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good evening to those of you in canada and good morning to all our colleagues in beijing

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thank you all for joining us for this panel discussion nature and humanity as one how the western idea of genus loci

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intersects with indigenous and chinese wisdom and practices relating to landscape

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my name is catherine croston and i’m the executive director and chief curator of the art gallery of alberta

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i would like to begin by acknowledging that we are hosting this event from edmonton and masquachi was kahikan in treaty 6

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territory and region 4 of the metis nation of alberta we acknowledge this as the traditional

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and ancestral home of the nihiwa cree anishinaabe soto miss tapi blackfoot nakota soo danny and

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metis peoples and acknowledge the many indigenous first nations and inuit people who make alberta their home today we

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know that this acknowledgement is just one small recognition of the work we need to do to address and

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reverse the ongoing impacts of colonization tonight’s conversation is being

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presented as a partnership between the china institute at the university of alberta and the art gall of alberta

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in association with our current exhibition cornelia oberlander genius loci this exhibition explores the

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work of the internationally renowned canadian landscape architect cornelia oberlander who from the 1950s

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until the present has revealed new ways of understanding the human connection to the natural environment the concept of genus locally

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has been used to refer to oberlander’s skillful approach to design that results in the timeless and

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site-specific landscapes in classical roman literature aegina society was the protective spirit of a

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place oberlander as a landscape architect is the modern equivalent of this her designs advocate for an

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amplification of what already exists in a place not the interruption of it with her

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public work frequently located in urban environments she seeks to soften the harshness of city life by offering spaces of respite

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in micro natural environments through the employment of scented plants pools and falls of water or the simple

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pleasure of a lone fruit tree through the lens of genus lochie this exhibition explores how overlander works

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to reveal connections that create community and foster a deeper alignment with the ecology and the natural environment

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is what it was with great regret that we learned of cornelia corbin langer’s passing on may 22nd

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just a month before her 100th birthday we extend our condolences to her family

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and are so very grateful that cornelia was able to play an active role in the development of our exhibition and

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accompanying publication and that we were able to realize both within her lifetime

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i would like to acknowledge the pool family foundation and the edmonton community foundation who support the

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pool center of design at the aga the cornelia oberlander exhibition and this discussion are being

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presented as part of the pool center of design programming i would also like to thank epcor who

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provide support for all aga online programming through their heart and soul fund

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we are very happy that tonight’s panel discussion marks the beginning of a new partnership between the arcale alberta

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and the china institute at the university of alberta it is now my great honor to be able to

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introduce zhan wang interim director of the china institute at the university of alberta

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who will share some welcoming remarks

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[Music] well thank you catherine good evening bonsoir

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okay welcome everyone from canada china and around the world to our webinar

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jointly hosted by the alberta art gallery and the china institute at the university of alberta

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my name is zhaowang or manxia as is known in chinese the culture i grew up in

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the china institute is canada’s only research think tank focused solely on china studies we

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strive to generate and disseminate knowledge that supports in-depth understanding

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of today’s china and encourage policy development in response to china’s evolving role in

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the world we are so honored and delighted to have such a distinguished panel of speakers

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joining us today are dr harvey lock from banff canada dr leroy little bear

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from lethbridge canada and dr young ray from beijing china my

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hometown webinar today will start by presentations by our speakers which will be followed

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by a moderated discussion and q a we encourage our audience members to

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submit your questions using the zoom q a function at the bottom of your screen

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we have over 200 registrants so we will try our best to accommodate as many

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questions as possible this event will be recorded and the recording will be made available to you

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shortly our conversation today will explore how different cultures

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perceive the relationship between humans and the natural environment and how these perceptions are put into

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practice in landscape design i hope that at the end of this session despite our varied

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cultures backgrounds history and geographic locations we could come to some common

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understanding in a world where differences are often

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highlighted and even exploited by some to fan hatred and divisiveness it’s

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perhaps particularly meaningful to shed some light on how much we actually have in common

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this recognition of certain shared values interest and even practices not only among us

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but also perhaps all the beings earthlings will helpful will hopefully help shape

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the principles underpinning our collective efforts to tackle global challenges

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such as climate change environmental degradation biodiversity preservation

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now it’s my great pleasure and honor to introduce our moderator today dr

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harvey locke harvey is the co-founder and senior advisor

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for yellowstone to yukon conservation initiative and nature needs half and he’s also

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one of our own he’s a senior fellow nature and environment at the china institute

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harvey is a conservationist writer and a photographer who is a widely recognized as a global

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leader in parks wilderness and large landscape conservation

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named one of canada’s leaders for the 21st century by time magazine

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harvey received many international awards since 2018 he has been very active in

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china including serving as an expert member of the china council for international cooperation

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on environment and development and working with members of the chinese academy of sciences and

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ministry of environment and ecology without further ado harvey the virtual floor is yours

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[Music] that’s a lovely introduction um i’m

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delighted to be here and you know we are so lucky in alberta canada to have something like

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the china institute it’s truly a provincial treasure it’s one of the great

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things that makes us worldly in our province and i’m so pleased that we can do this event

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together with the china institute which also has a fantastic chinese art collection the mctaggart

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collection and with the art gallery of alberta which has this magnificent building with a

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magnificent collection in the heart of edmonton and the pool design center which gets us

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thinking about these questions about what we want to do with the world we live in and how beautiful it could be

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so this is just an ideal evening and uh to have a chance to do an evening with

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my friends and colleagues young ray and leroy little bear it’s just a dream come true so what i’m going to do is set up the

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the ideas and then we’ll go to um young ray and then leroy little bear will speak

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and then we’ll do our q a at the end but i hope we uh everybody has a lot of fun tonight so

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i’m gonna start by a little powerpoint that i’m about to share sure hope this works looks like it might

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um see if i can get it full screen

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yes we should be good so here we go um

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as catherine said when she introduced things um we we’re celebrating the the magnificent

