Before the Flood and Q&A with Dr. Jess Adkins

Before the Flood and Q&A with Dr. Jess Adkins

  9:37 PM    Jlu17

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I had the opportunity to attend Poly's screening of the documentary Before the Flood and the Q&A session that followed. This documentary demonstrated different effects of climate change around the world and brought up actions our society could take to prevent the demise of endangered species, ecosystems, and native communities across the planet.

The narrator, Leonardo DiCaprio, travels to different parts of the world to examine how climate change has affected people’s lifestyles and their surroundings. He talks to experts and influential figures who are working toward a sustainable future, and he also addresses the political nature of climate change denial in the White House.

DiCaprio first visits Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, where he sees first-hand the detrimental effects of climate change on the ice caps. He is accompanied by Dr. Enric Sala, the National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, and Jake Awa, an Arctic guide. Sala tells DiCaprio, “In 2040, you will be able to sail over the North Pole. There will be no ice left.”

Later in the documentary, DiCaprio visits former president Barack Obama in the White House to discuss the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Paris agreement and how the White House is addressing climate change. Regarding the Paris agreement, Obama says, “I was happy that we put the architecture in place, but the targets that were set in Paris were nowhere near enough for what the scientists tell us we have to do eventually to solve this problem.” I agree.

DiCaprio also stops by Tesla’s Gigafactory to watch robots create lithium-ion batteries from solar energy. When DiCaprio is discussing the possible transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy with Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk, Musk estimates that it would take 100 gigafactories to transition the entire world to solar energy. “The only way to encourage this is with the carbon tax,” he says.

After the documentary, Adkins, Professor of Geochemistry and Global Environmental Science at Caltech, answered questions from the audience. Adkins obtained his bachelor’s degree from Haverford and his Ph.D. from MIT. His research at Caltech entails geochemical investigations of past climates as well as chemical oceanography and metals as tracers of environmental processes.

Questions ranged from the politicization of environmental science to how individuals could contribute to the environmental movement. When I asked about the possibility of the reversal of  climate change, Adkins replied that most effects could reverse with time, however, some of the devastation was irreparable. “There are tipping points in the systems. For example, if Greenland goes away, it is not coming back. The time and energy that climate systems spent to build the Greenland ice sheet up in the first place is much larger than what is available to the system,” he told me.

This stuck in my mind as I left the room. Although what he said about the Greenland ice sheets was devastating, the fact that he thought that most effects were reversible surprised me. I thought that coral bleaching destroyed the underwater habitats forever and that deforestation was permanent. Even though we can never bring old ecosystems back, I'm excited to see what happens to the environment as (or if) we transition to sustainable energy. I'm excited for the possibilities of the future.

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Viet Thanh Nguyen and his analysis of the Vietnamese diaspora

Viet Thanh Nguyen and his analysis of the Vietnamese diaspora

  12:38 PM    Jlu17

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To kick off the theme of "Borders, Boundaries, and New Frontiers", the GIP hosted its first talk of the year with Viet Thanh Nguyen, who discussed the making of his Pulitzer Prize-winning debut novel The Sympathizer and the different problems that come with writing and living as a Vietnamese-American.

Nguyen and his family fled to the United States after the fall of Saigon, settling in San Jose, California. Interestingly, he attended the same high school as one of the organizers for GIP. After receiving his Ph.D. in English from UC Berkeley, Nguyen began teaching at USC. He is currently an Associate Professor of English and of American Studies and Ethnicity at USC. His debut novel, The Sympathizer, won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and a long list of other awards. He also promotes Vietnamese arts and culture in the diaspora through The Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN) and diaCRITICS. He's also written Nothing Ever Dies, an analysis of how the Vietnam War has been remembered by the people of different countries affected. I hope to read this book soon.

