subject discussed. “In environmental studies it has commonly been assumed that there exists a fundamental connection between a society’s management of natural resources and it perception of nature.” “It strongly demonstrated that values of nature are socially and culturally constructed, and they change all the time as social contexts change. The changing landscapes are unpinned by these changing values. Many traditional values of nature have been inherited; while many of them have been changed or are new... there is a break between traditional and contemporary Chinese cultures. In today’s Scenic and Historic Interest Areas, mass tourism’s popular culture dominates, while traditional high culture has been vulgarised and abused to be used as a commodity for tourism consumption. …The contemporary competition for values of landscape is much more intense than in ancient China. Politics unites with the economy to manipulate landscape for new contemporary values, which has caused the re-distribution of social space. Social and cultural prejudice still exists and has been even more enhanced by manipulated landscape. The symbolic meanings of landscape are extending. Landscape also generates competing international, national and regional values. All these relationships to tradition, changes and conflicts of values of nature have put China in a very challenging position regarding heritage landscape conservation, internationally, nationally and regionally.” J.BAIRD Callicot and T.AMES Roger. Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought, Essays in Environmental Philosophy. New York: SUNY series in Philosophy and Biology, May 1989.

125

2.4 Lack of knowledge

Kid in a Tulou in Fujian province, July, 2014. Personnal picture.

Chinese People have no education about biomimicry A simple obstacle to biomimicry is that people ignore what it means. Absolutely all person I interviewed that I did meet outside of biomimicry conferences or events had no idea about biomimicry meaning. An interesting fact is that when I interviewed Richard He at an inhabitant house in the middle of our trekking in Yunnan I asked: “in your opinion, what is the relation between technology and nature?” He answered spontaneously: “Technology always destroys nature. For example a lot of vehicles and machines go in the land, grass and forest and they destroy everything. I am not happy to see this. The more development, the less nature is left. Development and nature are contradictory. ” At the end of the interview I asked: “Do you know biomimicry?” His answer was negative so I explained the concept. I then questioned him again: “so in that way would you say technology and nature can work in pair?” He agreed and asked me to write that word “biomimicry” on a paper because he found it very interesting and wanted to read about it.

127

All things considered, Guo, teacher in Tongji university, was able to recap the situation very well by saying the impossibilities for developing biomimicry in China are: not enough knowledge in the “the development of Science”. According to him: “There are not many people in China to think about it, or to talk about it. However it is an interesting topic. So if we advertise it, people will be interested about it and think more

about it.” 宋怡然 Song Yiran, the student in biology who actually takes courses with Guo, explained to me, what are the obstacles for biomimicry in China in her opinion:

“people don’t know about it. We need to teach children. In the countryside children want to become farmers, they don’t go to school. The second reason is that most people in China find it hard to find a job when you study biology. It is very long study. It can’t fit to most people because we have to learn for many years and they have to get married and make a child. They need to have a normal life. They don’t have time to study so much technology.” Song Yiran evocated another disincentive for biomimicry, which I find very accurate in China: pressure for a stable career. Applied science and engineering might guarantee a secure job in China whereas sciences of research require long studies and are not always leading on to a stable sufficiently job. Chinese youth, having a lot of pressure from society to start to work and marry early, may not be very keen on focusing on long study that do not guarantee job security. As Song Yiran explains it, she chose biology because she “loves nature” and she is “interested to know more about it” but her choice is not common in China and would not have been accepted from “some parents” as she puts it. Indeed, the words she used are quite strong to express her difference compared to other students she knows: “They need to have a normal life”. As if in China, studying biology is a marginal choice because of society’s constraints and expectations.

October 15th 2014, Biomimicry week in Tongji, at the BiDL or Biomimetic Design Lab, Shanghai

What also caught my attention is that even in the community of interest gathered around biomimicry that I met on October 15th 2014, at the BiDL or Biomimetic Design Lab of Shanghai, I found another type of lack of knowledge that was a hindrance to biomimicry development. Actually I found a lack of cross-disciplinary teams. I asked at the D&I (Design and Innovation) forum on biomimicry a question for advice on how to find biologists, naturalists and scientists to build a network that I could work with for my project. The lecturer hesitated before answering: “How would nature find a team to work with? You should do the same”. After exchanging with designers and hearing for 2 days about biomimicry during this special week for biomimicry, I did not find satisfying concrete answers to this question. I also noticed that students of this design school, Westerner or Chinese, were confronted to the same problem. Where and how to cross knowledge with experts in nature? I then got the idea that I could work on a networking platform for biomimicers? A Swedish student called Aldina Eriksson in architecture that just arrived in Shanghai that was also attending the events commented to me: “That could be very useful in Sweden too, because there is a very high rate of unemployment for biologist. They are not really highlighted. That could stimulate economy.” The problem mentioned by Aldina in Europe is similar to the one evocated by Song Yiran, Chinese student in biology just discussed further up. People at the event were mainly creative such as designers and architects. They themselves admitted to have very little knowledge about biology. 129

Lack of crossdisciplinary teams

Kids playing together in Fujian province, July, 2014. Personnal picture.

I was very enthusiastic about the “design week” event at the D&I studio of Tongji University as the venue was gathering an international community that shared with me a common interest on nature and a concern for ecology. Most lecturers were Westerners but there were also Asians. I attended many conferences, a workshop and the opening ceremony of an exhibition on biomimetic projects. In each creative lecturer presentation we could see clearly the main trends for biomimicry. The mainstream crowd of “biomimicers” were architects that design buildings. Constructions are one of the most polluting industries worldwide. For that reason, it is an evidence that biomimicry need to focus on human-friendly and ecological buildings in terms of materials used, ergonomics, systems of evacuation, irrigation, isolation, energy saving... In my opinion, biomimicry in architecture is meaningful also because it covers all the scope of biomimicry: buildings are using technologies of ecological materials, relevant shapes according to purposes, and eco-systems in the logic of human, energy and water circulations plans. What I would like to point out is that lots of architects got it, Mother Nature knows how to effortless built shelters with abundant resources, safe materials, efficient shape and the minimum quantity of energy. Mother Nature is the universe brain and grand architect. Nature is smart. However, most architects admitted at this workshop to find ideas on Internet or in the best cases in nature directly but they rarely work with experts in nature. Architects who were also lecturers of those conferences knew about biomimicry so they admitted to find regrettable this lack of cross-disciplinary teams. An interesting question was asked in the room: who already worked with expert in nature? Only one lecturer reported that he once worked with such team. Actually he found the experience “terrible” because each one had is own process of working, his own jargon and it was “hard” to work in the same direction. Even if he knew the benefits that he could get from skilled people interested in nature, he explained that the group had to split for communication and understanding issues. No common grounds were found so the one project that should be delivered ended to be two separated projects. In my opinion, there is not enough crossed informations between the different fields, and thus, from the earliest stage of education. I believe lack of mix between professions is the core problem for biomimicry anywhere.

131

Wild spiders in a village, Yunnan province, July, 2014. Personnal picture.

Rice terace, Guanxi province, July, 2014. Personnal picture.

Elder eating an apple, Yunnan province, July, 2014. Personnal picture.

Eaten tronk by insects. Guanxi province, July, 2014. Personnal picture.

