A Note on Methodology

The shift in focus that I propose in this article also includes a shift from daily behavior and physical and material factors to the realm of artistic representation. The article explores environmental narratives among the Mongols, Tibetans, and Uyghurs as they are manifested in popular songs and video clips produced and performed by famous minority musicians, all of whom are educated urbanites and most of whom live in Beijing and are known nationwide. These songs do not represent the full range of attitudes and discourses about the environment that exists among China's minority peoples, and their messages are not always entirely clear. These limitations are overcome, at least in part, by the fact that my analysis of the songs is informed and supplemented by interviews and conversations that I conducted in Beijing and in minority areas with the artists who created them and with other minority individuals with whom I discussed the songs and the issues that they address. Interviews and conversations with the musicians mainly helped to clarify their artistic intent, while those conducted with other minority individuals helped to explore the interpretations of the songs among minority people and to learn about the environmental discourses that circulate among these people. Like the musicians who created the songs, most of my informants were educated urbanites, including university students and professors, other artists, writers, and other intellectuals, as well as officials.

The above-mentioned limitations notwithstanding, using popular songs as a primary source also has its advantages. Since popular music is by definition widely disseminated and consumed by a large number of people, it usually represents widely shared sentiments and attitudes. This is especially true where famous musicians who enjoy wide popularity are concerned, which is the case with most of the musicians discussed in this article. Moreover, it is precisely because of the capacity of popular songs to communicate messages in an inexplicit form through a mixture of lyrics, sound, and visual images that minority musicians in China have used them to express politically sensitive messages in public, not only in minority regions but also in Beijing (Baranovitch Reference Baranovitch2003a, 54–107; Reference Baranovitch2003b; Reference Baranovitch2007b; Reference Baranovitch and Rees2009a). Indeed, while representing minority views and discourses, the popularity that most of the musicians discussed in this article have gained in Beijing has enabled them to spread their messages not only among their fellow minority people but also among their Han Chinese audience.

Desertified Grasslands and Endangered Mongolian Identity in the Songs of Teng Ge'er

The link between the environment and ethnic identity is at the heart of many songs by Teng Ge'er, a musician of Mongolian origin and one of the best-known pop and rock musicians in China. Teng Ge'er grew up in Inner Mongolia, has been living in Beijing for the last three decades, and creates and performs in both Mongolian and Chinese. He is often accompanied by his band, which he named Blue Wolf (Ch. Cang lang), after the legendary animal that the Mongols consider their ancestor. In 2003, Teng Ge'er was appointed by the State Environmental Protection Administration an “Ambassador of China's Green Image” (Ch. Zhongguo lüse xingxiang dashi), and since then he has been active in numerous benefit concerts dedicated to environmental protection (Teng Ge'er Reference Ge'er2005, 271). In 2010, Teng Ge'er was appointed the vice head of the Central Nationalities Song and Dance Troupe, and since 2013 he has also been a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). Despite his close links with officialdom, however, Teng Ge'er's creative work and artistic life have often challenged official narratives, and he has also been censored on several occasions (Baranovitch Reference Baranovitch and Rees2009a).

The song “Paradise” (Ch. Tiantang), which Teng Ge'er released in 1997, provides a powerful example of China's minority environmental discourses:

By mentioning the green grassland, steeds, and sheep, and by declaring: “This is my home, I love you my home, … my paradise,” Teng Ge'er proudly asserts his Mongolian identity and his attachment to the grassland. The lyrics of “Paradise” reiterate all the familiar Chinese stereotypes of Inner Mongolia, constructing an idyllic image in which the grasslands remain green and the Mongols live their lives happily and carry on with their traditional lifestyle undisturbed. This image conforms completely to the idealized official representation of the Mongols and Inner Mongolia.

The soft singing that dominates the first part of the song further enhances this idyllic image. However, when Teng Ge'er sings the refrain, “I love you my home … my paradise,” his singing becomes more like a scream, suggesting that perhaps there is something wrong with his paradise (Baranovitch Reference Baranovitch and Rees2009a, 193–95). Indeed, when one watches the video clip of the song (Teng Ge'er Reference Ge'er2003 in discography), it becomes clear that this singing is actually an expression of tragic lament and angry protest over the destruction of Teng Ge'er's paradise.

The video clip consists of two parts, the first of which features shots of green grasslands and blue lakes; galloping white horses and flocks of white sheep; a caravan of wagons covered with white cloth pulled by cows in the midst of the vast, lush grassland; and an image of a young Mongolian woman who appears when Teng Ge'er sings the words “there is also you, girl.” However, this dream-like image of Inner Mongolia changes dramatically in the second half of the clip when Teng Ge'er starts to repeat the lyrics. As soft arpeggios played on an acoustic guitar give way to aggressive drumbeats, the viewer is suddenly introduced to an entirely different Mongolia. Instead of the green grasslands and the lakes, the viewer is now presented with a vast, dry desert, sandy dunes and dried trees, all in a yellowish color. Later on, the flocks of “pure white sheep” are replaced by a herd of brownish camels, and when Teng Ge'er repeats the words “there is also you, girl,” the young lover from the first part of the song is replaced by an old woman. The caravan, too, undergoes a change and instead of old wagons pulled leisurely by cows, a line of vehicles is shown crossing the arid desert, creating a cloud of dust as they move along. The Mongolian subjectivity in the song is not confined to that of Teng Ge'er alone, but is also manifested visually in the clip through the image of a Mongolian man, who is shown bursting into tears when confronted with the dying grasslands.