During the talk, he discussed how he always felt the urge to appeal to a white audience because the publishing industry was around 80% white. However, when addressing the Vietnam War, many Americans often have a completely different perspective on these issues than Vietnamese or Vietnamese-Americans. However, with The Sympathizer, he sought to speak from a Vietnamese-American to another fellow Vietnamese-American. It was an unapologetic Vietnamese-American interpretation of the Vietnam War that did not cater to a white audience.

I unfortunately wasn't able to finish The Sympathizer before the talk, but what I have read so far has already personalized for me much of the Vietnam War and Vietnamese experience in a way nothing else that I've read has. Every page is brilliantly written--the elements of sharp humor and articulate descriptions complement well with the story about war, identity, loyalty, and understanding. (I heard that the ending of the book was the best part of the story, so I will update this blog post once I have finished.)

As a Chinese-American, I often generalize many of my issues to be that of the collective Asian-American identity. It's important for me to remember that recognizing the diversity of the Asian and Pacific Islander American (APIA) community is crucial for better understanding of the American identity and for better representation in media and in the government.

 

I'm excited for the release of his next book, The Refugees, which is coming out this February. The book consists of a collection of stories from people affected by the Vietnam War in different ways, whether that be through immigration or culture shock. Nguyen mentioned that he wrote this before The Sympathizer and left it untouched until The Sympathizer became widely successful and that it was written for a white audience, so I'm interested in seeing how these two fiction novels differ in their writing styles and developments because of this.

Also--I recently wrote a paper on Kissinger's influence in the White House because I wanted to learn more about normalization of Sino-US relations. As I delved deeper into his influence with Vietnam, I saw how he encouraged much of the bombings and the bombing expansion into Laos and Cambodia along with contributing to the betrayal of South Vietnam. Nguyen's take on Clinton supporting Kissinger's ideas that "America is great because it is good" was especially insightful because I never really thought about Kissinger's current connections to both Clinton and Trump. Not directly related to the talk, but interesting nonetheless.

Thank you for coming, Mr. Nguyen. You are an inspiration to not only the Vietnamese-American community (I'm sure) but also to the Asian-American community as a whole.

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Reading "One Child"

Reading "One Child"

  1:31 PM    Jlu17

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I spent most of my break writing college essays. During these writing marathons, I would have long periods of time where I physically could not look at my essays. So, I turned to my copy of "One Child" by Mei Fong. The GIP program had generally loaned me this book so that I could read it before welcoming Mei Fong to Poly in March. 

Mei Fong (方鳯美, Fang Fengmei) grew up in Malaysia and attended the National University of Singapore. After getting her master's degree from Columbia, she worked for The Wall Street Journal, reporting in Hong Kong and Beijing. She left WSJ in 2013 and began writing her book, One Child, about the socioeconomic implications of the CCP's one child policy, which was replaced by the two child policy in late 2015.

For context, here's a timeline of how the CCP addressed population growth: 

• In the 1960s-70s, China experienced a huge baby boom. The CCP was encouraging people to have more, saying that China needed the huge population boost for rapid industrialization with popular slogans like "More kids means more grandkids means better fortune" (多子多孙多福气). 
• Then, as the government realized that China did not have enough resources to account for a rapidly expanding population, they began releasing slogans promoting fewer children with "Later, Longer, Fewer" campaign (晚稀少). 
• In 1980, the government dropped the one child policy, completely halting this boom. 
• From 1980-2015, there were several changes to the one child policy, granting exceptions to certain conditions in rural China and letting ethnic minorities escape this regulation. Also, at some point, some parents could have two children if they were both only children.
• In late 2015, the government replaced the one child policy with the two child policy. 

“计划生育好处多", "The benefits of family planning are many"

“独生子女光荣”, "Only children are glorious"

One thing that I noticed in China was that there were two ways to say one child policy—"一胎政策" (one child policy) and "计划生育" (family planning). Chinese people preferred to use the latter, perhaps as a euphemism. Fong addresses this difference in her book too.