In the second part of the essay, we have discussed the hurdles for biomimicry in China. The first obstacle for biomimicry in China is the country’s responsibility for polluting and destroying nature. I have understood from living in China the complexity of the issue by seeing the reality of the air and water pollution and how people feel helpless about it. Another issue for biomimicry is massive urbanization that is driving people far from nature and farming heritage. The third barrier for biomimicry in China is the utilitarian vision of nature that Chinese people share. Indeed, I noticed from interview that when asking to the local how nature could be useful for men they all think about ‘consuming’ pieces of nature to fulfil basic human needs such as eating food, building a shelter and so on. The last impediment to develop biomimicry in China is a lack of education, ambassadors and communication around it but also a lack of knowledge from ‘biomimicers’ to work with biologists or nature experts. Despites those obstacles to overcome, I think biomimicry have a lot of common values with Chinese culture. That is why, I have good reasons to believe biomimicry have a good background to flourish in China, and I would even go further to say in my opinion, biomimicry could even have been invented in China 133

3 Biomimicry PROCESS COULD BE INVENTED in China.

3.1 Consistent values

Enthusiasm and trust

Bamboo forest, Yunnan province, July 2014, personnal picture

137

Through interviews I conducted, my greatest surprise was the discovery of an unanimous strong enthusiasm for biomimicry. Absolutely all the people I interviewed or each time I talked to someone about biomimicry, they were interested and asked me questions. I was glad to find out such motivation and concern for the topic. No one did not react or did not show any interest. On the 8th of January 2015, I was sitting

in Coffee and Bean in 安福路 Ānfú lù, Anfu road in Shanghai to interview Guo, the teacher of Tongji University who aready knew about biomimicry. I asked him: Do you think Chinese people can be interested about biomimicry? And why? He replied: ”Yes, they are. Yes they are interested in biomimicry. Because… because it is very interesting!” I kept questioning him: “So, how do people react when you talk about biomimicry?” He said: “In Tongji university, all my students are captivated but in society I am not sure. I have no experience about that, but I would like to think society is interested by biomimicry. I mean some citizens are also interested in it. I don’t know but I think so. Let’s check.” Guo stopped talking and caught the attention of a waitress1 with a hand gesture in the air. He started to explain in Chinese to the waitress what Biomimicry is. The Coffee and Bean waitress asked questions to him, starred at me, asked him more questions about who I was and concrete example of biomimicry. The exchanges lasted for 5 minutes. Guo then asked me about simple examples that can be understood by all the “common people.” I talked about trains inspired by king-fishers birds’s beak in Japan that have been very successfully designed and that bring more efficiency and energy saving. Guo told me about flamingo’s beaks that helped to design mechanical digger. He explained those two ideas to the waitress. In the end, the waitress looked at me and said in English: “Oh yes. Very interesting. Very interesting. Thank you. I did not know”. She seemed grateful that we included her in the conversation and that we shared with her an interesting concept she did not know about.

I believe biomimicry wins unanimous support because if we go deeper, it is an indisputable beneficial and smart way to resolve crisis of trust and ecological problems. I asked Guo: “What do you think about the ecological crisis in the world and in China?” His answer was in line with sustainable solutions: “Oh problems you mean. Oh yes, ok yes. Biomimicry can be a tool to improve and serve society. It should be used to do something with pollution or environment. This is a very good question. God use the law of nature to resolve our problems in our environment. It is very easy to say but hard to do. I have joined some QQ groups. They are talking about some bad things about our environment: hunting, pollution and some other things. People will accept this matter to resolve the problem of environment. But we need some time and hard work.” I greatly enjoy the enthusiasm that every people I interviewed conveyed and I think that it reveals a strong interest in finding sustainable solution for innovation and improving our society through biomimetic projects. This enthusiasm and trust for nature has a major role to play in biomimicry implantation in China.

1 Guo stopped talking and caught the attention of a waitress, January, 8th, 2014 Sunflour, Anfu lu, Shanghai

139

Traditional values in line with biomimicry

Farmers walking and working in Yunnan province, personnal picture, 14th July 2014.

China is sharing values that are compatible with biomimicry. While I interviewed my tourist guide Richard He in Yunnan province, he asserted: “ You need to combine what your learn with your tradition to be creative. Maybe 100 years ago my family was living near the Tibetan border in the mountain, in the 纳西

Naxi villages. So I always feel I want to visit the village people and the landscape to go back to remote areas… In my business card, I say I am a village guide because I come from there. The villagers always say hello to me. In nature we see a lot of original and traditional people. You can see landscapes with many fields and understand how they live. Like today what we see, fields, goes, horses, organic food… They don’t use any chemicals. It is pure life.” Richard admitted the value of its culture heritage by saying it is pure life. He showed attachment and care for nature with the sentence: “I always feel I want to visit the village people and the landscape to go back to remote areas”. He was enthusiastic

to reveal that 纳西 Naxi people had an exemplary lifestyle in harmony with their environment: “organic food”, “no chemicals…” Richard also talked about a key fact

that is highly linked to biomimicry: “You need to combine what you learn with your tradition to be creative.” The idea of combining learning and tradition added to a lifestyle close to nature is really epitomizing values of biomimicry. Biomimicry and Chinese culture have in common to enhance traditions especially the one respectful toward nature.

141

Another example of Chinese culture consistency with biomimicry is what Jiang Jun 蒋珺 explained to me:

“Chinese traditional thinking regards 孝 Xiào as the most important goodness people should have. You need to love your parents, treat them nice and well. Human is the child of nature. Heaven is the father while Earth is the mother.” 孝 Xiào literally means: “filial”. Respecting 孝 Xiào moral standard induces to

respect your parents and what they symbolize. It has major importance in China. An analogy is made between nature’s origins and parents’ origins. Both nature and family have to be respected and honoured because you should be grateful for them to have brought you to live. I believe in at least two other interviews I also got this feedback. This concept was actually drew on a piece of paper. I asked to 俞晓丽 Yu Xiao Li or Iris, a 24 years old, majoring industrial design in Shanghai University to draw what is nature for her. She came up with a small drawing of a

person sitting under a tree in the background and in the foreground a pregnant woman body. She also wrote that nature is for her: “sleeping under the tree, on the grass, flower, like in mom’s body.” While writing and drawing this, I truly think that Iris wanted to convey the same traditional idea that links birth to parents and to nature. She also expressed that in her opinion, nature is connected to life and therefore to this 孝 Xiào concept.

хнЭ 143

Guo also expressed some values of Chinese traditional culture that are celebrating nature and that are close to biomimetic approaches. He pointed out in our interview

that “there is a small park called 静安雕塑公园 Jìng’ān diāosù gōngyuán or Jing’an

sculpture park, near the temple in Shanghai. Behind that park will be opened soon the new nature museum. In that park, there are 梅花 Méihuā flowers or plum blossoms

that can grow in winter. There are other small yellow flowers that smell good and are

in blossom now. For the 梅花 Méihuā, there are so many Chinese poems. There are 270 species, so it’s so many ways to describe it. A very ancient Chinese person, I don’t remember his name, he wrote a book to describe the 270 species of 梅花 Méihuā. It is a special plant book. You can see the book was engraved on the wall of this ‘Jing’an

sculpture park’. You should visit the park near Chinese Spring festival. You will see those flowers in bloom.” I read that the 梅花 Méihuā became the national flower of the republic of China on

July 21, 1964. It’s scientific name is the Prunus mume. “The tree that starts flowering in mid-winter, typically around January or February in East Asia.”1

I believe it is a very important flower in Chinese culture so I asked Guo: “Why do you think there are so many poems about this particular flower?” He answered: “Because it is very excellent Chinese nature.” At the same time he grabbed a piece of paper and wrote four characters on it: 梅兰竹菊 (Méi lán zhú jú) respectively plum, orchid, bamboo and chrysanthemum.

Then he explained: “These characters mean 四君子 sijunzi: ‘the four gentlemen’ or the ‘four nobles ones’, because they have a responsibility for society. They will not agree with some popular ideas or some popular thoughts. They are persistent in their own ideas. They always stand from the crowd. The ancient Chinese gentlemen love 3 other flowers: 松竹梅 (méi zhú) respectively plum bamboo and pine tree2. They are called

the ‘best friends of the gentleman, men of honours, or literati’ in the winter, in the cold weather. These plants show the spirit of rightness to stand straight, like pine trees. I am very proud of Chinese beautiful culture.”

1 http://dragonilaceai.ro/Meihua%20EN.pdf http://www.baike.com/wiki/%E6%A2%85%E8%8A%B1

I was truly surprised to discover that plants could have such strong meanings in traditional Chinese culture. I understood that day that Chinese culture was subtle delicate and marvellously close to nature. During another interview, with 周健翔 Jain Xing Zhou or Sylvain, I asked more explanations of this ‘four gentlemen’ flower’s attributes. He said: “Those four flowers represent the characters of a gentleman in ancient China with 孔子Kǒngzǐ (Confucius). First it is because they represent the four seasons. It means

the order of the time: orchid for spring, bamboo for summer, chrysanthemum for autumn, and plum blossom for winter. Second they symbolize the meaning of life.