With its video clip, “Paradise” poses a challenge to the official narrative about the environmental crisis in Inner Mongolia in several ways. Although the Chinese media does report extensively on the grassland degradation and desertification in the region, it seldom depicts the devastating material, cultural, and emotional impact that this environmental change has on the Mongolian minority. Moreover, when Mongolian herders in particular are mentioned, they are usually blamed for the environmental crisis. By highlighting the misery of Mongolian herders, “Paradise” adds a whole new perspective to the representation of this environmental crisis, first, by shifting the focus from the physical dimension to the human dimension, and secondly, by highlighting Mongolian subjectivity and victimhood. Moreover, with its tragic tone, the clip also challenges the tendency of the official discourse to communicate optimism and to offer praise for the government's achievements in its efforts to stop the degradation.

Another alternative representation of the environmental degradation in Inner Mongolia is found in a song called “The Land of the Blue Wolf” (Ch. Cang lang dadi), which Teng Ge'er released in the early 1990s. The first two lines in each of the song's three stanzas are sung in a gentle voice and are accompanied by rhythmic chords played on an acoustic guitar that evoke the pastoral image of galloping horses. This idyllic atmosphere, however, changes in the second half of each stanza, when powerful drumbeats join in, and Teng Ge'er bursts into powerful cries of agony and anger that also sound like cries of war. The tense atmosphere is enhanced by the song's video clip, which, instead of the usual images of peaceful white sheep and green grassland, is dominated by the yellowish color of dry grasslands and images of Mongolian warriors riding their horses (Teng Ge'er Reference Ge'er2001 in discography; Baranovitch Reference Baranovitch and Rees2009a, 187–92):

“The Land of the Blue Wolf” is imbued with ethno-nationalistic sentiments, expressing a mixture of nostalgia for a glorious Mongolian past and angry despair and lament over the current condition of the Mongols and Mongolian identity in contemporary China. The song opens with depictions of Mongolian nomadic life, suggesting that the movement of Mongolian herders in the past was free and natural like the movement of the sun in the sky. There is also a proud reference to the political and military power that the Mongols used to have in the past. Teng Ge'er proudly reminds his Mongolian and Han Chinese listeners that the Mongols used to be the masters not just of the grasslands but also of the entire mainland. In the next two stanzas, however, the glorious past is replaced by a gloomy present. The Mongols have lost their great leader (“my ruler of former days where are you now?”), obviously a reference to Chinggis Khan, and with his loss comes the loss of their political and military power as well. Moreover, they have also lost all of the ingredients that make up traditional Mongolian livelihood and identity, including their horses, Mongolian riders, hunting dogs, and the grasslands.

“The Land of the Blue Wolf” suggests that Mongolian identity is dying, and that this crisis is closely related to the fact that the grassland, the basis of traditional Mongolian livelihood, culture, and identity, is becoming a desert. This song is the boldest among all of Teng Ge'er's environmental songs because whereas in most of his other songs the destruction of the grassland is depicted as a major cause of the identity crisis among the Mongols, “The Land of the Blue Wolf ” suggests that the cause-and-effect relationship between the two may also be the other way around. In other words, the song seems to suggest that if the Mongols had retained their military and political power, the condition of the grasslands would not have deteriorated to its present condition. This message is implied because the destruction of the grassland is depicted at the very end of the song, after the references to the decline of Mongolian culture and political power.

In calling the Inner Mongolia grasslands “The Land of the Blue Wolf,” and thereby linking it with the legendary ancestor of the Mongols, Teng Ge'er clearly constructs “the landscape as nation” (Dibben Reference Dibben2009, 135–38), claiming ownership over the grassland and transforming it from a natural landscape into a Mongolian territory. Furthermore, in suggesting that in the past the Mongols used to be “the masters of the mainland,” Teng Ge'er hints at the fact that the Land of the Blue Wolf is now ruled by another master. This is a very significant point, underscoring the central implication in the song that “the land of the blue wolf is yellow sand” because the Mongols are no longer the masters of this land and because they have lost their power to protect it from the destruction inflicted upon it by the new masters, the Han Chinese. This notion cannot be articulated explicitly in China's public domain, but it is widespread among Chinese Mongols, some of whom mentioned it explicitly in private conversations.

Indeed, most Mongols with whom I spoke in recent years in Beijing and Inner Mongolia blamed the Han Chinese and the Chinese state for the degradation of the grassland, suggesting that the main cause of the desertification of Inner Mongolia is the millions of Han Chinese farmers who migrated to Inner Mongolia and changed its environment. Some of my Mongol informants explained that the environment in Inner Mongolia is too fragile to support the large population of Han immigrants that moved into the region. They contended that the introduction of intensive agriculture by Han Chinese farmers destroyed the topsoil and exposed the sand that was buried beneath, and this began the destructive desertification process that threatens the survival of the grasslands. In contrast, although the official Chinese accounts sometimes mention the demographic pressure on the fragile local environment as a cause of its degradation, they seldom mention the fact that the major cause of this pressure was the massive migration of Han Chinese. This mass migration is a sensitive topic that cannot be discussed publicly in China in explicit terms.

