Observing the environment around us
Q: But for example, in your book you often mention your birdwatching activities; those people who have never participated in birdwatching will have a hard time comprehending its fascination and the meaning that birds have for people. How does a nature writer achieve a balance between intellectual and literary concerns?
A: There is certainly a need in Taiwan for straightforward recording of natural phenomena. If the changes in the natural environment that have taken place in the last ten or twenty years had been recorded, it would be just like recording the history of development in Taiwan; it could be used for reference in the future.
Furthermore, to improve the quality of naturalist writing, we need more young people to observe and record the environment around them. For instance, members of the Meinung Self-Help Society wrote about how the natural environment and local culture, which is affected by the environment, have been crushed by various kinds of development pressures. The book fully communicates a love for the place and is really moving.
Naturalist writing in Taiwan is still very wide-open. It is still a new field, and many methods of writing can be employed. The only thing that is needed is for many young people to get involved, to "breathe" together with their own immediate environment. In the past, depictions of nature often stopped short at the level of hypochondriac moaning. Today we should write slowly and deliberately about our personal, genuine environment, about the full range of phenomena, and we should employ all the different forms of literature. Good works, even works of complete philosophical reflection, will then arise.
No matter what the form of writing, naturalist literature is a very achievable undertaking in Taiwan, because although Taiwan is small, the topography and ecology are unique, giving every locale its own special living environment and human atmosphere, which can be directly expressed in writing.
Of course, the greatest ambition of naturalist literature is, like other kinds of literature, to be able to have an impact on the hearts and minds of society. It's a pity that in the last decade or so the high value of leading a simple life, which naturalist literature tries to communicate, has not sunk in deeply in Taiwan. Taiwan has made the same mistakes over and over. Writers must use every form of literature to repeatedly call attention to these problems.
Q: You had published a number of essays before you began to focus on the natural environment. Why later on did you choose nature as your major subject? What are some of the differences between naturalist writing and the writing that you did in the past?
A: In the past, actually even now, I often wrote about the people, places or art that I observed, or some fantasies, some thoughts. After the question of the natural world entered into the sphere of my thinking, the way I wrote about it was no different from other topics. It's only that I had to read more information about the environment before I could write. The reason I came to write more naturalist literature is that I came to realize the inseparable relationship between nature and human beings. Every last trace of people's livelihoods is a gift from nature; people depend on nature for their very survival. Perhaps I'm particularly sensitive, but I have an especially hard time accepting the ignorance and vulgarity of humanity's destruction of nature, and this realization thoroughly raised in me a sense of mission in writing naturalist literature.
Writer, artist--two faces of the same coin
Q: You have settled down in the United States, but in your book you have visited a large number of places traveling and studying birds, from the mouth of the Tatu River in Taichung County, Taiwan, to the Hudson River in the US, to both banks of the Nile in Egypt. The predicaments faced by birds and the natural environment in Taiwan and other countries are given equal treatment in your book. According to what you have seen in your travels, are Taiwan' s ecological problems more serious than other countries'?
A: Although I have lived in America since I graduated from university, I have returned to Taiwan on three separate occasions for stays of over a year. My motive was to allow my son to study Chinese. Once I came back to Taiwan for five straight years. The first thing I did when I came back was to climb Yushan [Mt. Jade], and I wrote the book Verdant Mountain for Yushan National Park.
Taiwan is the place I care most about. I have always felt that it is a precious piece of earth, but the intense changes in Taiwan's environment are a thing of the 1970s and 1980s. Taiwan's problems are unquestionably the most severe. Its area is very small, its population density high. Its problems often occur very abruptly. Garbage accumulates very quickly, and there's nowhere to accommodate it; rivers quickly become polluted. When a poultry disease spreads, it rapidly becomes an island-wide problem.
Once I held an art exhibition with people who lived around the salt fields as the subject; the paintings were all of life along the southern coasts. It's a pity that the year after the exhibition, because of a decline in Taiwan's salt industry, the towns began to close the salt fields one by one. I don't mean to say that we absolutely have to preserve salt fields. But Taiwan's natural and human environments are changing too quickly. We really must make a record of them.
Q: Besides being a professional writer, you're a professional artist as well. And most of your books are also illustrated by many of your own paintings. In your mind are the goals of your painting the same as those of your writing endeavors?