梅 plum is 傲 proud, 兰 orchid is 幽 quiet, 竹 bamboo is 坚 strong, 菊 chrysanthemum is 淡 light.”

Thanks to this idiom, I could approach Chinese culture and feel that it is more interlaced with nature than I could imagine. It is incredible to imagine Confucius would designate gentlemen by analogies with 4 plants peculiarities and link them with both time elapsing, cycles of life and noble values. I though it is so intersting that everyone should get inspiration from those bucolic metaphors. In my opinion they are truly meaningful and elaborated. It gave me deep rooted sentiments.

The ancient Chinese gentlemen love 3 other flowers:

松竹梅 (méi zhú) respectively plum bamboo and pine tree. Personnal pictures.

145

Sylvain evocated “a poetry in ancient Chinese about the characters of the four flowers.” He also said that it was: “very ancient and traditional symbols”. He tried his best to express in English the delicate poem meaning. 梅：探波傲雪，剪雪裁冰，一身傲骨，是为高洁志士；兰：空谷幽放，孤芳自赏，香雅怡情，是为世上贤达；竹：筛风弄月，潇洒一生，清雅澹泊，是为谦谦君子；

菊：凌霜飘逸，特立独行，不趋炎势，是为世外隐士。 “Through the translation, we can find out

梅 plum blossom is like a proud and noble patriots,

梅 plum blossom is the first among all the flowers, because it blooms in the coldest day and survives from terrible situations. 兰 orchid is like the wise leader,

兰 orchid grows in a deep and far away valley. So it’s quite pure without any dirt. You can imagine that.

竹 bamboo is like a humble gentleman,

竹 bamboo is very tall and skinny. It is green all the seasons. If you grow the bamboo,

first three years it grows very slow because it is growing its root. Later, after spring, it grows very very fast. It is like when you build a budding, the foundation has to be very good then you can build a tall building. In some painting you may see plum bamboo and two birds, that means the good thing is coming like marriage, birth etc. 菊 chrysanthemum is like a independent and elegant hermit,

菊 chrysanthemum is a character like a martyr’s indomitable personality, elegant and independent gentleman. Once the chrysanthemum blooms, it is not afraid of cold and

of loneliness. That means no matter what terrible thing happened to a men, he can be an ambitious gentleman.”

Guo kept going with his passionate

speech on the 梅花 Méihuā, plum blossom:

“ 梅 Méi sign means you can live lonely.

There is a very good poem describing the 梅 Méi flower. There is a 梅 Méi flower

living alone in the corner of the yard.

However it live very well, it doesn’t invade anything else, it smells very well. People can smell 梅 Méi fragrance. 梅 Méi can still bloom in the winter and in the snow. It shows it is brave and courageous.” I understood from Sylvain and Guo that

plants

are

deeply

intertwined

with Chinese traditional culture. These glimpses of culture that I had the chance to catch from interviews lead me to think that the potential for biomimicry to seduce China is huge. Their culture is already so rich of plants inspiration that stand for high and humble values that it could be possible that biomimicry was already invented in China in ancient times. Actually I felt Confucius already invented the premises of biomimicry by creating such metaphors that highlight plants benefits and values.

147

梅花 Méihuā flowers in bloom, March 13th 2014

149

Artistic sensibility toward nature

Cricket that make very unusual sounds in Yunnan Province, July 2014. Personnal picture.

We just discussed about poetry enhancing plants for their link with traditional culture but not for its aesthetic values. From interviews and observations, I found that Chinese people feel grateful for nature beauty. Let’s take another example than the poetry already discussed, even if, for sure it also reveals an artistic sensibility toward nature.

I asked to some people to: “write or draw what is nature for them”. 大尾巴狼 Zhao

Yuanxing, a student in environmental design wrote on a piece of paper “nature is beauty”. When I asked Richard He about something that ever surprised him about an insect he answered: “the cricket we saw today. It is doing weather forecasting but also makes so beautiful music. People don’t know that they speak their own language.” Whereas Guo explained: “You know in South east of Tibet there are a lot of rainforests which give some scenic. All in the same place, at the same time, you can see oranges, snow, forests, bananas… All the elements come together. It is diversity but in the hillside and snow mountains. You can eat orange and a banana directly from the tree in the winter. Oh it is so wonderful.” Those 3 testimonies are highlighting the Chinese conscious of this magnificent ability of nature to produce, pretty and exquisites shapes, processes, landscapes, species such as fruits, vegetables and animals.

151

Chinese people view nature with a very sensible artistic approach. During November 2014, I wanted to get some fresh air and I went in the French Former Concession district for a walk. On the way, I was so surprised by what I saw. One woman in her fifties, one grandfather and a younger girl were apologizing for bothering each other. They all wanted to take a close picture of a brown fallen leaf, which was blocked in the grid of a window. The 3 of them had massive cameras and were taking hips of shots of this leaf. I passed my way and though that this would have never happen in France. I did not understand the situation, as this leaf had nothing special. I then arrived to 武康路 Wǔkāng lù or Wukang Road, this street has the particularity to be bordered on

each pavement by a row of French plane trees. The real name of the specie is Platanus

Hispanica or Sterculiaceae but Chinese love to call those trees the 梧桐 wutong tree or even the French trees because it is assumed that the French planted those trees during the period of the French concession. I was so surprised a second time by what I discovered on this street… At least 40 Chinese people were taking pictures of trees and leaves. Some of them were pausing with leaves in their hands, smiling, jumping in the stacks of fallen leaves, throwing them in the air, spinning around and even dancing. A sensation of joy and happiness radiated in this street. Elders, kids, families and lonely people were all gathering around those fallen leaves as if they had never seen one before and it was a precious treasure. I found myself in a funny situation when I wanted to capture this moment of joy among the people. I noticed that while I was taking pictures of the Chinese people, they started to take pictures of me.

Fascination for leaves in 武康路 Wǔkāng lù, Shanghai November 27th 2014.

153

I then engaged the conversation and asked the reason for this happiness and for those shootings. One very kind woman talked to me and she admited that Shanghaies people enjoy the “serenity” conveyed by those trees in the streets. She said they are “beautiful”. Then she explained that it was a very special moment because Chinese government decided to let the fallen leaves on the pavements and on the ground for aesthetic purpose. Usually, she said, “some people take care of collecting the leaves to throw them away” but during one month “we can enjoy their beauty”. I though Chinese people reaction to this news from the government was interesting and unusual for me. I found Chinese were blessed to be able to admire nature’s beauty. It was a very special moment. I talked to other people in the street. A family came from another area of Shanghai, which was more than one hour away, to take pictures of their child in the leaves. Another man was a professor in photography he came with one of his student who was also the mother of little boy. He asked me to pause with leaves and started to act like in a professional shooting. I agreed to let him conduct me to convince myself they were really all here for the leaves and to continue exchanging with them. I must admit I could not believe the situation was real. I did not get how they could be so fascinated by those leaves when I first arrived. The photographer gave me direction according to the light. He asked me to stand here, sit there and throw a leaf there and here… that shooting lasted 30 minutes and he could not stop saying, “漂

亮, 漂亮!” Piàoliang, Piàoliang meaning beautiful, beautiful! The photographer and his student explained they wanted to capture the beauty of falling leaves in the air. They

thought it’s a magic moment. He finally showed me his best shots: a series of black and white pictures of leaves flying in the air. It was very interesting to share this moment with local people and to understand that they truly think nature is beauty.