Along with blaming the Han Chinese and the Chinese government for the destruction of the grassland, some of my Mongol informants often went to great lengths to explain to me with obvious pride that, unlike the Han Chinese, Mongols have always been very sensitive to their natural environment. They stressed that the traditional knowledge accumulated by Mongolian herders through generations of a nomadic, pastoralist lifestyle actually contains all of the essential contemporary principles of sustainability and environmental protection of which most people in China became aware only in recent decades. Such statements were often accompanied by suggestions that the Han Chinese may be more advanced technologically, but they are quite backward with regard to environmentalism. My informants contended that in this regard, the Han Chinese can learn a lot from the Mongols, who know best how to protect the grasslands. My conversations with my Mongolian informants indicated that among the Mongolian educated elite there exists a wealth of alternative environmental discourses, many of which are well established and widespread. Teng Ge'er's songs not only have reflected many of the central ideas embodied in these narratives and may have also helped to shape some of these narratives, but also have helped to disseminate them to a much larger audience. The same also applies to the songs by the Uyghur and Tibetan musicians that I discuss below.

Uyghur Culture as an Endangered Environment in the Songs of Askar

Another famous minority musician who engages in his music with the link between environmentalism and ethnic identity is the Uyghur rocker Askar, who was born and grew up in Xinjiang and has lived in Beijing since the early 1990s. Askar sings in both Chinese and Uyghur, and was considered an idol among urban Uyghur youth and students during the 1990s and early 2000s. Similar to Teng Ge'er's band, his band, Grey Wolf (Ch. Hui lang), was named after the wild animal that the Uyghurs consider a national symbol. However, more often than not, Askar uses this name combined with his real name—Askar-Grey Wolf—to refer to himself (Baranovitch Reference Baranovitch2003b, Reference Baranovitch2007a, Reference Baranovitch2007b).

Since the majority of the Uyghur population lives in oases located on the margins of the Taklamakan desert, the Uyghurs and Han Chinese alike consider the desert, like the grassland in the case of the Mongols, to be a symbol of Uyghur identity, and indeed, Askar uses the desert in many of his songs to represent Uyghurness. Askar's engagement with the environment in Xinjiang is most evident in his album from 2005, The People Who Embrace the Sun (Ch. Yongbao taiyang de ren). The cover notes attached to the album open with a short note by Askar in which he comments on the environmental degradation in Xinjiang. Printed on the background of a large, colored landscape photograph that was taken in Xinjiang in which a stream is seen passing through a mountainous desert, the note reads:

In this seemingly naïve introduction, Askar depicts the great environmental transformation that has taken place in Xinjiang in recent decades, and points, albeit in a very implicit way, to its origin. The tall buildings to which Askar refers obviously symbolize the massive development that the region saw in recent decades, especially after the Chinese government launched its “Great Development of the West” (Ch. xibu da kaifa) campaign in 2000 (Becquelin Reference Becquelin2004). In sharp contrast to official representations that praise the development, Askar depicts it in a negative light. The musician suggests that the tall buildings were built at the expense of fields and gardens, and in saying that the snow has lost its pure white color, he is clearly referring to the pollution caused by this massive development.

Another significant detail in Askar's note is the statement that “there are many more people around” (Ch. ren ye duo le). This brief and seemingly trivial detail alludes to one of the most politically sensitive issues in Xinjiang—the massive migration of Han Chinese into the region. This migration is closely connected to the efforts made by the Chinese government to develop the region and strengthen its control over its restive population. Like the development itself, many Uyghurs see this massive influx as a threat both to the fragile natural environment of their homeland and to Uyghur culture and identity. These notions are explored in the second song on Askar's album, “The Tears of Kashgar” (Ch. Kashige'er de yanlei). In keeping with the image of the tears in its title, the song has a melancholic melody and is performed to the slow accompaniment of a Western classical guitar and a traditional Uyghur bowed lute, which provides a gloomy prelude and interludes:

“The Tears of Kashgar” opens with the voice of Askar's son asking in Chinese, “Dad, what is a rainbow?” This question suggests that the boy is unfamiliar with the natural phenomenon that has existed since time immemorial because in some places it has ceased to exist due to pollution. The song's eco-criticism is further strengthened by the reference to the dwindling forests and the implication that in the future even birds may cease to exist. This environmentalist message also reveals itself in the song's video clip. About half of this clip celebrates the beauty of the pristine desert of Xinjiang, featuring colorful shots of a vast desert landscape with sandy, brownish hills; a bright, blue sky; and streams running between barren mountains.

However, the idyllic atmosphere is shattered in the second part of the video clip, which features shots of a dark site of ruined industrial buildings that are filmed in black and white and out of focus. These shots of destruction evoke connotations of catastrophic bombing and bring to mind images of nuclear disaster. These images may be a general reference to the pollution and destruction that the human race can cause, but they may also be a hidden reference to the impact of the nuclear tests that China held for decades in Xinjiang. Aware of their destructive impact, Uyghurs demonstrated against these tests as far back as 1985 (Rudelson Reference Rudelson1997, 130–31), and even though China stopped conducting nuclear tests in Xinjiang as of 1996 (Shichor Reference Shichor and Frederick Starr2004, 147), the sensitive issue is still considered a hot topic among Uyghurs today (Vergani and Zuev Reference Vergani and Zuev2011, 222). In my private conversations with Uyghurs in Xinjiang and Beijing in recent years, several of my informants referred to these tests and insisted that they still have a disastrous impact on the environment and the population of Xinjiang.