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lifetime achievements of cornelia han overlander uh who was a

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genius uh herself and who you know there was a lovely obituary to her in the new york

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times today um this is a very impressive canadian and oppressive human on planet earth

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um the exhibit at the art gallery about uh at the art gallery of alberta is a great opportunity to talk about

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that and this is one of her great accomplishments the legislative grounds of the northwest territories which i

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have seen in person which is a building that fits right into this beautiful and strange setting that yellowknife is

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which is with ponds and rocky outcrops a very pretty place uh with a pretty building and a

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magnificently integrated landscaping plan that makes you think that the building grew organically out of the

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site instead of was dropped in and she did many other famous projects like the robson square project

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in vancouver and many people think of this idea of a genius loci meaning the person who was a

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genius of that place it’s sort of personalized to the individual meaning you know this person was a

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genius if you’ve read landscape and memory by simon sharma he talks about a genius of a place in

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the fontainebleau woods south of paris but actually there’s another and i find even more interesting meaning

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to that word um and it relates to the context of the environment and here’s a couple of quotes from

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uh from cornelia oberlander that i think get at this deeper idea so these are just some quotes i

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harvested from various things of hers while i was doing my research to get ready if we want to maintain biodiversity and

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keep the world green with healthy cities and healthy people there is no time to lose urgency

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our well-being on this earth depends on the state of the health and the environment we’re part of nature but above all

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develop and practice an ethical aesthetic and caring design and building process interesting

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let the land dictate a horticultural response and i noticed she quoted barry lopez for

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his uh passage in his book arctic dreams where he says i listen to what the land is saying

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and entered in this matter the land will open up and this is getting at this other idea that the genius loci

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represents this is from the merriam-webster dictionary and you’ll see it’s about the pervading spirit of a

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place or the tutelary deity of a place it is not about the person it’s about

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the place and how we get that context for ourselves and our actions in

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that place um this is a letter that alexander pope

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famous english poet wrote at the time that landscape gardening was taking on a distinctive

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english character which was heavily influenced by a chinese landscape gardening in a book called 36

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views from the emperor kang shi that had come to england shortly before and this passage is a marvelous one that

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says to build to plant whatever you intend in all let

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nature never be forgot consult the genius of the place in all

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that tells the waters to rise or to fall and be whatever vitruvius was before

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that point about vitruvius is an interesting one so who is vitruvius well everybody in

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western culture knows this image this is called vitruvian man by leonardo da vinci

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and what this represents isn’t a drawing of originality by da vinci but rather him trying to plot what vitruvius said about the

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divine proportion of the human and how there are certain measurements that that work out to make us

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somewhat circular or square in our in our metrics and this drawing is of course a symbol

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of the renaissance but it’s also uh a tribute to this to vitruvius vitruvius has given us the

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three foundational principles of all western architecture these laws solidity utility and beauty

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or fermitas utilitas and venustas are the foundations of most

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architectural practice in the west and i mean the entire west uh not western canada i mean the western world

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and this is hadrian’s garden here that i photographed a few years ago where you can see some of those principles

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that work but this idea of these three foundational principles of architecture

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are extremely widespread if you read modern books on architecture you’ll almost always find them

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but vitruvius was about more than just those three things vitruvius was very

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influenced by the etruscan conditions in which he was

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born and that italian trust etruscan perception was that there was a divine

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spirit inhabiting all spaces and that man-made monumental space interacted with the sanctity of the

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space itself and this is from the ania this is virgil

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the founding of rome so this is the story of when aeneas comes from troy and scrapes rome

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um before romulus and ramus are born which i’ll come to in a moment

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uh ginny m qualosai param credeorum tellurium by the way nobody knows how to pronounce

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latin so mine’s as good as anybody else’s there’s three different proposed pronunciations we agreed to call it

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genius loci using that pronunciation but aeneas prayed to the spirit of the

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place and to earth the first of the gods the day had come to found their destined

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city of course aeneas uh daughter is uh the mother of romulus and ramus and

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everybody in the west knows this image and what’s interesting about this image if you look at it

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is you see a she-wolf wild nature nurturing the babies

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that are the founders of rome you see the relationship between humanity and nature is one

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this is not in a strained relationship this is an intimate one as deeply intimate as it could possibly

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be babies suckling at the breast of a wild she-wolf at the founding

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of rome but something strange happened that moved us away from that as

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the romans who were the master engineers of the ancient world and still some of the best engineers

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that ever were started to discover their capacity to build to straight roads and aqueducts and to

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transform the earth and they kind of lost that that sense of the spirit of the place that was very

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deeply there at the founding this is d h lawrence commenting on the difference between the original

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etruscans and the romans in his really interesting little book etruscan places the old religion of the profound attempt

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of man to harmonize himself with nature changed with the greeks and romans into

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a desire to resist nature till at last there should be nothing free in nature at all

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all should be controlled domesticated and puts to put demands meaner uses

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now when the roman empire collapsed interestingly in the western world you can find other threads of through the middle ages

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of people more interested in the connection with nature think of saint francis of assisi for example

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uh but by the time of the renaissance that roman thing is brought back in and

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here’s the this is uh the capitoline hill where that she-wolf statue is in the capitoline museum in the founding of

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rome occurred this is michelangelo square where you see man on top of the horse

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dominating the round planet this is the earth and we are on top of

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it and rene descartes said in 1637 humans are the lords and masters of nature so you can see

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suddenly in the renaissance we’re sort of doubling down on this new roman perception of we’re in charge and the rest of the

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earth is there to serve us and of course if you bring that into north america you have this idea of

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progress and this wonderful painting which is in the getty museum in los angeles it’s called american progress or

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progress as a canadian would pronounce it and what she is this is in a book about how to go west and

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settle the west and you see her carrying the book of knowledge and a telegraph line in her hands

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behind her follows the railways the the farmers with their plows the miners with

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their picks the settlers in their covered wagon the telegraph line everything and she’s