155

Having said before that Chinese people have a very pragmatic view on how to use nature, it is also true that there is another opposite aspect of their vision to be considered to understand their culture. Chinese vision of Nature can be divided into two categories: an utilitarian pragmatic insight already discussed and a magnifying and aestheticized view. Sherry Ritter, biologist from Montana, USA, that worked for ‘Biomimicry 3.8’ famous organisation, envisioned it quite accurately by saying: “according to my researcher friend that came a long time ago in China; I think in China there are two main views on Nature: a poetic vision and the reality, but you need to verify that.” It is true that in spite of this pragmatic vision of nature as resources for humans, Chinese also enhance nature through magnification, especially in Arts. As the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York puts it: “In no other cultural tradition

has nature played a more important role in the arts than in that of China.” 1 Chinese history of Arts is deeply connected to nature as it is representing and celebrating it with various supports. Dynasty after dynasty and until the modern world, Chinese artists steadily viewed and depicted nature through philosophy, poetry, calligraphy, but also on bronzes, paintings, ceramics, carvings and seal. Indeed, Nature is an endless source of inspiration and can becomes a materialisation of artistic expression. In Shanghai Museum of Arts, many bronze vessels, ceramics and stamps represents animals such as snakes, turtles, cranes, fish, tigers, birds, bovines and dragons... 2

1 Department of Asian Art. “Nature in Chinese Culture”. In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cnat/hd_cnat.htm (October 2004)

2 Chinese artefacts with natural patterns or inspirations. Shanghai museum 2014. Personnal pictures.

157

Ceramics room or ornaments room

Chinese stamps

This jade cicada, called Han in Chinese, was put in the mouth of the deceased upon burying. It is to express their wishes that the deceased would revive as a cicada.

159

This study of beauty do not only represent nature grace or refined particularities, it is also conveying a very poetic vision as we can see it in the famous “Great age of Chinese landscape”. Indeed, Chinese landscape painting became an independent recognized genre embodying men desire to retreat into nature by the late Tang Dynasty (618-907). After this Dynasty disintegration, Humans were seeking for a sanctuary to escape the political chaos. Mountains figured prominently in the Chinese arts. I read there were two dominant styles but both were highlighting nature’s beauty. Northern style, was rougher using sharper and darker ink wash and brushstrokes whereas Southern style and its famous hills and rivers peculiarity is softer, more peaceful and washed out.1 1

http://www.chinaonlinemuseum.com/painting-landscape.php

Fan Kuan 範寬, Guo Xi 郭熙. Chinese Northern style for landscape painting.

Dong Yuan 董源, Juran 巨然. Chinese Southern style for landscape painting.

I read from the same website

that in the Song Dynasty (960-1279), landscape

Chinese painting style became more complex and elaborated. Compositions started to have more details and depth. “Emphasis was placed on the spiritual qualities of the painting and on the ability of the artist to reveal the inner harmony of man and nature, as perceived according to Taoist and Buddhist concepts.”

Autumn Colors on the Que and Hua Mountains (鵲華秋色) Zhao Mengfu (趙孟頫, 1254-1322), Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368) Handscroll, ink and color on paper, 28.4 x 90.2 cm, National Palace Museum, Taipei

161

It reminded me of a great exhibition that gave me insights of Chinese unconditional love for nature. The French exhibition, at la Pinacothèque de Paris, from October the 3rd of 2012 to March the 17th 2013, entitled “Hiroshige, l’art du voyage - Van Gogh, rêves de Japon” caught my attention. I really kept this moment in mind because it was the first time that I understood and appreciated an insight of Asian Art. Now that I think about it, I feel that this openness could occur because the venue was juxtaposing the work of a western artist that I knew and appreciate with its inspiration from Asian Art. At this time Chinese and Japanese landscape paintings and other forms of Asiatic art were totally abstruse for me, as they were not triggering any emotion. Of course at this point, I had already seen some Japanese artworks, but I it left me insensible. The goal of the exhibition was certainly to recall the importance of Japanese influence on European artists from the last third of the XIXe century. Indeed Vincent Van Gogh wrote to his brother in a letter that he was calling the Impressionists the “French Japanese” and that Arles region of France was “his Japan”. As I was reading around signage of Hiroshige exhibition, I understood that landscape had deeper interest than just stilllife reproduction. I learnt from this exhibition’s explanations that Asian landscape paintings were inviting the viewer to meditate. By the use of frame, different scale with foregrounds and backgrounds, colours and contents, Hiroshige wanted to let people wander around and take an imaginary walk in those landscape. I believe Chinese artists were not interested in the realism of the representation but they wanted to convey an insight of the soul of those landscape. They wanted to share meditative

landscape emotions. From the same website1 (p22) I had the confirmation that Chinese paintings were conveying the essence of people and places inner landscape of heart and mind, and not only the visible world. This painters’ objective carried on under the Mongol Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), especially with Chinese elites, barred from

government that created an alternative culture1. To commemorate and represent their meetings, paintings were often made as symbols. In my opinion, the powerful aim of those painters is the reason why Chinese traditional landscape painting is so famous even in Europe. Nature has remained a recurrent subject matter in Chinese painting history and this is a proof of Chinese sincere and poetic affection for nature. This excitement for nature brings people closer to biomimicry. I believe that Chinese were using the beauty of nature to convey strong ideologies or communicate to people some moral education.

Dossier de presse - Van Gogh, rêves de Japon - Hiroshige, l’art du voyage Expositions du 3 octobre 2012 au 17 mars 2013 SAISON AUTOMNE – HIVER 2012 – 2013

163

Philosophical compatible vision

Mint in Guanxi province, 2014, personnal picture.

165

We just discussed about Chinese preoccupation for landscape painting and their deeper aim to convey philosophical messages. Let’s push this concern further by examining other parts of interviews. I asked to Guo: “Do you think Chinese philosophy can be linked to biomimicry?” He answered: “In China, especially ancient China. Maybe you have heard it many times but nature and human are united. You have to obey the law of nature. 师法自然 Shī fǎ zìrán means

‘learn from nature’ or ‘nature as a teacher’. Lifestyle in ancient time was very linked to nature. Have you heard of the Georgian garden in Suzhou? It is fantastic. It has been designed according to nature. Yards are designed according to the four seasons of the year, to the wind also and the cardinal points. In winter there are plum booms where the wind can blow the fragrance to the house. Not only these, there are many other parameters to design all the architecture and the landscape of the garden. Before I did not like garden much I preferred nature. But when I heard from this, now I prefer garden. It is very interesting. I am touched very much.” By saying “nature and human are united” Guo is demonstrating that nature and human are one entity. In his opinion you have to obey natural laws to be successful or happy. He gave the example of a garden’s architecture that was pleasant because it considered nature’s law such as seasons. It respected harmony of this union between men and nature world.

Guo kept explaining about Chinese gardens’ arrangements and their link with philosophy: “Another very interesting cultural fact is about Literatis in China. You study very well, you are Literati and you will become an officer for government. That is why our science is very poor and weak. Literati are gentlemen. They like the plants I told you about. Almost all the garden were build by Literatis. They have very contradictory thoughts about society. First they want to do their best to improve society. However, some of them are disappointed by society. Some emperors don’t like them. Emperors like people who say good words to them and Literatis are writing the truth and story emperors dislike. (Despite frustration) Literatis still want to do something for the people. That explain why the Literati create garden not very far from the crowd with little yard to have space for meditation. Their gardens reflect their philosophy or mood to society.” Here Guo is revealing a key finding. In China, well-educated gentlemen destiny was to become government officers. That might explain why, as Guo puts it, “science is very poor and weak” in China. If all literatis are serving emperor, there are not enough educated people in other clusters such as sciences. Although in the West, natural perception is based on scientific approach, rapports, dissections, experimentation, “leçons de choses” or other representation of nature, it is not the case for China. To my understanding, Chinese vision of nature is more influenced by arts and philosophy. A reason for this literary approach might be the result of history. Indeed as Guo explained, it might be influenced by the fact that literatis were subjected to emperors’ whim and vagaries. They might had to hide their spirit and thoughts into form of arts they mastered.

167

As a consequence, by putting sense and philosophy in gardens they were creating, they are expressing their tribute to the people as a contribution to a better society. If I had never talk to Guo, I would never imagine that garden could be such deep reflections of some literati’s philosophies and that they were also space for the people to meditate. We can assume through this example that organised nature such as parks is a support to invite people to meditate and to get in touch with literati’s philosophical thoughts. Nature’s smartness was used, exposed, and arranged by literati people to educate others about philosophical ideas and nature’s beauty. I believe this is very close to biomimicry that celebrates and uses nature to find solutions to human problems. Transfered to biomimicry that finds solution in nature to human problems we could formulate this concept so: The problem is: how do educate people and invite them to meditate. The literati’s answer was: by revealing secrets of nature in some wellarranged gardens that follow natural laws. This insight from Guo is establishing a link between nature and morality just like biomimicry does put ethical values in nature.