In what might be another reference to China's nuclear tests in Xinjiang, the video clip ends with a brief close-up shot of a red rose, which was shown blooming initially but now lies withered on the ground in the middle of the desert. However, this final image, which clearly evokes death, may also be interpreted as a reference to the severe water shortage in Xinjiang. The lack of water is the top environmental problem in this fragile, arid region and is evidenced most clearly in the drying up of lakes and rivers and the desertification of some oases. The shortage of water is not a totally new phenomenon in Xinjiang, but the situation has deteriorated dramatically in recent years due to the massive development of the region, which has created unprecedented pressure on its already scarce water resources (Becquelin Reference Becquelin2004, 365–66; Toops Reference Toops and Frederick Starr2004).

The pessimistic mood that prevails in “The Tears of Kashgar,” however, relates not only to the condition of the environment in Xinjiang, but also and primarily to the condition of Uyghur culture and identity. Indeed, as in Teng Ge'er's songs, the representations of environmental degradation in Askar's songs are always intertwined with representations of cultural loss and endangered ethnic identity. This becomes immediately evident in the title of the song, “The Tears of Kashgar,” where reference is made to the ancient city that the Uyghurs consider a major symbol of their culture. As one of the most poignant symbols of Uyghurness, in the last decade and a half or so Kashgar has turned into a symbol of cultural loss after the authorities started to dismantle the old areas of the city and rebuild them in a modern style. Contrary to the bright depictions of development and modernization that official sources promoted, many Uyghurs had strong reservations about the transformation of their ancient city because for them it meant erasing Uyghur heritage. Revealing the widespread distrust that many Uyghurs feel toward the Chinese regime, some Uyghurs suggested to me in private in the early 2000s that the transformation of Kashgar was part of a general scheme designed by the Chinese government to “annihilate” (Ch. xiaomie) Uyghur culture and identity in order to force Uyghurs to assimilate into the Han Chinese order. These negative feelings are conveyed quite clearly in the title of “The Tears of Kashgar,” which suggests that the city is crying.

The demolition of old Kashgar and the meaning that this demolition has for many Uyghurs are suggested in the second part of Askar's song, which he sings in Uyghur: “I sit in the garden, my daughter looks at me…. Many houses appear. Why are there so few gardens left?” The video clip makes it clear that in these lines Askar is referring to the gardens and orchards in traditional Uyghur villages and towns. Thus, by suggesting that few gardens are left and Kashgar is crying, Askar seems to lament the disappearing of Uyghur culture. Askar reinforces this point by juxtaposing the verbal and visual references to old Kashgar with the references to the environmental degradation that appear in the first part of the song. This juxtaposition creates an analogy between nature and culture and helps Askar communicate the message that Uyghur heritage and identity are on the verge of extinction just like the rainbow, the forests, and the birds.

A similar message also appears in another song by Askar called “Save the World” from 2001 (Ch. Liuzhe diqiu; Askar 2001 in discography). Despite the song's title, which borrows the famous global environmental protection slogan, it immediately becomes clear that Askar is not concerned so much with “saving the world,” but rather with saving a particular place and a particular culture. The video clip of the song suggests that the song's main focus is once again the city of Kashgar and everything that it represents. Most of the song is performed in Chinese, and Askar sets the mood right at the beginning when he sings in a powerful and rough voice: “I lost, I lost, I lost my hometown (Ch. wo shiqu wo de jiaxiang).” Later in the song, however, one realizes that the loss is not personal and is not associated only with the demolishing of old Kashgar. When Askar gets to the refrain, the language changes from Chinese to Uyghur, and he repeats the following line over and over again: “We have to protect/save ourselves” (Uyghur: onzimizni sahlayli). This line, which is obviously directed at Askar's Uyghur audience, encapsulates the main message of the song, namely, that Uyghurs have to save themselves and their culture. In what seems to be an attempt to make this subversive message look more ambiguous, the Chinese subtitles that accompany the singing—“Keep the Earth, cherish nature, show concern for life” (Ch. liuzhe diqiu, zhenxi ziran, guanzhu shengming)—reiterate the universal environmental message embodied in the song's title. Thus, “Save the World” offers a clear example of how Askar uses the global environmental discourse not only as a means to construct a specific framework of meaning that helps convey his messages about the threat faced by Uyghur culture, but also as a disguise to obscure his subversive messages and the subversive ethno-nationalist call to resist this threat (Baranovitch Reference Baranovitch2007b, 482–83).

