“The ecological literature can socially boost ecological conservation, exerting a great influence on the modern society.” In the 2023 China Eco-literature Forum held on August 30, Liang Hongyan, a member of the presidium of the China Writers Association and also executive vice-president and secretary general of the Chinese Reportage Association, said that humans could create diverse living styles to enrich their lives despite environmental protection, energy conservation, and emission reduction because the two goals were not contradictory.

“In the contemporary holistic system of literature, the status of the environmental literature, natural literature, or ecological literature needs improving. It’s urgent for the literary circle to gain a deeper insight into the importance of the ecological literature,” said Mr. Liang. 

According to Ji Xiaoqing, Party Secretary and president of the Inner Mongolia Federation of Literary and Art Circle, ecology was the birthplace of literature, while the latter served as a carrier to boost ecological conservation. From the ancient concept of “uniting humans and universe” to the description of natural landscapes in the Book of Songs and the Heaven of Birds by Ba Jin, writers of different times have recorded humans’ love and pursuit of nature and ecology. Practices have proven the deep interactive relationship between literature and ecology.

Long Qilin, associate professor and Ph.D. advisor at the School of Humanities of Shanghai Jiaotong University, said that contemporary Chinese ecological literature emerged in the 1980s when the country started to embrace openness and the world. Since literature closely concerned the fate of all human beings on the planet, China’s literary creation in the ecological era was characterized by globalization. First, the geographical space in the ecological literature covered the entire world; second, what the ecological literature concerned were issues closely related to the very existence of every person; third, as a shared result of human civilization, the ecological literature logically belonged to all humans on the earth.

Mr. Long said that Chinese writers’ concentration on globalization in ecological literature works, influenced by ancient China’s view of the world, socialism, and communist ideals, was a brand-new thinking and conception about the world ecological order and the relationship between humans and nature, and was an important contribution of the Chinese literature and culture to the human ecological civilization. He believed that, as the world connected more closely, China’s ecological literature would focus more on globalization, expressing its understanding and imagination of the global ecological crises through literary works and shaping a more conscious ecological awareness during globalization. He hoped Chinese writers to create more excellent ecological literature works based on the vision of a community with a shared future for mankind with a broader view and a more profound spiritual realm.

In recent years, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment has cooperated many times with the China Writers Association to hold the China Eco-literature Forum, organize academic trips for ecological literature writers, and collect relevant articles, and it has also published ecological literature works such as Dadi Wenxin: An Excellent Collection of Chinese Ecological Literature. In May 2023, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment and the China Writers Association co-issued guidelines to promote the prosperous development of ecological literature in the new era, putting the promotion of ecological literature and ecological culture to a more prominent position in ecological conservation. China proactively boosted the development of ecological literature, the future of which was promising. 

The 2023 China Eco-literature Forum was held in Ordos, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on August 30. It has issued “the first batch of recommended ecological literature books”, including China Manifested in Trees: Understanding China and other nine works. It also started the Inner Mongolia Ecological Literature Week and unveiled the Dadi Wenxin·Inner Mongolia Ecological Literature Creation Base.

The 2023 China Eco-literature Forum was co-sponsored by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the China Writers Association, and the People’s Government of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. 

Translator：LI Xiaochun

Reviewer：JI Yitian