Flower in Fuxing park, Shanghai, May 2014, personnal picture.

Insect eating a leaf, Yunnan province. July 2014, personnal picture.

“The natural world has long been conceived in Chinese thought as a self-generating, complex arrangement of elements that are continuously changing and interacting.” Department of Asian Art. “Nature in Chinese Culture”. In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. NY,The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cnat/hd_cnat.htm October 2004

This quote is introducing well the Chinese religion of 道教Dàojiào, Daoism. 道 Dao,

meaning the way is a principle based on the fact that all elements of the natural world are flowing by themselves. 169

Mountains in Guanxi province, July 2014, personnal picture.

“According to the early texts in which the foundations of philosophical Daoism were laid down (the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi), the Way is a way of flow. … This is, … an order of mutual arising, a symbiosis ... Moreover, when the Ten Thousand Things (elements of nature) are left to arise spontaneously in this way, under the mutual influences of one another, the universe assumes its own proper pattern or form – it follows its proper course… The flow patterns that are observable in water or wind or indeed in any field of energy are always graceful and beautiful and somehow effortless, regardless of what disturbances or obstacles are introduced into the field of flow. This is because such flows always follow the lines of least resistance. Water flows downhill. It fills the lowest places first. It flows around obstacles rather than trying to surmount them… It just goes where the going is easiest… It makes no effort, which is why the idea of flow is equated with effortlessness. Flowing into whatever spaces are available, finding a way around obstacles rather than contending with them, insisting on nothing, but nevertheless, by dint of continuous adaptation to whatever presents, unwaveringly achieving its end, the river makes its way down to the sea. In wending its way thither and thereby achieving its own destination, it simultaneously assists others in achieving their ends, sustaining the entire landscape with its waters, giving life to all things. ‘Doing nothing’ then, the river ensures that everything is done, that its work of sustaining the world is accomplished.” MATHEWS Freya, Towards a Deeper Philosophy of Biomimicry, pre-publication version of an article published in Organization and Environment, 24, 4, Dec 2011, p12 and p13

Freya Matthew1 an associate Professor in Philosophy at Latrobe University that works

on the subject of environmental philosophy, explains very well the 道 Dao concept. She also quotes 老子 laozi, “the first philosopher of Chinese Daoism and alleged

author of the Daodejing”2: “the thousands of things depend on it for life, it rejects nothing…..It clothes and feeds the thousands of things, but does not act the ruler.” She also explains about 大道无为 Dàdào wúwéi, meaning non-action:

“Wu wei, as set forth by Laozi in the Daodejing, proceeds by harnessing forces or patterns of energy already at play in the world, and letting them carry us to our destination. ‘Nonaction’ denotes not inactivity but activity taken with rather than against the grain of existing conativities… Zhuangzi illustrates wu wei via the story of an old man who falls into a river and is carried by the rapids to emerge downstream unscathed, having rolled with the waves and currents.” (Zhuangzi, 1889) This wúwéi reminds me of 郭博文 Born Guo Bowen or Inner, drawing of his vision of nature: a man on a bot on a river. This reveals that Daoism philosophy still belongs to the youth reference. Freya Matthews is establishing a correspondence between Janine Benyus fundamental principle that “nature uses only the energy it needs” with Dao and Wu Wei concepts. Dao indeed, as explained in her article excerpt, Dao is flowing “effortless” and “doing nothing”. Dao, root of Chinese philosophy, is sharing with biomimicry the same philosophical basis: the “ten thousands things” of nature are flowing effortless to achieve their purpose. It is just like biomimicry bio-logical, viable, sustainable, efficient and elegant process inspired from nature that are using just what they need to achieve their goals. 1

Her books include The Ecological Self (1991), Ecology and Democracy (1996), For Love of Matter: a Contemporary Panpsychism (2003) and Reinhabiting Reality: towards a Recovery of Culture (2005). She is a co-editor of PAN Philosophy Activism Nature and has been, and currently is, on the advisory boards of a number of environmental journals. Laozi. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2014. The excerpt is quoted from Lafargue, 1992, p138.

171

By definition, Nature is opposed to the artificial world of human-produced creations or artefacts. The limit is though to be reconsidered, as Gautier Chapelle, co-founder and president of Biomimicry Europe says it in his courses of ‘Alternative management’ in HEC1. Human is an animal so as a consequence: he is a part of nature. In addition,

materials he is using are all resulting of nature’s original production or existing in his natural environment. The question we can ask is: to what extent human’s productions are to be considered natural? In the same way in 1980, a ‘new’ ecological paradigm was formulated by Dunlap and Catton, who are two American sociologists. They conveyed the idea in their book: “Environmental Sociology“, that ‘man’ and ‘environment’ are the same entity. I am wondering when they formulated this idea if they had in mind any Asian philosophy, because to me this ‘new’ paradigm is totally the Asian perception of nature. Actually it is not very new.. Well, it is fascinating to observe that in China the understanding of nature is based from a very ancient tradition. Understanding of nature is based on the fact that humans are part of nature. It took so much time for Westerners to raise this debate of humankind part or not of nature whereas in China the concept is well established from ages. Chinese people share a holistic perspective on nature. Asian people are linking elements to shape an entity that has more value together that scattered fragments. In the Chinese philosophy, nature and human is a whole and humans are an integral part of the universe. 1 CHAPELLE Gauthier, Biomimétisme, l’intelligence du vivant. Alternative Management Observatory, Paris HEC, Majeure Alternative Management, 1st of February 2010. 2 “Environmental sociology emerged as a coherent subfield of inquiry after the environmental movement of the 1960s and early 1970s. The works of William R. Catton, Jr. and Riley Dunlap, among others, challenged the constricted anthropocentrism of classical sociology. In the late 1970s, they called for a new holistic, or systems perspective” wikipedia.

Gardening in a tulou, in Fujian province. July 2014.

Men are advised to “maintain a close relationship with nature for optimal moral and physical health.” 3 It seems to belong to Chinese lifestyle that people should be close to nature for their health. As Song Yiran said it: “nature bring me happiness”. Guo also related to this idea when we discussed: I asked: “do you think you have a special relation to nature?” He answered: “I have tried to be separated from nature for a long time but I felt bad. For example, when I was working, before I graduated, for study, I stayed in a room for several days, for a week, for weeks and weeks, I did not go out. I felt very bad. In nature I feel very happy…. For instance in north central China, in 青海 Qinghai. There

is no pollution, people drink from the river, they organize pic-nics in nature and there are no buildings. I think low-developed society and high-developed one can share the same lifestyle sometimes. It is as if the high societies walk all the way to come back to origins. Yes, those places show you the beauty, but not only pretty. It is not only about the beauty, it has something inside.” I also asked him: “Do you miss nature sometimes in the city?” His answer was: “Very much. Many times. I frequently go to place because I like nature, I go to big parks and wetlands. It is very interesting; I am now doing birds’s watching for survey along Century Avenue” 3 Department of Asian Art. “Nature in Chinese Culture”. In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000 http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cnat/hd_cnat.htm

173

I believe some Chinese people life philosophy is to be close to nature to feel happy. As opposed to some clichés I had about China, I now know that some Chinese people are conscious that they need nature for “optimal and physical health”. It even belongs to their life philosophy so some of them are more linked to nature than some people could be in Westerns societies. Similarly, I found by analysing an interview with 孙芝华 Sun Zhihua or Tiffany a 24 years old lady that studies wood painting, that nature also had philosophical signification for her. “Nature is breath and beauty”,

she wrote. She also drew a mouth and a nose. I believe this can be explained by a very significant concept in China: the 气 Qi, breath or vital energy. In China, the main

religico-philosophical ideas are Confucianism and Daoism. Chinese philosophies are based on the perfect balance between 阴阳 Yin and Yang. The good symmetry between 阴阳 is created and assured by the science of 气 Qi exchange also called the vital air. 阴 Yin, is a passive, dark, weak feminine and negative force whereas 阳 Yan deals with

active bright, positive masculine and hot. 气 Qi is a sacred power present in nature

for instance in mountains. “They not only attracted the rain clouds that watered the farmer’s crops, they also concealed medicinal herbs, magical fruits, and alchemical minerals that held the promise of longevity. Mountains pierced by caves and grottoes were viewed as gateways to other realms—‘cave heavens’ (dongtian) leading to Daoist paradises where aging is arrested and inhabitants live in harmony”.1

1 yinyang. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2014.