Fong begins the book by talking about the Sichuan earthquake. When the quake hit, a generation was wiped out because of a mixture of shoddy school infrastructure and the one child policy. She followed a Sichuan couple in Beijing who rushed back to Shifang to find their child, who had died from the quake. The couple was later forced to sign a government agreement saying "I pledge to come back to normal life and normal production as soon as possible" (p. 21). The stories that followed this one example of the failures of the one child policy are vivid and heart-wrenching. 

Fong then examines many more perspectives on this policy than I thought existed. There's the idea of raising a generation of "little emperors" and runaway brides. She also describes the unequal gender balance and its social implications. She wrote that "In 2008, economists showed that a 1 percent increase in China's gender ratios increased violet and property crime rates between 5 and 6 percent. Researchers estimated that the 'increasing maleness' of China's young adult population could account for as much as a third of the overall rise in crime" (p. 115). Furthermore, "one in four women in China confronts domestic violence" (p. 115). It was increasingly harder for men to marry, and women who are still single after 30 are shunned and called "leftover women." Also, the legal age for marriage is 20 for women and 22 for men. This marriage issue, Fong pointed out, is further exacerbated by the hypergamous culture where "women marry up and men marry down." Thus, educated women are finding it hard to find men to marry and are turning to adult education workshops that promote deference to men. 

She points out that the policy has, overall, benefited the urban Chinese female because more women are receiving a college education than ever in China, but the trade-offs are great. Infanticide for women in the countryside is prevalent, and trafficking in surrounding countries is being a serious issue for rural China. 

Another facet of Chinese culture to consider is the growing elderly population. The average lifespan has extended significantly since WWII, from 39 to 74 years old. By the mid 2020s, there would be an additional 10 million elders and a loss of around 7 million workers in Chinese society. By 2050, it was estimated that 1/3 people in China would be older than 60. Fong mentioned the rise of the saying that "China will grow old before it grows rich." Deference to one's elders is a huge part of Chinese culture, but the one child policy makes it difficult for a married couple to take care of 2 sets of parents, a child, and sometimes 4 sets of grandparents. This is why even when the one child policy was lifted, few couples chose to have an extra child. In 1996, a law required children to support their aging parents because of China's growing elderly population. Later, in 2013, a new law that children must visit their parents frequently was established, with one of the most popular cases ordering a woman to visit her mother once every two months. However, neither of these laws are easy to enforce, but they echo China's fear that the elderly population cannot be taken care of. On top of this, even though most city residents are covered by government pension, only a fourth of rural residents are covered.

Fong also discusses adoption. American media sensationalized the idea of helpless female infants who were abandoned in the countryside because of the one child policy, and as a result, China became by far America's largest source for adoptions. It seems most ethical to adopt from China, a place where stories of baby kidnapping were initially nontexistent. However, human trafficking and kidnapping has also become a huge problem in the adoption industry because of the one child policy. 

Finally, Fong consistently highlights her own pregnancy issues throughout the book as a parallel to her journey around China. After experiencing a miscarriage and more fertility issues, she decides to undergo IVF treatment in China, which fails. During this time, she examines how Chinese people sometimes use IVF treatment to obtain twins or surrogate mothers to have more kids. There are a multitude of ways for Chinese couples to go around the law, but they all involve a significant amount of money, whether that be through fines or treatment. In general, the richer have more opportunities to bend the law and have more kids, while the poorer have to abide by the restrictive and sometimes inhumane regulations. Finally, she has a boy after an IVF treatment in America.

While reading this book, I constantly thought back to myself—a Chinese-born immigrant with an American-born brother. My parents were the elite who could escape the one-child restriction by moving to America. When I studied in Beijing, I lived with a host family similar to my own family but who only had a daughter my age. My host family hosted so that their family could feel a little bigger during the school year. I saw what could've been me in my host sister—one trapped by the suffocating education system with no sibling support and with traditional Chinese values crushing many of my aspirations.

I'm glad to have had the opportunity to read One Child, and I'm excited to hear Mei Fong continue her discussion at Poly in March.

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