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driving out the wildness the wolves the indigenous people in the buffalo or

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the bison so you can see this narrative about progress lies in this thing that dh lawrence described

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of converting everything to the meaner uses meaning the average uses and driving out the first

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people driving out the wildness driving out the world view that we belong in nature

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instead of the world view that it’s there to serve service and convert it now this worldview has gotten us to

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tremendous wealth it’s created the prosperity for which the western world and many other

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countries which have gotten on the program of generating wealth it’s made us very rich but now we’ve hit

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the wall uh the science is unequivocally clear that that

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idea that it’s just here to serve us is causing us a big big problem right now so this is from it

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best this is the scientific body that advises the convention on biological diversity which we’ll be having a meeting in china

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this year uh cop a conference of the parties this year very important meeting for nature nature

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is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history a million plants and animals are at risk

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of extinction and our own well-being is at risk too this is from the chair of the equivalent

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science body for the climate convention this is a statement in december last

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year um science tells us that climate is already changing because of us

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we’re on a path to risking serious pervasive irreversible impacts

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climate change is already affecting people in nature around the world and limiting to 1.5 degrees is not

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impossible brackets it’s very necessary but would mean unprecedented transitions

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in all aspects of society in other words we have to change our program here now this is the united nations

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development program um the covent my team pandemic has unleashed a human development crisis

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we’re back to the 1980s level of developments in some places lost all that progress over the last 40

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years and it was superimposed on unresolved tensions about the equitable distribution of wealth

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and also between people and the planet

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and this is a speech i you know if you’re interested in nature and conservation and climate change and the state of the

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world this is a very compelling speech the secretary general of the un gave in december to put it simply the state

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of the planet is broken humanity is waging war on nature this is suicidal

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making peace with nature is the defining task of the 21st century it must be the top top priority for

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everyone everywhere now happily this penny is beginning to drop at the um

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at the serious world leadership level china’s president xi jinping has been talking about this in very explicit

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terms we don’t tend to hear this in the west for very we have some filters up right now that don’t allow us to actually hear

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what’s being said sometimes this is from a speech he gave 2020.

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the industrial civilization while making us very wealthy has caused ecological crises

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biodiversity loss and environmental damage a sound ecosystem is essential for civilization

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we need to take up our lofty responsibility we need to respect nature follow its

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laws and protect it that’s the president of china it’s not the only time he’s spoken like

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this by the way this is from the g7 environment ministers communique two weeks ago

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may 21st we may see something else this weekend coming from the heads of state who are meeting at the g7 in england but

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this is a direct statement we acknowledge with grave concern the unprecedented and interdependent

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crises of climate change and biodiversity laws pose an existential threat to nature people

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prosperity and security we need to move to a nature positive and climate resilient pathway

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and bend the curve of biodiversity laws and then this highly relevant to

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canadians reconciliation with the first people this is from the principles document

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from the truth and reconciliation committee commission a few years ago

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reconciliation between aboriginal and non-aboriginal canadians requires reconciliation with

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the natural world reconciliation will never occur unless

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we are also reconciled with the earth we can’t just resolve problems among ourselves we must also resolve our

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relationship with the earth so it is terribly exciting tonight that we have

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two of the best thinkers in the world about one about how chinese landscape tradition

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affects chinese society in the future vision of china which includes a vision of equal civilization

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dr yang ray and we have dr leroy little bear speaking who’s one of the great

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indigenous thinkers on planet earth and they will explore these ideas about

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how we might bring this all together with potentially this idea of reviving

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the genius loci just as we revived ideas from roman greece in the renaissance perhaps it’s now time to

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revive ideas of the spirit of place of the genius loci in the 21st century it’s in the western

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tradition as well and i think you’ll find an amazing correspondence between that part of our culture

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in the west and these ideas that will come from leeway and yang gray more formally leroy is a founder of the

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native american studies department of the university of lethbridge he served as chair there for 21 years

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he’s the founding director of the harvard university native american program he

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was one of the initiators of the united nations declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples

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he’s author he co-authored the book’s pathways to self-determination native indian leaders perspectives on

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self-government and also quest for justice aboriginal rights in canada

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he’s a member of the order of canada and an esteemed member of the blackfoot

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confederacy he’s a leader force in the creation of a modern treaty among planes first nations

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from both canada and the united states called the buffalo treaty a treaty of cooperation renewal and restoration

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um one of the great joys of my life is the fact that i know this brilliant man leroy you have the floor

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thank you very much harvey and thanks very much for that

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introduction

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ah [Music]

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song i belong to the small robes band of ghana

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and we belong to the blackfoot confederacy i’m very honored

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to be with you this evening and to be able to share some thoughts with you

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what we’re going to be discussing this evening and what harvey has just introduced us

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to is a very very interesting

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topic and a but a very important topic for us

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homo sapiens human beings but so that we understand

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and have a little bit of a background about what we’re going to be talking

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about let me give a little bit of that

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background you see when a society

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comes into existence however that society

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comes into existence sooner or later

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that society claims a territory

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and within that territory it has a mutual relationship

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over a period of time with everything within that totality of that

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environment the sky the land the plants

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the animals and so what in other words with the totality of the

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environment and sooner or later and again

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over a period of time that society more or less

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i don’t think there’s any specific time that it says so and sometimes it may

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never say so but more or less comes to kind of an agreement

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that says this is how we as a society

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are going to live on this land this is how we’re going to interpret

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our relationships with this total environment this is how we’re

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going to interpret reality okay so in other words

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that that notion about how we’re going to interpret things how

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we’re going to do things is what we usually refer to as a culture

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and because of the so many you know hang ups let me put it that way

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around the word culture i prefer to use the phrase a collective agreement

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of the society now that collective agreement

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usually has something like an esoteric theoretical

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aspect to it that theoretical esoteric aspect

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is really what we refer to as the paradigms or the

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metaphysics of that society it has customs customs

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already accepted ways of doing things and of course