“In Chinese philosophy, the ethereal psychophysical energies of which everything is composed. Early Daoist philosophers and alchemists regarded qi as a vital force inhering in the breath and bodily fluids and developed techniques to alter and control the movement of qi within the body; their aim was to achieve physical longevity and spiritual power.” Department of Asian Art. “Nature in Chinese Culture”. In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000 http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cnat/hd_cnat.htm (October 2004)

“Neo-Confucian philosophers of the Song dynasty (960–1279 CE) regarded qi as emanating from the Great Ultimate (taiji; q.v.) by way of li, the dynamic ordering pattern of the world. This tradition, whose ideas predominate in traditional Chinese thought, held that qi is manifest through yang (active) and yin (passive) modes as the Five Phases (wuxing; wood, metal, earth, water, and fire), which in turn are the basic processes defining the cosmos.” Qi. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2014.

Yin and Yang engraved in the wall of a temple in a village of Fujian province. July 2014. Personnal picture.

175

Temple roof, Jiangsu province, July 2014. Personnal picture.

Some minorities’ religions in China are also sharing a compatible vision of nature in keeping with biomimicry’s respect of nature. As Richard, the Yunnan guide said it: “纳西Naxi people protect nature because of their religion… We respect the water, it washes the trees and the forest. If you destroy the nature too much, nature will punch you. Our Domba religion is always near clean resource, or close to the oldest trees.” “In our religion we are not able to spit or shit in the river… We are a bit similar to Buddhism but it is different. Thousands years ago our people came from Tibet. Some words are exactly the same still now.” Buddhism, Daoism, Wuwei, Qi, Yinyang or other concepts included in minority religions like Domba are influencing Chinese philosophy. As interviews reveal it, those thoughts are still accurate and shared by the people. Chinese philosophy is incredibly linked to biomimicry. They are sharing the same values of getting inspiration from nature to improve people lifestyle. In that way, we can assume that biomimicry is a transcultural concept between its place of invention: Western countries and China. At the first sight, I would have say that there is no common point between biomimicry and Chinese culture, but actually it is terribly wrong. I now believe thanks to researches that biomimicry was in a way, first invented by Chinese philosophers.

177

3.2 Unconscious links

Old woman, Jiangsu province, July 2014. Personnal picture.

Apprehension of nature’s finiteness linked to biomimicry essence Another finding of my research is that Chinese people I interviewed have in mind nature’s resources finiteness. Some of them are even taking actions in their everyday life to protect nature. For instance Guo has learn from Socrates. “Socrates came at the market, and he said I don’t think people need so many thing. So, last year, I said to myself, I will not buy any clothe for myself. I have enough clothe in my closet. I need not more. I can wear it for many years it doesn’t matter. Also I live a simple life. I eat in a cafeteria room in the campus. I work in my office. When I go to my house I just sleep or think about something; I don’t use soap. I want to protect landscape and my skin also. I have no television. I listen about Chinese history through the radio. Several years ago I knew much more history about America than China. I did not know about my own history (laugh).” The fact that Chinese people are concerned about nature or that they act to protect it is also a step ahead for biomimicry’s ideal of sustainability. For instance Richard, guide in Yunnan province, led me to think that there is an awareness of human dependency on nature but also on the balance to be kept not to use all the resources. Indeed Richard said: “We eat worms but part of them, not all of them. Otherwise there will be no other

ones. 纳西 Naxi people build homes for them.” By saying that Richard is expressing that he does not want to be responsible for worms extinction.

179

Now we will see that this human concern for natural species or nature extinction are linked to biomimicry essence and the concept of sustainability. If we ask to ourselves the question of why biomimicry is aiming to more sustainable projects is to keep life proliferating well in our environment. I believe people also wish to have descendants because of subconscious wish regarding to specie conservation. The argument here is that humans are tight to nature because both of them are alive and might die. Therefore, all species are aiming to survive and spread copies. People are concerned, or I would even say: “scared” to see some species extinction. Biomimicry is also based on theory of evolution. Darwin’s natural selection operates to eliminate the weaker species that could not adapt to their environment whereas the ones with the best aptitude to survive evolved or proliferated considerably. Janine Benyus puts it in her book by asserting that nature is a measure because it is the judge from an “ecological standard”. According to her, “after 3.8 billions years of evolution, nature has learned: What works. What is appropriate. What lasts.” In my opinion, humankind is able to survive because of its big nervous excrescence called brain but nature also uses intelligence and learns from experience to survive. When some species are dyeing, people get concerned. Have you ever been touched by an animal documentary dramatizing and humanizing the situation of whatever animal? I believe that in documentaries, struggle for life becomes a story that generates emotion because we are empathic animals. Indeed documentaries are like a projection of our own fear to die and to be extinct. In a way I think it recalls us that we are in the same boat. We will also die and we need to keep proliferating to live a trace on Earth. I think there is a very basic survival instinct that links people unconscious fear of dying with biomimicry. I will use again a part of the interview with Guo to illustrate that there is a strong link between human concern for nature’s durability, including their own survival and biomimicry.

Me: Do you believe we have similarities with animals? Guo: You should read the book ‘Selfish Gene’ by Talkins. It explains that genes control all behaviours. The only aim of genes is to enlarge or spread its copies. Why the females select the males? They want to win the game, the battle. Why the girls love money? Because it represents resources for future generations. If you want a baby you need enough resources. So females select males who have enough resources. Money in human society is a kind of resource. They do not only select money but good genes. A simple example is peacocks with very longs tails. Do you think it is very useful to live? No actually, it can cause many problems. They cannot fly because of their long tails moreover it is full of parasites. However females just like peacocks with a big tail. Why? Gentleman peacock will show the females, ‘look, I have a very big tail but I am happy; I can live well; I can stand such a big burden.’ It shows: ‘I have good genes.’ Females cannot test the genes using PCR but they select them just by their appearance. So a large degree of animal and human behaviours are explained by genes. Later in the interview I asked: Did anything ever surprise you or impress you about any plant? Guo: Many things. The most impressive one is a very special plant called ‘the bird in paradise’ with a very special structure and a very special flower to attract the insects. The pollen is here. When a bird wants the honey, it has to stand on it, it makes the pollen fall down here. Here is the female part. Thanks to that it can form seeds. It impressed me very much. Plant can design it structure to attract animals help them get pollen for seed formation. I am very astonished by their design. It is science of structure.

181

Peacocks, Guanxi province, July 2014. Personnal picture.

183

Biomimicry, a transcultural ideal concep

The most stunning finding I got from collecting observations and interviews is that some people who told they did not know about biomimicry where actually instinctively able to express the concept by themselves and with their own words. People knew instinctively about biomimicry without having learned the modern name of the concept. I think that biomimicry existed for ages and in different continents. It is, for sure spread under the Biomimicry appellation by contemporary figures such as Janine Benyus but I believe the concept of getting solutions by observing nature had already been used in a lot of places on earth including China.

大尾巴狼 Zhao Yuanxing, a student in environmental design said in an interview:

“maybe farmers or people who love nature have learnt from nature unconsciously before, but they didn’t notice that. Maybe there have to be someone to guide them, to tell them their behaviour is meaningful”. I think she had a good intuition by saying this. I believe that some people indeed already had a biomimetic approach without even noticing it. For instance Rihard He, my tour guide in Yunnan province, said to me: “Nature gives you inspirations. After you visit, do observations and study, you get inspiration from the animals, plants, water or forest … yeah yeah”. Richard also said: “I think maybe technology can get help from insects because we should learn more from them. It could benefits to the people.” When I asked: “in what ways?”, Richard said: “I don’t know too much about insects. I did not study about that.” Richard added: “I think people learnt a lot from nature. Actually I think people imitated a lot from animals…” After explaining what is biomimicry, he said: “the purpose of technology is for nature and come from nature. But between it’s the people. So they should be clever because sometimes they do stupid things”. I could not agree more… I believe the key points of biomimicry were all known from intuition by Richard who comes from a village where there was no school when he was a kid. Moreover later on, he never heard about the concept. I believe that because he is close to nature he realized the potential of inspiration that nature can bring for human innovations. In the second part when he explains about people doing “stupid things”, I think he is referring to the aim of innovation, which has been shown through history to be damaging instead of productive. For instance, it is known that biggest inventions were made up in context of extreme needs such as wars. It is the case for the atomic bomb. Richard had two interesting comments, one about nature’s potential to be imitated for the sake of innovation, second an input to warn about aims of creation. Biomimicry is defending sustainable goals whereas lots of innovations were created to destroy directly or indirectly our planet. It is has if, biomimicry was an evidence for someone that never heard of the name but that could say in his own words it’s meaning.