Askar also uses the global environmental discourse in other ways. This is most evident in a song from the late 1990s called “Play” (Ch. Wan), which, despite its Chinese title, is sung entirely in Uyghur. The song is imbued with ethno-nationalist messages depicting Uyghur suffering, suggesting that they have lost most of their heritage, and criticizing them for their lack of unity. References to the environment are made towards the end of the song, where Askar sings the following lines: “Where does this stinky air come from? It ruins our beautiful place. Let's take a fan. And fan this place together…” (Askar 1999 in discography). While the Chinese “translation” of these lines—“Look at the sky. It is not blue anymore. We need to get rid of the pollution”—suggests a universal environmentalist message, several of my Uyghur informants offered a totally different interpretation. According to them the “stinky air” is actually an allegorical reference to the Han Chinese, and the call to get rid of this “stinky air” is an allegorical call to drive the Han Chinese out of Xinjiang (Baranovitch Reference Baranovitch2007a, 63). This reading is supported not only by the general ethno-nationalist framework that the lyrics of the song construct but also by the song's video clip. The clip consists of a series of shots that represent the various themes addressed in the lyrics, and several shots of a crowd of Han Chinese immigrant workers emerging with their belongings from a local train station seem to provide a visual representation of the “stinky air” that penetrates Xinjiang from the outside.

Thus, in “Play” Askar uses the global environmental discourse as a metaphor to depict the Han Chinese not only as the source of the pollution in Xinjiang but also as the pollution itself. More importantly, in suggesting that the Han Chinese are ruining “our beautiful place” and that this is another good reason for driving them away, Askar clearly enlists the environment to support the Uyghur nationalist struggle against the Han Chinese. He does so by adding environmental destruction to the list of sins that the Han Chinese have inflicted upon the Uyghurs and by using environmentalism as a means to build Uyghur unity and to mobilize the Uyghurs against Han Chinese colonization.

Tibetan Antelopes, Compassion, and Tibetan Identity

“Come Back” (Ch. Huilai) was released in 2001 (Han Hong Reference Hong2002 in discography) by the half-Tibetan, half-Han musician Han Hong, who was born in Tibet and moved to Beijing when she was nine years old. In the last decade Han Hong has become one of China's most popular female pop singers, a status she attained mainly because of her numerous songs about Tibet, which she sings mainly in Chinese (Baranovitch Reference Baranovitch, Weintraub and Yung2009b). Like Teng Ge'er, Han Hong is a member of the CPPCC (since 2008), and in addition she also serves as the vice-head of the Art Troupe of the Political Department of the Chinese People's Liberation Army's Air Force (since 2009).

Although without explicit references to Tibet, “Come Back” contains several elements that strongly suggest that Tibet is its main point of reference and source of inspiration. The first and most important one is the long reference to the Tibetan antelope, a wild animal endemic to the Tibetan Plateau (Harris Reference Harris2008, 142). In a similar way, Tibet is also evoked by the reference to the panda bear. Most people inside and outside China do not normally associate the panda with Tibet, but many Tibetans do, because one of the very few remaining habitats of this famous endangered animal and probably the most important one is located in the Tibetan areas of western Sichuan (World Wildlife Fund, n.d.). This fact has caused some Tibetans and “Free Tibet” activists to claim that the panda is “Tibetan” and “not Chinese” and to appropriate it as a national Tibetan symbol (Loa Reference Loa2009). Another, more subtle hint about Tibet is the reference to the “wounded” forest. Although there are forests in various regions in China, those in the eastern part of the Tibetan Plateau are among the largest of China's natural forests (Richardson Reference Richardson1990, 80). Moreover, these forests were severely damaged very recently because of massive commercial logging that continued until 1998 (Hillman Reference Hillman2003, 175–76; Litzinger Reference Litzinger2004, 495; Winkler Reference Winkler and Clarke1998, 87–88).

“Come Back” is unique among Han Hong's many songs about Tibet because, unlike many of these songs that usually depict Tibet's natural landscape, it focuses primarily on Tibet's wildlife. This focus reflects a growing concern in recent years among Tibetans inside and outside China with the deteriorating condition of the wildlife on the Tibetan Plateau and the fact that this concern has become a central element in Tibetan public discourse and collective identity. Among the many species of wild animals that are endemic to Tibet, the endangered Tibetan antelope has attracted the largest amount of attention in recent years because of the dramatic decrease in its population between the 1980s and 1990s. This decrease took place as a result of massive poaching that developed in tandem with the increase in commercial activity in China and the growing international demand for the animal's very rare and expensive wool, which is woven in Kashmir to produce a luxurious product called shahtoosh (Harris Reference Harris2008, 141–45). Whereas, until the late 1990s and early 2000s, the dwindling population of the Tibetan antelope received little public attention beyond Tibet and other Tibetan areas in neighboring provinces, efforts by local and national authorities, other official bodies, and various NGOs have succeeded in raising the consciousness about the crisis in both China and internationally (Economy Reference Economy2010, 161–63; Harris Reference Harris2008, 143–44).

The Tibetan antelope was popularized all over China in late March 2005 when it became an official nominee for the emblem of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing (People's Daily Online 2005). Eight months later it was officially designated as one of the five official Olympic mascots, known collectively as “Fuwa” (meaning “good luck dolls” in Chinese). Like the other four mascots of the Games, which included the fish, the swallow, the Olympic flame, and the panda bear, the Tibetan antelope was personified through the cartoon image of a little child. It was also given a name, Yingying, which together with the names of the other mascots formed the sentence “Welcome to Beijing” in Chinese. A short article published on November 11, 2005, on the official website of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games explained:

The impressive publicity given to the Tibetan antelope by making it a mascot of the Beijing Olympic Games notwithstanding, in my conversations with Tibetans in Lhasa and Beijing in 2005, during the same time in which the animal achieved its national and international fame, I learned that for many Tibetans the meaning and symbolism associated with this endangered animal were significantly different from its official representation. The official narrative turned the animal into a Chinese symbol that signified the country's vast landscape and its “greenness,” depicted it as confident and healthy, and portrayed a bright picture of successful efforts to protect it. In contrast, many Tibetans preferred to emphasize the Tibetan-ness of the animal, its continuing plight, the link between its plight and the general environmental degradation of Tibet, and most importantly perhaps, the link between the plight of this animal and the plight of the Tibetan people in China.