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it also has social values and the values are those

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standards that we use for you know judging whether or not

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people within the society are following the customs the beliefs

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and so on those values might even speak to giving rewards

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to people who follow the rules of the society see

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well especially that esoteric part

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those metaphysics is our interpretation

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of what comes to us it’s almost like we’re a computer and

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it’s all the input and we say well all that intake this is how we’re going

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to interpret that see you know how

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scientists like to be very sight very objective well

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a nobel prize winning scientist steven weinberg said

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you know there’s an objective world out there but to be a true objective world

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there shouldn’t be any humans in the picture

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as soon as there’s a human being in the picture it becomes an interpretation

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of that objective reality out there so in other words

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those beliefs those metaphysics those paradigms really are

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just an interpretive template of what we think that objective world is

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out there see and one of the things we have to keep in mind is that we fight

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wars over those interpretive templates we argue amongst ourselves as

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different societies saying to each other no my interpretation my society’s

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interpretation is better than yours mine is it

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say well when we look at blackfoot where

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i come from and i know this to be true amongst other indigenous people

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in my part of the world that those metaphysics consist

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of seeing the world in other words we’ve said this is how

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we’re going to interpret the world based on the following and that is hey everything is

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going to is seen as being in a state of flux things are always

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moving changing interchanging transforming and so on that flux

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is really made up of consists of energy waves

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as opposed to matter or particles

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another part of it is that everything that has movement in

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is alive it’s anime so we see everything as

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anime there’s no such thing in blackfoot as inanimate not having

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life see we see the world as being all interrelated

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that’s why even in our prayers we say all my relations

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i’m related to all those people out there so that harvey was mentioning

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the buffalo treaty i’ve got a copy of this buffalo treaty well there’s some rock

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down at the bottom that rock we would refer to as

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buffalo buffalo rib stones and is part of all my relations

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when we were working towards establishing that buffalo treaty we always had a

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seat at the table not as advisor but at the table for the buffalo

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and he joined the conversation see now moving on with those metaphysics

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everything being interrelated hey our languages reflect

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all of that notions so that because it’s about state of flux

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our language is about motion it’s about action it’s about processes

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see and because if there’s always a state of flux

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we try to really look for something that’s a regular occurrence in that

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flux well land becomes very important

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because land will change because of the flux but not as

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quickly as other things and that’s why land is very

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important in our way we can at least refer to the

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land at least for the time being we can hang our head on it

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for at least the time being see so when we’re talking about

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landscape well that landscape really

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has all this spirit it has that life in it and

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it’s all about my relations those animals out there

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relate to that landscape the land itself relates to

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us and we relate to it a good example of that connection

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is water i am and we as human beings

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adult human beings are 60 to 70 percent water

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so that water out there is my brother my sister see

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i can relate to it see so because

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everything is alive that notion of you know

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being all related we become part of

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the overall picture the totality we fit

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into it as opposed to being separate from it

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when we look at the modern world today it is as harvey was explaining at the

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beginning it’s all what i would refer to as constructed environment

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it is a constructed environment and not what

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nature and all my relations those animals the earth itself

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how they have shaped that see so when we’re talking

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landscape it’s how the river shapes the land

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i live in a windy country it’s how the wind

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shapes the land and i as a human being have to fit in and make peace with the

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wind because it shapes the land and it shapes how all those

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other beings whether they’re coyotes whether they’re bears and so on

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how they react to that overall landscape

39:45

what connects us all in other words all my relations is

39:52

that spirit that spirit is those

39:59

energy waves that’s common to all of us

40:07

and that’s why they are all my relations and that’s why

40:13

we respect everything that surrounds us

40:21

so landscape really is about

40:28

the totality and the relational aspect and we as humans

40:36

are a very small part and play a very small part

40:42

of that relational network and if we play around with it

40:49

too much hey i used to text as i

40:54

tell people i used to text neanderthal man

41:02

well neanderthal man is no longer here well

41:09

we may not be around in in the distant future

41:16

so that’s something we have to think about

41:21

thank you very much

41:33

thank you leroy um so clear so compelling so important to

41:41

us who wish to practice reconciliation to fully understand each other and how we all see the world

41:48

and um brilliantly clear and i’m i’m now i’m going to turn to

41:55

um another very very old old way of seeing the world perhaps the

42:01

oldest continuous civilization which is china and so many thoughts about how to live

42:08

in the world have been held by chinese thinkers and scholars

42:14

and the the opportunity to learn about

42:20

how the chinese civilization has seen the world um and pretty much everybody on this

42:26

call will know that china has become the second largest economy in the world it’s had cities that have gone from 35

42:33

000 people in the 1980s to 14 million people today with more buildings over 50 stories than manhattan

42:40

a fantastic road system subways but it also has this deeply anchored culture in a way of seeing the world and we’re

42:47

so lucky that dr young ray is with us tonight he’s the co-founder

42:55

head and professor of the department of landscape studies at the school of architecture in chingua

43:02

university in beijing he’s also the director of the national park research institute of

43:08

chingua university and vice chairman of the chinese society of landscape

43:13

architecture he was a visiting scholar at the graduate school of design at harvard

43:20

and starting in the 1990s he proposed the idea of there being a national park

43:25

system in china he’s one of the pioneers of the idea of national parks which in china

43:30

is now the focus of their protected area system he’s won awards for his national park

43:35

planning ideas and he um in particular with the milai

43:40

snow mountain master plan he received a very distinguished award for it

43:46

um i had the pleasure of being a visiting scholar at chingua with with dr ray

43:53

dr young in december and learned some of the things that i think he’ll share with you tonight

43:59

that just struck me of how much depth there is to this concept of relationship between

44:06

chinese culture and heaven the earth and the relationships

44:11

that he will now share with all of us thank you very much ray for being here

44:17

i’m so thrilled such a pleasure that you could be with us in canada thank you very much javi