185

SongYiran, student in biology, also made a point through an example. She said that: “nature is smart because what nature does is better than what humans do now. For instance, we consist of cells. But we cannot develop our cells by our technologies now. Nature can create cells. I want to use technology to protect nature. Many ideas of technologies come from nature. Human see things imitate and develop technology.“ She said that biomimicry existed in China before and is still applied today. Her vision is smart, she defined biomimicry in her own words and she expressed the power and mystery of nature through cells creation. From talks during the ‘biomimicry week” at the D&I in Tongji university, I already discussed about architects that knew biomimicry and were giving lectures. Actually, I also interviewed a junior architect working for “Frederic Rolland International”, his

name is 周健翔 Jain Xing Zhou or Sylvain, he is 24 years old. From our interview, Sylvain admitted not to know what biomimicry is, however I was surprised to discover

that first he did define it in his own words and second he was applying it in his job. “Technology is inspired from nature. Technology is about human studying nature and finds its secrets. Humans discover some things and may create some useful things for our lives. For example, architects might be inspired from animals shapes or structures is a very simple easy way to build a building in architecture… I think it is a trend. Building use to be very square but now they have a lot of shapes like seashell or other animals. Like Zaha Hadid a lot of her projects are biologics, with very smooth shapes… I think that nature is mysterious. Like plants growing in the shape of the Fibonacci suite, I think it is genius. Very delicate... like less is more: if you add something else, it is weird and not beautiful. You can’t add you can’t remove. Just so perfect.”

House of inhabitants that probably like plants, Shanghai area, April 2014. Personnal picture.

187

Illustrations and stamps representing Luban biomimetic story.

This looks like a comb but this is a bronze ancient tool for agriculture. It is inspired from Luban Saw. http://www.liuliart.cn/bbs/dv_rss.

Actually, I got another confirmation of the fact that most Chinese know about biomimicry concept without knowing its name while I asked to Guo, the professor in Science and Technology in Tongji University this question: “Do you think biomimicry could have been invented in China?” He replied: “There are very famous example in ancient Chinese stories. Like for instance a saw was invented by observing the edge of the grass. I know this from a long time. I was told when I was a child from a book. It is an ancient popular story called 魯班 Lǔbān, everyone knows it. It is the king of the carpenters. He wanted to

pick up the grass. His finger was cut. He invented the saw from observing the grass. That is the story.” I read about this myth online on baidu search engine, which is famous in China, and

I found that the story goes further. After he cut his hand, 魯班 Lǔbān, took off a leaf for careful observation and he found on “both sides of the leaves grows a little finetooth and sharp. Later on, he saw a grasshopper eating grass. He caught the animal to observe its mouth structure, then he found again lines of small tooth. That is how he got the idea of creating a saw.” Through this popular Chinese tale told to kids, we can clearly see that nature has been a source of innovation in previous time in China. Moreover this figure of the father of bionics in China is quite well-known under this figure of魯班 Lǔbān the carpenter.

189

CONCLUSION Considering that this essay revealed biomimicry as a valuable concept in different cultural contexts, we can assume that it is a transcultural idea or even more that it might be a universal ideal or great paradigm for innovation. I found out by living in China that Chinese people are appealed by the concept as well as western people are. Despites some difficulties for Biomimicry to occur in China, there is a real foreground and enthusiasm that proves that the country is ready for it. Undoubtedly, China did not invent the modern name of Biomimicry but, according to some traces of history and to some actual facts, we can say that China did made up the same concept independently from the outside world by observing their own nature. Biomimicry exists under other appellations from ages but it has been renamed so and its influence grew under this name in the United States of America. Europe has been adopting it as there are many different manifestations of biomimicry in this area of the world.

WELSCH Wolfgang, Transculturality - the Puzzling Form of Cultures Today, From: Spaces of Culture: City, Nation, World, ed. by Mike Featherstone and Scott Lash, London: Sage. 1999, 194-213.

page 12 - 3 page 5 - 2 et 4 page 4 - 5 page 5

As far as I am concerned, little French plant that I am, my experience of living in the booming city of Shanghai affected my vision of how to include nature in everyday life in another part of the world. I can assume that biomimicry was also transcultural because while seeking some possibility for biomimicry to be valid in China I also got influenced. My research, observations and analyses were not only findings; they became inputs. Their significance had an impact on my personal vision. Exchanges of thoughts with Chinese people lead to transculturality. As Wolfgang Welsh puts it: “With regard to the old concept of culture I have set out how badly it misrepresents today’s conditions and which dangers accompany its continuation or revival for cultures’ living together. The concept of transculturality sketches a different picture of the relation between cultures. Not one of isolation and of conflict, but one of entanglement, intermixing and commonness. It promotes not separation, but exchange and interaction. If the diagnosis given applies to some extent, then tasks of the future - in political and social, scientific and educational, artistic and design-related respects ought only to be solvable through a decisive turn towards this transculturality.”1

« Transculturality is, in the first place, a consequence of the inner differentiation and complexity of modern cultures. These encompass … a number of ways of life and cultures, which also interpenetrate or emerge from one another.” 2 “We are cultural hybrids.» 3

I chose transculturality. I am transcultural. By choosing this subject for my dissertation (is biomimicry valid in China and therefore can we assume it is a transcultural concept) and this theme for my master’s degree in design (Interculturality in China), I believe I truly experienced the “inner differentiation and complexity of modern cultures” that Wolfgang Welsh is discussing in his essay: Transculturality - the Puzzling Form of Cultures Today. I have the feeling that new ideas that fed my mind thanks to this research emerged from Chinese culture. Actually those input from another culture is exactly the author above definition of transculturality 191

(“entanglement, intermixing, commonness … exchange and interaction”). “Cultures today are extremely interconnected and entangled with each other. Lifestyles no longer end at the borders of national cultures, but go beyond these, are found in the same way in other cultures… The new forms of entanglement are a consequence of migratory processes, as well as of worldwide material and immaterial communications systems and economic interdependencies and dependencies… Consequently, the same basic problems and states of consciousness today appear in cultures once considered to be fundamentally different - think, for example, of … ecological awareness which (is a) powerful active factor across the board culturally.» 4 My approach is transcultural. Wolfgang Welsh talks about ecology that is a worldwide matter connecting cultures beyond borders. This example is relevant for my essay. Biomimicry is a solution to developp more sustainable processes of creation. It is answering a need that many culture have in common. Following Welsh logic, as I find biomimicry is an extraordinary solution to these ecological matters, it is obvious that Chinese would also have thought about it in a way or another. It is true that different cultures have different ways of answering to same issues. Thanks to the “migratory process” I experienced by living in Shanghai, I can say I participated to this new “forms of entanglement”; I had a transcultural approach as well as biomimicry is transcultural. “Cultures today are in general characterized by hybridization. For every culture, all other cultures have tendencially come to be inner-content or satellites. This applies on the levels of population, merchandise and information. Worldwide, in most countries, live members of all other countries of this planet; and more and more, the same articles - as exotic as they may once have been - are becoming available the world over; finally the global networking of communications technology makes all kinds of information identically available from every point in space. Henceforward there is no longer anything absolutely foreign. Everything is within reach. Accordingly, there is no longer anything exclusively `own’ either. Authenticity has become folklore, it is ownness simulated for others - to whom the indigene himself belongs. To be sure, there is still a regional-culture rhetoric, but it is largely simulatory and aesthetic; in substance everything is transculturally determined. Today in a culture’s internal relations - among

its different ways of life - there exists as much foreignness as in its external relations with other cultures. 5

Biomimicry is transcultural. There is nothing that belongs to a single hermetic culture. According to Welsh, “authenticity has become folklore, it is ownness simulated for others - to whom the indigene himself belongs.” That quote proves that biomimicry, from a transcultural perspective belongs to everyone, everywhere because it was “stimulated from others”, because today “cultures are in general characterized by hybridation”, because there is a “global networking of communications technology (that) makes all kinds of information identically available from every point in space”. This transcultural concept inherent to cultures according to Welsh explains in what way biomimicry is transcultural. Transculturality as defined here, explains why we have seen that biomimicry is present under different materialization in China.