Most of these alternative meanings and negative sentiments are expressed quite overtly in “Come Back.” Indeed, in sharp contrast to the cute, smiling face of Yingying and its cheerful and confident galloping pose, the reference to the Tibetan antelope in Han Hong's song evokes gloomy sentiments, as the wild animal is depicted as injured and chased, and also as crying. “Come Back” also challenges the official discourse through its critical representation of development and modernity. This critique reveals itself in several places in the song, but most powerfully in Han Hong's call to “return to nature” and in her suggestion that in nature one can find “the warmth of former times.” In this line the musician idealizes the past and thus contests the future-oriented vision of modernity, development, and progress that the Chinese Communist Party has always propagated, a vision that constitutes its prime source of legitimacy.

Despite the extensive eco-criticism in “Come Back,” this song exposes only part of the alternative environmental discourses that circulate among Tibetans in China. In my conversations with my Tibetan informants in 2005, it became clear to me that through their references to the dire condition of the Tibetan antelope, they were also asserting their Tibetan identity and highlighting the essential differences that exist—according to them—between the Tibetans and the Han Chinese. The references that my informants made to the endangered animal and its plight were inseparable from a more general narrative that demonized the Han Chinese, blamed them for the fact that the Tibetan antelope and other species of Tibet's wildlife have become endangered, and depicted them as greedy and cruel people who have no respect for nature and life. By contrast, the same narrative idealized the Tibetans and presented them as compassionate people who usually refrain from hunting or limit it to the minimum necessary for basic subsistence. Indeed, the general message that my informants conveyed quite uniformly was that Tibetans have always respected nature, considered it sacred, and protected it, whereas the Han Chinese, by contrast, are interested only in exploiting nature and do not mind destroying it in order to gain material benefits.Footnote ²

This narrative is similar to the narratives that the exiled Tibetan elite and the Tibetan government in exile have constructed and disseminated since the mid-1980s (Huber Reference Huber and Korom1997, 111–12). Another obvious similarity with the environmental narrative of the Tibetan exile community was manifest when my informants explained why Tibetans try to avoid hunting as much as possible. According to my informants, this avoidance derives from the central position of Buddhism in Tibetan life and the fact that Buddhism attaches great value to the life of all living things. The link that my informants created between Tibetan Buddhism and the environmentalist concern for wildlife protection, which, as noted earlier, was already established by the Tibetan elite in exile as early as the mid-1980s, reflects the fact that from the late 1990s and early 2000s on, Tibetan Buddhism also began to be embraced by educated Tibetans in China. This development occurred after decades in which they were expected by the dominant Chinese culture to negate any sign of Tibetan religion and traditional society. As part of this embrace, these educated Tibetans also adopted compassion as a new central marker of Tibetan identity, something that enabled them, among other things, to redeem themselves and their fellow Tibetan people from the denigrating Chinese stereotypes of Tibetans as extremely primitive, cruel, and violent (Robin Reference Robin2009, 45).

The Tibetan narrative concerning wildlife protection was thus very different from the official narrative concerning this issue. It was pessimistic and created a clear ethnic distinction between the Han Chinese and the Tibetans, blaming the former for the sharp decline in the wildlife population in Tibet and presenting the Tibetans as nature's protectors. It was also different in that in contrast to the official narrative, which emphasized the physical and scientific dimensions of wildlife protection, a point nicely illustrated in the paragraph from the Beijing 2008 official website (2005) cited above, it approached the whole issue from a religious, moral, and emotional perspective.

This feature is illustrated in a powerful way in another Tibetan pop song called “Let Me Live” (Tib. Nga gson par bzhag rogs) by the famous Lhasa-based Tibetan rock band Vajara. Considered to be “Tibet's first rock group” (Deqen Baizin 2005), Vajara has six male members, it performs mainly in Tibetan, and much of its creative work is dedicated to social commentary that criticizes immoral behavior and materialism and promotes traditional Buddhist values (Van Vleet Reference Van Vleet2006).

“Let Me Live” was released in 2003 (Vajara 2003 in discography), and according to Vajara's members it is about the Tibetan antelope (Deqen Baizin 2005), even though it does not refer to it by name. The focus of the song, however, is not so much on the identity of any specific wild animal but rather on the violent act of hunting and its moral, religious, and emotional meanings. With its emphasis on the sanctity of the life of all living creatures, and references to “sentient beings” (Tib. sems-can), “desire” (Tib. ‘dod-blo), “greed” (Tib. ham-pas), and “compassion” (Tib. snying-rje), “Let Me Live” is imbued with Buddhist messages. At the same time, it aims to shock the listener not just by graphically depicting the actual act of killing with its bloody images, but also through its music. The song opens with the sound of a gunshot, which alludes to the violent content that unfolds later on. This sound is followed by a short, vivacious solo played in staccato on an electric guitar, which seems to depict the cheerful galloping of the wild animals that are mentioned in the opening lines. These lines are sung in slow tempo in a soft, ballad-like style that fits the idyllic mood depicted in the lyrics. But the whole atmosphere changes dramatically when the lyrics start to depict how the animals are being slaughtered without mercy. At this point the instrumental accompaniment changes to the typical aggressive sound of heavy metal music while the band members scream the lyrics violently, emphasizing again and again the word “kill” (Tib. bsad).