44:25

[Music] could you please share with your screen

44:39

it is the full screen show you

44:46

okay uh thank you very much harvey uh for your uh

44:52

introduction and i think it’s a tough task for me to introduce the

44:58

concept of chinese landscape i would like to call it chantry because

45:06

in the landscape in english could be translated into chinese for

45:12

several terms such as funjin

45:22

today i will um try to explain the concept of chantry and also

45:30

wisdom and the practice of shine because i like this translation very much

45:38

changing so next slide

45:49

as you may know the chinese character is a pictograph

45:56

so you can see uh 3000 years ago during the

46:04

ancient chinese time they had a different chinese character

46:12

of mountains and waters the top one is mountain and then um

46:20

and the other one is the uh water floor it’s tree and the streets so uh

46:28

you could say on the left the shine on the street the mountain and

46:34

the water is quite uh concrete and nowadays things in nineteen

46:44

you could say in the chinese character of shanxi is uh abstract so

46:51

uh it’s very interesting to see in a physical level shan andersoy

46:59

is the most important physical element for chinese people to

47:06

represent uh next slide

47:14

and also uh this old man you may know very well because uh

47:21

he is the first teacher in china is kung’s confucius and

47:29

he was born in [Music]

47:35

551 bc and uh about two thousand years ago two

47:41

thousand and five hundred years ago so he tried to link the physical part

47:49

of mountain and water into a physical

47:56

on the mind level try to link try to make a linkage between the mind

48:03

and then the physical element and he said that

48:08

white people the uh wise men like water so uh they found

48:16

some similarity between the wise men and

48:23

then the correct very uh ristic of water because now wise men like water water

48:29

has characteristic of uh

48:37

flexible and clear and also um

48:44

a lot of uh maybe um transformative

48:52

this kind of characteristics so he said and wise people like water and

49:00

um

49:06

the average person like the mountain because the mountain also has the

49:13

characteristics like mountains the mountain is also operate

49:18

and so he found he said that

49:28

the nice people oh the people who is hating the knees

49:34

uh like mountains so you could say that in the chantry the mountain on the water there’s two

49:40

chinese characters uh not only represents the physical element but also

49:49

the psychic the spiritual element this is the

49:56

ideas from the confucius next slide

50:08

and in ouijin uh dynasty um luigi is a very um

50:16

special uh dynasties about 2000 years ago and the people uh would like to go to a

50:26

mountains and water to nature and to enjoy their life these seven

50:32

people named julian chichen because they would like to

50:38

bamboo uh area and to have some recreation

50:45

to have some uh activities because they think that only in nature

50:52

in the forest they could find their peaceful their happiness this kind of things

50:59

so um about two thousand years ago chinese people like nature very much

51:06

the mountains waters forest oh um this kind of uh

51:12

uh natural uh environment be the um very

51:19

uh good uh places to to stay

51:28

okay next slide show you so you can see the um

51:37

traditional uh paintings from uh cities uh

51:43

from maybe in a farmland and also from some wilderness area just like

51:50

harvest paper 3c so we could say that this is

51:56

[Music] a chinese festival

52:03

in spring and in on this day it’s about in april uh fifth

52:11

um on this day uh you could see in the city of kaifeng now located in hernan province

52:18

the um different uh mountains and forests and rivers

52:26

buildings bridges and then the people and they are um living

52:33

in harmony uh in the sun dynasty about uh one thousand years ago

52:42

next slide should also they say uh maybe we could call it’s not um

52:51

farmland oh it’s not in the city it’s not in the uh wilderness but it’s

52:58

um it’s not shared the landscape just like harvey uh described

53:05

and this is a painting um of uh tren fu twin river

53:12

future river is located in angkor province and the georgian province so uh in this painting you could also

53:19

see the mountains of the rivers

53:25

and if you could see very uh in very detail you can see some people

53:32

so chinese people they don’t separate the human beings from nature

53:39

they just see as human beings as one part of the

53:46

nature next slide

53:53

this is a very sacred mountain in china oh

54:01

it’s not

55:15

can you hear me hello yes we can hear you now

55:22

okay thank you should you could you please okay

55:29

so we could see in a very famous mountain i also

55:36

could see is a protected area is mount uh huangshan located in angkwe province

55:42

so you can see a lot of ancient paintings about uh mount function uh

55:50

you also can see in a mountain water floor and also uh there is some

55:58

small buildings uh in this mountain with people with

56:04

different activities uh in this mountain so for the chinese people men

56:12

and nature is always get together they they did not uh separate

56:19

the human beings from the natural and also they seen the mountains the rivers the water flows in the forest

56:28

is is one next slide

56:35

so we could say um in chinese contact chantry creation reprints all of the

56:43

landscape activities this is a picture i drawing to um

56:51

try to um understand the chantry of the chinese

56:59

how chinese people understand in the landscape uh i think there are each aspect

57:05

that is store tau is the philosophy and the deal

57:18

techniques functions mechanisms images and the meanings so

57:25

uh this is a um chinese tai chi if you know some knowledge about the yin

57:33

and the young so we could say that in a chancery concept not only

57:40

on the level of theory but also on the level of practice

57:46

and um they uh exist in

57:53

for uh fields it’s not conservation it’s not planning it’s

58:00

governance and also it’s not designed for these four fields we could

58:08

say uh we could um uh all of the age aspect toward early

58:17

could could be found in the conservation planning governance

58:24

and design okay next

58:30

it’s very interesting this old people actually it’s loud

58:38

loud is older than uh confucius and his uh philosophy

58:46

is we are g uh is thought yeah doing nothing that goes

58:53

against nature so it’s very interesting he said that you should not

59:00

do much if you are doing too much then

59:07

it will not only hurt the nature but also hurt yourself

59:14

uh so he suggested doing nothing that goes against

59:21

nature so this is uh his uh main philosophy

59:30

another people is uh trunks trunks is [Music]

