George Chan and the Disappearing “Mulberry Dike Fish Pond”
WASTE NOT, WANT NOT! The most important thing we all learn from Nature is that: MATTER CANNOT BE CREATED NOR DESTROYED! Yet what the modern world does all the time is to create “NEW” things and leave more WASTE to be destroyed! - George Chan
You won’t find anything about George Chan on Wikipedia.1
If I had not met with artist and agricultural ecologist Fernando GarciaDory in 2013, it may have been a much longer time before I had known about the existence of George Chan. Or perhaps I never would have heard of him at all. A few years ago with a friend’s help, Fernando was finally able to visit the nearly 90-year-old George Chan. Chan, who was living alone at a retirement home in Mauritius, was barely able to communicate verbally, and unable to walk to his window to see the outside world just a few steps away. Due to brain surgery following an accident, Chan had been forced to cease all social activities. After his visit with George Chan, Fernando was filled with despair at the thought of losing the old man’s life’s work “Dream Farms”, and was moved to archive and publish Chan’s materials as thoroughly as possible. The only material I have been able to find about Chan thus far is from the dOCUMENTA(13) 100 Notes - 100 Thoughts series, George Chan: Dream Farms, for which Fernando wrote the introduction. Although the booklet only covers a fraction of Chan’s extensive work, it allows those who are in need of information to begin to understand the magnitude of what he had done.
Fernando was very curious about what kind of “less is more” agricultural system Chan was researching. I think what George Chan may have been searching for at the Pearl River Delta back then was the now long gone “mulberry dike fish pond” system—a highly effective and elegant manmade ecosystem with a very long, rich history. This system began with mulberry trees, and via silkworms and fish, created a complete nutrient system with tightly interwoven relationships between the three. Mulberry trees were planted next to a fish pond, the leaves of which would nurture the growth of silkworms; silkworm waste matter in turn nurtured the fish and pond water, which then fertilized the mulberry—an integrated flow of energy. The impression of George Chan leaves us with an image of a Pearl River Delta agricultural landscape that no longer exists. Perhaps by learning from Chan, we may come to understand the resources we used to have—and those we still have—once again. (Hu Fang)
George Chan was born in 1923 on the island of Mauritius and lived through World War II. After completing engineering studies in London, he returned to Mauritius to work in the public sector with an aim to reduce poverty and improve health in all regions of the archipelago. After many years of research and fieldwork, Chan developed an Integrated Farming and Waste Management System (IFWMS) to ensure farmers could increase their production abilities and income based upon a cycle of sustainability. At the same time, the ecosystem could benefit from an overall well-balanced development. In other words, what Chan focused on was how to transform waste matter into something useful, simultaneously positioning agriculture as a means to curb the rampant overconsumption created by modernization processes. It is in his minimally drafted plans that Chan’s “don’t waste, don’t need” mentality is most clearly manifest. For Fernando, Chan’s processing system is akin to a sort of alchemy; by means of an effective formula, seemingly useless matter is transformed into something precious. This method was based not only upon strict scientific training but also upon his study of mankind’s various ancient wisdoms. Of particular note is Chan’s trip to China in 1983, when he served as a volunteer, researching traditional agricultural systems of the Pearl River Delta. He wrote, “We have learned many lessons on HOW to do so Much with so Little, and WHY we should Recycle all wastes and residue which were resources before.”2