Toward an Ecologically Harmonious Modernity: Nature Writing in Contemporary Chinese Ethnic Minority Children's Literature

Abstract

Zhongguo dangdai shaoshu minzu ertong wenxue yuanchuang shuxi [A contemporary Chinese ethnic minority children's literature series] is a collection of ten novels published in 2017 describing the life of young children from a variety of ethnic minorities. Ethnic minorities in China generally live in rural areas and hold holistic and animistic world views. While this series contains abundant descriptions of distinctive landscapes and animals, these natural elements are not meant to be mysterious or sacred, but a tangible part of everyday life. The nature writing in the series plays with new possibilities and manifests a shift from a transcendent and metaphysical worldview to one that is epistemologically imminent and empirical, which suggests the new generation's readiness to embrace modernity in an ecologically harmonious way.