59:37

i think i like him very much because he uh wrote an article on the

59:43

equality of things about

59:50

2000 years ago and he wrote that heaven and earth lived together with me

59:57

and everything and i are one so he um

1:00:04

he saw uh everything is equal they have an equal right and

1:00:11

human beings is just uh has many equal rights as animals

1:00:17

as the waters and the mountains human beings is not in a um

1:00:24

it’s not in the lord human beings is it’s just uh one equal part of the universe

1:00:32

so he um his philosophy is very nice and i would like to suggest

1:00:39

you if you are interested in you could read in a paper of on the

1:00:45

um equality of things it’s wow it’s wonderful okay

1:00:52

next slide so this uh slide um

1:00:59

is um once one is not a philosopher

1:01:05

is not a teacher but he was a politician

1:01:12

not a modern politician but a politician two thousand years ago uh in jangwood

1:01:21

dynasty and he is a leader of the country of chi

1:01:30

uh nowadays located in the shandong province and he said that men and the nature

1:01:37

adapt to each other and in the result if they adapt to each other

1:01:45

the result is great beauty so this is his um philosophy

1:01:51

and he applied his philosophy to rule his his country

1:01:58

the um the whole country and the cities and the

1:02:03

peoples and then farmland and also everything they use uh this kind of

1:02:11

philosophy so you could say uh he said

1:02:21

next slide

1:02:26

so like uh guanz in chi uh country

1:02:33

for the certain years in agricultural civilization in china the

1:02:40

um chinese government at that time they do

1:02:46

um conservation of doing conservation with a lot of

1:02:54

wisdom and practice such as

1:03:00

the five great mountains and the sudo is the five most important rivers

1:03:07

so you can see in the right picture is

1:03:15

i think is the first um national protected area in china

1:03:22

because at that time the qing dynasty set a city named taian

1:03:29

to manage this mountain protected areas and the

1:03:35

city and the mountain are so integrated

1:03:43

they integrate very well um just like

1:03:51

julian is a chinese term maybe some of the chinese

1:03:56

colleagues could translate this chinese term into english

1:04:08

it’s a match perfect between the city and the mountain

1:04:15

between the main and the nature next slide

1:04:21

not only a space management but also

1:04:28

the ancient chinese government they cite a lot of policies and regulations

1:04:36

to conserve the landscape like some books

1:04:45

they told them the people during the spring you can uh hunting or

1:04:52

you cannot fishing oh you should do something you should not do

1:04:58

something it’s in the policies regulations 2000 years ago

1:05:05

next slide not only in the han nationality you may know that

1:05:12

there are 56 nationalities in china uh now

1:05:19

a ball content is chinese nationalities

1:05:27

appearance and this is some minorities like tibetan

1:05:33

people or some people in the union province they also have sacred trees mountains

1:05:41

and lakes and they conserve the natural landscape very well

1:05:49

next slide and also you could say that juju is

1:05:57

a zooming map uh in ancient time the chinese government divided

1:06:04

the whole country into nine states as jojo

1:06:11

according to mountains and the rivers and

1:06:17

to plan or to manage to

1:06:24

governance these nine uh states um according to the different

1:06:30

uh environmental situation such as climate own

1:06:37

soil all those different kind of things next slide

1:06:45

this is a concept of uh feng shui i just mentioned about shan

1:06:52

shree this is another chinese term feng shui feng shui is a technique

1:06:59

for chinese people to plan and design their cities their places

1:07:07

their villages even their tombs so from

1:07:17

water so feng shui um how can say maybe in ancient times they

1:07:24

try to find a nice um a nicer

1:07:29

metro uh climate uh for the cities from the villages

1:07:36

from the buildings for the tombs so uh feng shui is a

1:07:43

system actually it’s very complicated it combined in uh some chinese uh

1:07:50

philosophy and with um um james c and

1:07:58

the uh different analysis together to develop a technique

1:08:05

how to select the cities how to select the place of

1:08:12

the cities of the villages of the buildings uh it’s very interesting and

1:08:17

also it’s very complicated next slide so you could see

1:08:25

in the uh hong kong village located in uh angry province um

1:08:32

very close to the mount huangshan this is the result of the feng shui you could see this

1:08:38

village they have a moon lake and to

1:08:47

adjust or to give a better metro climate of this village

1:08:54

and also you could see in the landscape it’s very beautiful of this village

1:09:01

now it’s a world cultural heritage next slide not only for the living

1:09:09

people but also for the dead people this is

1:09:15

located in beijing there are 13 tombs uh from the

1:09:21

ming dynasty the emperors and his families so you also could say

1:09:30

that the tombs located very well with the relationship between

1:09:37

the mountains to the rivers next slide

1:09:44

and also this you know honey terrorist

1:09:50

views in yunnan province you can see how agriculture land

1:10:00

to get along with the uh forest to get along with

1:10:06

the village and they are very harmony they just

1:10:13

one system the people on a main element

1:10:21

is an equal part of of this system so they are

1:10:29

in harmony living in harmony with nature okay and not only

1:10:36

those villages and cities but also infrastructures such as

1:10:44

in located in sutran province near tuna city of chengdu

1:10:51

and this irrigation system provides a lot

1:10:58

of good farmland for the people living in in this area

1:11:05

and also it’s a world cultural heritage because it’s very beautiful

1:11:12

and uh you could not even realize it’s uh it’s a it’s a dam or

1:11:19

it’s a irrigation system uh when you visited this area it’s just

1:11:25

like a big landscape and it’s

1:11:30

very harmony aggregation aggregation system mountains

1:11:38

rivers everything is so harmony okay so

1:11:45

not in a big landscape but also from the gardens from the small gardens the this is the