One way to read “Let Me Live” is to interpret it as a call directed at Vajara's fellow Tibetans to refrain from hunting. If read in this way, the song illustrates nicely how wildlife protection is promoted among the Tibetans through the use of Buddhist concepts and terminology. Despite this reasonable reading, the Tibetan informants with whom I discussed the song and who also helped me translate it preferred to interpret it in other ways. Several informants suggested that the song actually depicts the cruelty of the Han Chinese and the fact that they eat “all kinds of animals.” Other informants interpreted the song as an allegory about the relationship between the Tibetans and the Han Chinese, an allegory in which the hunter represents the Han Chinese and the hunted animals represent the Tibetans. This reading blurs the distinction between Tibet's endangered animals and the Tibetan people. The blurring is manifested most clearly in the song's title, “Let Me Live,” where the band personifies the animals and assumes their miserable subjectivity by using the first-person narrative. These readings, with their clear distinction between the Tibetans, who are perceived as victims and compassionate people who protect nature, and the Han Chinese, who are perceived as merciless killers who destroy nature, provide another example of one of the most important ingredients of China's minority environmental discourses. Moreover, the second reading also conveys the strong sense of victimization and threat that many Tibetans feel in contemporary China. These sentiments and conceptions were expressed in a powerful way in the following remarks that one of my informants offered in response to the song:

Conclusion: Ethno-Nationalist Environmentalism in China's National Public Sphere

This article suggests that the environmental narratives of China's minority people are imbued with a strong sense of the loss, victimization, and survival anxiety that relate to their ethnic identity and are strongly linked with the environmental degradation in minority regions. At the same time, it also suggests that minority people appropriate environmentalism and use it as a tool to advance ethnic agendas that go beyond the environment. Most importantly, minority people use the global environmental discourse to rearticulate their ethnic identities and cultures in new, positive ways. Although the minority discourses perpetuate the old idea in China that minority people are closer to nature than the Han Chinese majority, they challenge the derogatory images of backwardness that the latter has often associated with this proximity by reframing the strong bond between minority people and nature within a contemporary environmentalist framework.

This framework also involves constructing an environmental dichotomy between minority people and the Han Chinese in which the latter are represented as the destroyers of nature whereas the former are represented as nature's guardians. Indeed, a central ingredient in China's ethnic environmental discourses is the construction of an idealized, “green” image for China's minorities, according to which they have always been environmental. It is important to note here that like the official discourse, which puts the blame for environmental degradation in minority regions primarily on minority people while ignoring the negative impact of official policies and the actions of the Han majority, this “green” self-image too ignores the multiplicity of factors that contribute to environmental degradation, including the minorities’ own role in this degradation. Furthermore, it also ignores evidence suggesting that despite religious beliefs that encouraged conservationism, minority people engaged throughout history in practices that did not necessarily conform to these beliefs (Clarke Reference Clarke and Clarke1998, 29–31; Huber Reference Huber and Korom1997, Reference Huber and Kreutzmann2012; Winkler Reference Winkler and Clarke1998).

Minority people use environmentalism to represent themselves not only as more advanced environmentally but also as morally superior. They also use environmentalism to reaffirm their traditional lifestyles, which have been looked down upon by the Han Chinese for centuries. In contrast to the images of backwardness, these lifestyles are now represented as embodying a traditional environmental wisdom that the Han Chinese lack. In addition, this new representation is often made in parallel to criticizing Chinese modernity and development, linking both to environmental degradation and pollution, and in some cases to greediness and cruelty as well.

The notion embodied in China's minority discourses—that because of their stronger connection to nature, minority people know better than the Han majority and the Chinese state how to maintain a sustainable relationship with nature and thus also how to protect their environment—resembles typical claims made by indigenous peoples around the globe who became marginal minorities in contemporary nation-states dominated by more modern majorities (Brosius Reference Brosius1997; Conklin and Graham Reference Conklin and Graham1995; Fisher Reference Fisher1994). The important point about these claims is that they are often very politicized because they go hand in hand with calls made by these peoples (and their Western supporters) to protect their traditional cultures and “indigenous knowledge.”

In addition, such calls are often accompanied by claims to land rights and cultural, economic, and even political self-determination. Inspired by global environmental movements that became linked to indigenous politics and rights, the Tibetan government in exile and several pro-Tibet organizations have been using environmentalism for years as a political tool to criticize Chinese policies in Tibet and mobilize international support for the “Free Tibet” cause. These organizations, in fact, were the first to construct a “green” image for Tibetans and the concomitant narrative according to which the Chinese destroy the environment in Tibet, as well as Tibetan culture, which according to them has always protected this environment (Huber Reference Huber and Korom1997). This narrative also claims that the destruction of the environment in Tibet and of Tibetan culture will have a negative effect on the ecology of the entire world and therefore it is vital to protect Tibetan culture and grant Tibetans autonomy and even independence so they can save their environment (Government of Tibet in Exile, n.d.a, n.d.b; Kopel, Reference Kopeln.d.).