A: When my son was still very little, I was a full-time mother and homemaker. I had my time tightly organized. When he was attending nursery school, kindergarten and primary school, I did my own writing and woodcut printing. During the first few years, two hours of every day at the most was my own time. At that time my writing and my painting were one and the same. So my works of art were often illustrations for my poems and articles; my poems and essays were often analyses of my art. My early poetry collections and essay collections were created through this stressful and regulated allotment of time.
When my son went on to middle school, I got my own art studio, and my schedule was much more relaxed. My writing and painting began to move along separate paths. But both my writing and art occupied a common ground--concern for and observation of the natural world. The subjects of my oil paintings were still often things mentioned in my articles, like the scenery along seacoasts--the shells, the birds, the plants--and the rolling clouds, the rainbows and shrubbery along mountain trails. The basic difference between my literary and artistic output is a matter of tools and techniques; the spiritual inspiration and internal thought processes are the same.
Hoping to change people's hearts
Q: In Search of the Name of a Bird features illustrations by your son Ben. Has he been influenced by your love for birdwatching and writing?
A: The environmental problems created by our generation will inevitably result in misfortune for the next generation. And these problems arise from our ignorance, so I have especially taken on the responsibility of preventing my son Ben and his generation from growing up ignorant. Since he was little, we took him along on Audubon Society activities, such as birdwatching, mountain climbing and picking up litter. When he was very young, he understood that a large amount of land space is required to raise beef cattle. Multinational powers like McDonald's have razed many tropical rain forests to make room for pastureland to raise beef cattle, to be ground into beef and turned into hamburgers. McDonald's has become a murderer of South American tropical rain forests. My child has really been convinced by me not to eat McDonald's hamburgers, even though hamburgers are his favorite food. Right now he's an adolescent, and he doesn't eat red meats like beef, pork or mutton. He only eats white meats like chicken and turkey, as well as fruit and vegetables.
He is much more vigilant than I was at his age. He knows that some of humankind's uncontrolled behavior will destroy the environment. And he does his best to avoid making the same mistakes. At school he is also taught things like refusing to accept second-hand smoke, not using disposable tableware, wearing simple, undyed clothing, creating as little unnecessary garbage as possible, and so forth. When these actions become a habit of life, they are unconsciously and very naturally put into practice day by day.
Q: In your book you often mentioned a few pieces of Western naturalist literature, such as Thoreau's Walden and Henry Beston's The Outermost House. What special qualities do you think good naturalist literature should have?
A: I think to write good naturalist literature, a writer must first obtain sufficient knowledge about nature and must continually observe nature's evolution and its relationship with human life. At the end of the Twentieth Century, human beings still do not fully comprehend nature's profundities. In order to solve these mysteries, we need to have an attitude of intellectual inquisitiveness and intelligent deliberation.
What naturalist writers face is a wide field with many unanswered questions, both natural and intellectual. I hope that naturalist literature can inspire a kind of new religious sentiment. It won't rely on building big temples to worship in; it won't have any scriptures to recite or dogmas to restrain people. It will only need to realize a delight in life, in the growth of grass and trees, and a beauty of mind, which will give birth to a gentle, peaceful, spiritual feeling for nature. This is an alternative faith which writers can build up with pen and ink.
I wrote a poem for my son when he graduated from grade school, which says:
Finally, you will realize
That a love of the earth that benefits all mankind
Starts with loving a single little plant
That grows by your foot
Treasuring the flowers and forests and waters, and a simple admiration for human life involves protecting a very small territory, not crossing over the boundaries to disturb the domains where other organisms exist--just as animals do in the wild. Constructing an ecological ethic based on the symbiotic interdependence of the world's wildlife is certainly a more appropriate blueprint for the coming century.
With such phenomena as the recent obsession with reincarnation, it is obvious that contemporary people are often confused. All over the place temples disturb the natural environment, occupying the best land on the mountainsides, and people's hearts are troubled by complex contradictions. Society's behavior has become utilitarian and complicated, and religion, which originally promoted simplicity, peace, and spiritual improvement, has reversed its course. Doesn't the Bible say, "Consider the lilies of the field; Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these"? I want my own writings about nature to concentrate and build upon a beautiful and pure spirit of conservation, an ecological morality and a love of the earth!
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(photo by Lin Meng-san)
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