1:11:52

uaming um which was uh destroyed in uh

1:11:58

[Music] 100 years ago by the wall

1:12:03

but you could also say the gardens and the buildings from

1:12:11

small gardens to the big landscape to infrastructures chinese people trying

1:12:18

to integrate the uh natural and human beings

1:12:25

to integrate in the mountains rivers and human beings together

1:12:31

okay last slide so i think the core of the shine she

1:12:39

philosophy is that human beings

1:12:46

is just an equal part of the universe this is the call of the shantri

1:12:53

philosophy so from the cop 15 um of this uh

1:13:00

october just like uh having mentioned the uh conference theme is

1:13:07

building a shared future for all life on earth i think it represents

1:13:14

a a heightened spirit uh of the core of the chantry

1:13:22

we should think how to apply the shine three wisdom in this very

1:13:29

specific ecological civilization so i would like to

1:13:36

back your pattern because my english is poor uh and also to ex

1:13:44

plan this uh chinese uh philosophy even in chinese

1:13:50

is uh difficult uh so uh that is my presentation

1:13:57

thank you very much for your patient thank you

1:14:06

ray that was very clear very easy to understand and absolutely magnificent thank you so

1:14:13

much uh for explaining uh shenshui and the other dimensions of the

1:14:19

unity of uh humans and nature um absolutely wonderful presentation and i

1:14:25

was struck by the connections between some of the thoughts and what you expressed and some

1:14:31

of what leroy expressed about how we perceive ourselves in this world maybe we can put leroy’s

1:14:37

image up too so we can have the question and answer period

1:14:43

if we can get leroyce up here with us along with ray but i would like to first

1:14:50

the first thing i want to do is ray you mentioned a phrase where you wanted some help translating i bet your jock and

1:14:56

tell us what it was you were trying to say john would you mind sharing with us about the city and the mountain being

1:15:02

integrated at mount tai what it was that ray was saying please

1:15:08

well julian pierce so it is about uh pearls and jade like

1:15:15

match perfectly together so um and uh and professor young also spoke

1:15:21

about zhao run so um water and um and and cream comes together

1:15:28

beautifully so it really meant to say that um two things um can come and combine and

1:15:37

and and and connect um very nicely together and probably in the end

1:15:44

it actually creates a greater beauty than the individual items super joe i’m going to ask you to

1:15:52

wait one more minute too because there’s a phrase that you and i have talked about which is a phrase that president xi is

1:15:58

using a lot when he talks about building equal civilization and ray ended his talk talking about this

1:16:04

idea of equal civilization which is actually in the chinese constitution to build an eco-civilization

1:16:10

and there’s a phrase about lush mountains and green and clean rivers um can you use that

1:16:17

phrase that’s very common in chinese understanding job please just explain the phrase say

1:16:22

the phrase in chinese and then explain it sure it’s um

1:16:32

um

1:16:46

green mountains and clear waters clear rivers

1:16:53

are the equivalent or as good as mountain of gold and river of gold

1:17:02

so it basically indicates how precious uh beautiful nature and and clean

1:17:08

pristine environment is it’s as good as gold perfect thanks and what’s so interesting

1:17:15

is this is a phrase that president g is using regularly to promote policies

1:17:21

so um and so so just to stimulate the conversation people are welcome to put

1:17:27

questions in the chat if you have some um but i’d like to

1:17:33

ask a question uh of ray to just explain briefly what is the ecological red line in china

1:17:41

what is the that land use thing that’s just happened that has resulted in protecting 25 percent of

1:17:47

china recently could you just explain briefly what that is to the audience

1:17:53

well um is a concept raised by a professor

1:18:02

gaujishi and who is working for

1:18:09

ministry of environmental protection and

1:18:16

the chinese government accept the idea and make some laws on the

1:18:24

legislations about the right line the dry line is try to

1:18:29

um prevent the human activities inside the boundaries they come true

1:18:38

the um the human activities the human use uh

1:18:44

in inside the uh right lines so for me i would like to suggest that inside in a

1:18:52

right line um isn’t a different kind of protected areas such as

1:18:59

national parks such as natural reserves such as some uh maybe in natural parks

1:19:07

the national forest park uh national white land park this kind of

1:19:13

things for me um the right line is

1:19:19

his concept this very strong linkage to the protected

1:19:25

iris now the chinese protected areas cover about 18 percent

1:19:33

of the whole country and then the right line is about 25 or 30

1:19:40

percent of uh of the chinese line is that clearly yes yeah that’s great

1:19:47

ray it’s just uh i thought people would be interested to know that china has literally said we will dedicate that much of our

1:19:53

country sorry i cannot hear you no no that’s good um in canada of course

1:19:59

we have a policy of protecting 25 by 2025 and 30 by 2030

1:20:04

that the federal government has just recently developed and announced funding for and we need to see our provinces and so

1:20:10

on come on board because if the chinese can do it we should be able to do it in canada i think

1:20:15

okay thank you ray your comment was good um we have some questions um

1:20:23

um from vance martin who’s joining us from the united states

1:20:29

um how is the essential and important philosophy of relationship to be made real or actualized in

1:20:36

political and business planning any ideas there

1:20:47

um i would say i would say that this whole notion

1:20:55

should figure into the business planning why well number one in many cases when

1:21:04

we’re talking about business planning we are talking about corporations

1:21:12

[Music] and as we all know corporations

1:21:18

are persons and those persons should be

1:21:26

as responsible for the environment

1:21:33

as other persons like us humans and so on

1:21:41

and i think really what it is is that what i’ve been trying to say for

1:21:48

the past little while is we have to sit

1:21:53

back and reflect and covet 19 is giving us that

1:22:01

opportunity to sit back and reflect on how we do things

1:22:08

see how we do things and so if

1:22:15

those metaphysics that we use on a daily basis we should reflect

1:22:23

and ask ourselves where are those metaphysics taking us

1:22:30

where are they leading us what path are they taking us down you know

1:22:37

and maybe there are other interpretative tools

1:22:44

that might work also let’s examine those other interpretive

1:22:50

tools we’re not saying forget up forget what you have

1:22:57

and adopt totally somebody else’s we’re saying examine others

1:23:04

and by doing that you will widen your perspective

1:23:11

and therefore creativity will come in with that diversity

1:23:18

and therefore more answers to the issues that face us

1:23:25

so really diversity is strength

1:23:33

thanks leroy i would make a comment that there’s a really big um effort globally now