Clichés that I could have about the fact that Chinese are careless about nature is wrong. I found through this research that Chinese people have a very specific way of envisioning nature. They recognize its power and they know there is a balance to find. Notions of power are interlaced between human and nature. This vision of power balance is very present in China and I believe putting words (or characters) on it helped me to incorporate it in my own perception of nature. I realised that men evolution in China like everywhere else was truly depending on nature in the past. Furthermore, I realised by traveling in China that some Chinese people still directly rely on nature to survive, live or live-well. Some Chinese are conscious of: the best they know nature, the more they will enjoy a wealthy life. I am not talking only about farmers but also some urbanized people. I found that some citizens are relying on nature as much as western countries could feel they need nature for their life to be enjoyable. This was a discovery because before coming in China I just assumed, incorrectly, that they minded only about primary needs such as provide food and shelters for their families because they were a developing country. I found by living there that this idea is wrong. There is a growing concern to participate to cleaner and more perennial innovations. In other words I found the context is more favourable than what I thought. 193

It is true that there are some hurdles for biomimicry to occur in China. As we saw it in the second part of the essay, the first obstacle for biomimicry in China is the country’s responsibility for polluting and destroying nature. I have understood from living in China the complexity of the issue by seeing the reality of the air and water pollution and how people feel helpless about it. It is a barrier for biomimicry because nature is destroyed and flouted. Massive urbanization is a massive challenge that is damaging Earth. It is not comparable to European countries’ demographic transitions because scales are different. A real problem I encountered and understood from interview is that it is true that Chinese people view nature as a resource to consume. They share very pragmatic thoughts about nature to fulfil basic human needs such as eating food, building a shelter and so on. This view on nature putted down roots in Chinese minds because it belongs to their personalities to be very rational. The last impediment to develop biomimicry in China is a lack of education, ambassadors and communication around it but also a lack of knowledge from ‘biomimicers’ to work with biologists or nature experts. This lack of knowledge is an obstacle but I believe thanks to education it can be overcome quite easily even if it takes some time. Chinese population is tremendous and cannot share the same relation to nature than French people whom population is much smaller or than a small tribe of monks living alone in the mountains. I also got the feeling that the massive population of China make political choices for nature conservation very tough. My experience emphasis even more on the rarefaction of untouched nature and the luxury that it is to live clothe to nature. I understood that my former vision of Chinese growth destroying nature is not as simple as it seems to be from the outside and that many people are suffering from pollution and nature destruction. I understood that Chinese people are conscious of a lot of ecological concerns. I have good hope for a shift in consciousness that will lead China to act for nature and not against it, maybe through the solution of biomimicry. Despites those characteristics that I found to be issues for biomimicry in China, I have good reasons to believe biomimicry have more than a good background to flourish in China. I would even go further to say that after research and interview with Chinese people, in my opinion, biomimicry could even have been invented in China. I discovered so many interesting clues that Chinese culture may have invented

biomimicry in a way. I was touched identify that all things considered, whilst Chinese are pragmatic and very straightforward, they are also extremely sensible. Chinese love to use Arts or bucolic metaphors to express their profound thoughts and their feelings. The high number of poems and paintings can be explained by the fact that Chinese people believe they are one with nature. Nature is them and they are nature that is why they communicate through it and they are inspired from it. As a designer, this experience of expatriation and transculturality reinforced my positioning. Nowadays, design is a human-centred discipline dealing with interpretations of needs. What strikes me is that it does place human at the centre of the universe without considering other species. My opinion is that this anthropocentric vision belongs to the Dark Ages. Design has to shift from anthropocentrism to biocentrism and this by keeping in mind a transcultural approach. Anthropocentrism is one main reason for the current ecological crisis. Empathy is a great form of knowledge, skill, attitude or tool for a new design-thinking era that could consider the Universe as a whole equilibrated entity such as the Chinese philosopher envisions it. Biomimicry is also linked to generate human empathy toward nature in the modern society context through new considerations of the creative process. Interactive designers have a role to play here. A dialogue is to be created thanks to technologies between users and their natural world. The question is how can designers become a mediator by creating closer relations between people and nature through technics? We are talking here about interaction between humans and machine for the goal to respect nature. Beyond biomimicry process, technics are working for nature protection and not to destroy it. Human is a sensitive creature that, in good conditions and thanks to good education, could have great empathic capacities, which offers rapidity in comprehension and singular responses. Little French plant that I am, I will do my best to incorporate ethical and ecological insights in my future work. My projects in China will be like seeds. Trying to go with the flow of the wind, settle in Chinese people space, and grow up in their houses to recall them that we have only one planet. Nature is a transcultural treasure. Biomimicry is a transcultural solution.

195

REFERENCES Books BENYUS, Janine. Biomimicry, Innovation inspired by Nature. New York: Harper Collins books, 1997. BERGDOLL Barry, GAMBONI Dario, SACHS Angeli, URSPRUNG Philip. Nature design, from inspiration to innovation. Museum für gestaltung zürich. Lars Müller Publishers. J.BAIRD Callicot and T.AMES Roger. Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought, Essays in Environmental Philosophy. New York: SUNY series in Philosophy and Biology, May 1989. GARRAUD Colette, L’idée de nature dans l’art contemporain. France: Flammarion, 1994. Grandes idées, petites structures - XS vert. Thames and Hudson. https://www.biblegateway.com/ Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.®

RILEY E. Dunlap and William R. CATTON, Jr., Environmental Sociology, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 5, (1979), pp. 243-273 Published by: Annual Reviews WELSCH Wolfgang, Transculturality - the Puzzling Form of Cultures Today, From: Spaces of Culture: City, Nation, World, ed. by Mike Featherstone and Scott Lash, London: Sage. 1999, 194-213. WHEELER William, Illustration Botanique. France: Les Editions du Carrousel, 1999 YIMING Liu (1734-1821), translated by PREGADIO Fabrizio. Cultivating the Tao: Taoism and Internal Alchemy. Golden Elixir Press, 2013. Website Movie GAUDRY Pierre-François (director) and TALAS Annamaria (Smith&Nasht producer/ director), Life on us. Mona-Lisa Production, Smith & Nasht, ARTE, SBS. Release date: 04/06/2014. TOURANCHEAU Philippe et UNGARELLI Frédérique, Buffon, le penseur de la nature. Co-producted by France 5, Gédéon Programmes, Le Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, le SCÉRÉN-CNDP, et la ville de Montbard. 2007

Video SCHWARTZBERG Louie (producer) and FREEMAN Morgan (narration),A World of Solutions. 5,42minutes. This short movie is showing that Humans spoiled Earth’s Beauty, and that nature is full of resources. 197

Thesis MORINIÈRE, Alban. Le biomimétisme pour un design durable. Paris ENSAD, Object design section, 2009. SCHUMMER Joachim. Aristotle on Technology and Nature. Germany: University of Karlsruhe, published in Philosophia Naturalis, 1999.

Seminars CHAPELLE Gauthier, Biomimétisme, l’intelligence du vivant. Alternative Management Observatory, Paris HEC, Majeure Alternative Management, 1st of February 2010. Reports CRDD (Commissariat Général au développement durable) and Ministère de l’Écologie, du Développement durable, des Transports et du Logement, Le biomimétisme. February 2012. Articles MATHEWS Freya, Towards a Deeper Philosophy of Biomimicry, pre-publication version of an article published in Organization and Environment, 24, 4, Dec 2011.

Me, cycling in Shanghai. August 2013.

199