1:23:40

to promote the idea of an equitable nature positive and carbon neutral world heavily supported by business

1:23:46

organizations that are interested in the in nature and the climate such as world

1:23:51

business council on sustainable development the world economic forum business for

1:23:57

nature imagine these are all groups that i’ve had the privilege of working with who are very concerned about these same

1:24:03

issues and are they’re looking at this nature positive idea as a way of managing towards a positive

1:24:10

outcome that’s sort of within their reach just like being carbon neutral is within a business’s reach

1:24:15

and of course this question of equity is very important to uh going forward as we’re seeing

1:24:20

widening disparities um and uh increased suffering and so on so it’s

1:24:25

it’s it’s interesting that there is this critical mass of businesses there’ll also be something called the circular economy

1:24:31

conference coming up in canada a global conference on this idea that you shouldn’t waste anything that

1:24:37

everything should be reused there’s a lot of thought actually conversations going on in china like that as well

1:24:43

and i wonder if we can move the next question to professor yang could you explain a little bit more the

1:24:49

elements of that taiji drawing that you did about the eight principles and the taiji drawing

1:24:56

just what you were what’s the core idea there

1:25:08

can you hear me ray no i guess not so sorry about that we’ve

1:25:14

got a uh an issue of the connection um

1:25:20

so i’m going to uh just let just second um dawn we have a question from don hill

1:25:27

how does the chinese perspective concerning sacredness in the land the chinese leadership under president

1:25:32

xi concord with china presently described as the biggest polluter on the planet

1:25:39

um i might take a shot at answering that one because i’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking about that um

1:25:46

china is a big complicated country just like the united states of america is a big complicated country

1:25:52

and so there’s there’s things that are consistent and things that are inconsistent about every culture

1:25:58

but what china has done and this is a very direct commitment from the top which is to say we are

1:26:05

going to change course and create an eco-civilization and china recently committed to carbon neutrality by 2060

1:26:12

and has also moved a lot of things ahead no culture

1:26:18

is perfect but i’ve been struck by as a canadian living here

1:26:23

um how we don’t learn anything positive about china we we just hear bad things and there’s a

1:26:30

lot of good things happening there as well that can help us to find a pathway forward that isn’t

1:26:35

what i shall call a negative pathway that seems to be the one that we’ve been focused on too much lately for my

1:26:40

opinion we’ve got to find a positive way out and the relationship with the natural world is potentially

1:26:46

one of those ways out um and uh i just one more question i think we’ve lost ray

1:26:53

so perhaps with that um we’ve used our time up i’m going to have asked catherine coston from the art

1:26:59

gallery of alberta and joe wong to take over again but before we go i just want to talk about one

1:27:05

practical implication of thinking of the spirit of the place that i heard in a wonderful presentation

1:27:11

from an indigenous biologist in montana about the highway system that they

1:27:16

have in montana kind of modeled on the highway crossing structures and bath and this story from whisper camel means

1:27:22

goes like this the montana department of highways wanted to widen highway 93 across the

1:27:29

kootenay salish reservation the kootenai salish people had authority

1:27:34

to to be involved in the conversation because it crossed their land

1:27:40

this is the road between the flathead valley and missoula for people who know montana and they said the road must

1:27:46

fit into the land there is a spirit of the place that the road must respect and that is the best mitigated highway

1:27:53

for wildlife in the united states so this idea of bringing the spirit of

1:27:58

the place to ground in a culture has a direct application that can make the world a better place for nature and

1:28:04

for the people also so it’s kind of a great story she just presented this last week at a

1:28:09

webinar for yellowstone to yukon and and the white museum which i thought was

1:28:14

fascinating to see the application so it’s too much fun for me i could talk forever about this with my friends

1:28:20

leroy and ray um please uh catherine and jaw take over and us

1:28:26

and uh say our parting words

1:28:41

thank you so much harvey um i just want to say on behalf of the art gallery of

1:28:46

alberta i would like to extend our sincerest thanks to tonight’s speakers

1:28:52

uh dr lila we believe our little bear dr yangri and dr harvey lock um

1:28:59

your wisdom and the thoughts that you’ve shared with us this evening have been inspiring and

1:29:05

and so generous so you’ve given us many things to think about in terms of how we as just one small part of nature

1:29:12

can live in and better respect the land the water and everything in the environment that we share

1:29:17

with all of our living beings i would also like to thank our colleagues at the china institute for their partnership

1:29:23

and assistance with this presentation and to the pool center of design for their support of this program

1:29:30

i’m very happy to announce that the art galley of alberta will be reopening to the public on the weekend of june 19th

1:29:35

and 20th and we will be having a free admission day on sunday june 20th

1:29:40

in recognition of national indigenous people’s day on june 21st so i do hope you will all take the

1:29:47

opportunity to come to the aga to see the cornelia oberlander genius loci exhibition that catalyzed

1:29:54

tonight’s important and impactful conversation thank you so much and here i would like

1:30:00

to welcome jeopard thank you catherine um i will definitely

1:30:06

be there um at the exhibition and i hope you can all visit as well so

1:30:11

that’s um that was a truly illuminating conversation we had tonight um and thank you our panelists as

1:30:19

catherine already did dr um have harvey log dr little bear and dr yang

1:30:26

for sharing your insights with all of us it’s quite a treat i also like to again thank

1:30:33

you thank all the colleagues at aga and china institute for organizing this webinar

1:30:38

and finally a big thanks to all the audience members with us uh here today please stay tuned

1:30:46

for also more events we’re planning in the coming months finally enjoy the rest of your evening

1:30:52

and the rest of your day thank you thank you thank you everybody

1:30:58

thank you ray thank you leroy wonderful bye bye

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