Although less explicit than the environmental discourse used by the Tibetan exile community and pro-Tibet organizations, the texts analyzed in this article suggest that the strategy of appropriating environmentalism in an attempt to protect and articulate ethno-nationalistic interests and aspirations is also employed today by Tibetans living inside China as well as other minority people living in China who share similar aspirations. Indeed, the dichotomous representation of minority people as nature's protectors and of the Han Chinese as the destroyers of nature that prevails among all three minorities discussed in this article is a mirror image of the official nationalist environmental discourse and is based on the same logic. The Chinese state presents itself as the protector of the environment in minority regions while depicting the minorities as the destroyers of this environment to legitimize its sovereignty in those regions (Yeh Reference Yeh2009a, 104–5, 120). The minorities do the same but in the opposite direction. In demonizing the Han Chinese and presenting them as the destroyers of the environment in minority regions while portraying themselves as the protectors of that environment who care for its wellbeing and know best how to protect it, they assert the powerful historical bond between themselves and their land and claim ownership over it. At the same time, they imply that the Han Chinese are strangers in that land and therefore have no rights over it. In a similar vein, by presenting a gloomy picture of the condition of the environment in their home regions, the ethnic narratives imply the failure of state environmental policies and thus also delegitimize the state and its claim of sovereignty in minority regions.

The appropriation of the global environmental discourse discussed in this article can be attributed to several interrelated factors, the most important of which is the combination of the rise of ethnic nationalism in China since the late 1980s and early 1990s and the growth of popular environmental awareness since the mid- and late 1990s. Other factors include the acceleration of economic development, the intensification of environmental degradation in minority regions, and the growing impact of globalization since the early and mid-1990s. Minority musicians and other members of China's minority cultural elite adopted the global environmental discourse to articulate their ethnic concerns and aspirations because this discourse involves themes that are very relevant to their ethnic experience and concerns, such as land and natural resources, loss and destruction, protection, extinction, and survival. It is also useful because it is officially legitimate, being part of the state policy of sustainable development, and therefore can serve as an excellent disguise, or “protective umbrella” (Yang Reference Yang2005, 52) for politically sensitive messages.

Although it is not clear yet whether or not and to what extent China's minority environmental discourses have been able to improve the condition of the environment in minority regions and the condition of minority people and their traditional cultures, there are some signs that these discourses are gaining a foothold in mainstream Chinese culture. This is seen not only in the fact that famous minority musicians have been able to bring these alternative discourses into China's most general public sphere, but also in the fact that these discourses also are being used in recent years by influential Han Chinese individuals who help to disseminate them in various forms. One notable example of this new trend is Lu Chuan's 2004 film Kekexili, which won China's Golden Rooster Award for best film in 2005 and depicts the struggle of Tibetan rangers to protect the Tibetan antelope from illegal poaching in the remote Kekexili nature reserve. The minority environmental discourses that I depicted in this article were echoed in this film not just in the choice to focus on the environment in minority regions and in its tragic end, but more importantly in the fact that the film highlighted the positive role of Tibetan individuals in environmental protection and portrayed them as environmental heroes who are willing to sacrifice their lives to protect endangered wild animals. This role was further emphasized by the fact that none of the poachers in the film is Tibetan.

Another even more significant example is the controversial bestseller Wolf Totem (Ch. Lang tuteng) that was published in China in the same year that Kekexili was released, and that, according to reports, sold more than 20 million copies. Wolf Totem is based on the experience of its author, Jiang Rong (the pen name of Lü Jiamin), who was sent to Inner Mongolia during the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), where he spent more than a decade living and working with Mongolian herders. One of the novel's main focuses is on the fragile ecosystem of Inner Mongolia, the interdependence between the grasslands and Mongolian nomadic culture, and the decline of both. The Mongolian protagonists in the book are completely conscious of their interdependent relationship with nature, and they are the ones who explain this relationship to the author and teach him what the novel depicts in admiration as traditional ecological wisdom. The person who plays the most important role in introducing this wisdom to the author is an old Mongolian herder called Bilgee. After telling the narrator that wolves are essential to the survival of the grasslands and that they were sent by Tengger, the Mongolian god, to protect the grassland, the old herder makes the following statement, which contains one of the main messages of the book: “We Mongols were also sent by Tengger to protect the grassland. Without the grassland, there would be no Mongols, and without the Mongols there would be no grassland” (Jiang Rong Reference Rong2004, 77).

Wolf Totem echoes not only the notion that traditional Mongolian culture has protected the grassland for centuries, but also many other ideas and narratives embodied in the minority environmental discourses that I have discussed in this article. The novel depicts in great and painful detail how the grasslands are destroyed as a result of governmental policies that encourage settlers from other areas, most of whom are Han Chinese, to move into the region and open up farmland. It also depicts in great and painful detail how Mongolian nomadic culture is dying out as a result of Han Chinese colonialism and suggests that this process is closely linked to the ecological crisis in Inner Mongolia.

Parallel to their spread in mainstream Chinese culture, since the late 1990s and early 2000s, and in some cases even earlier (Hathaway Reference Hathaway2010), China's minority environmental discourses have also gained a strong foothold in the Chinese academia. An increasing number of academic publications have adopted the idea that traditional minority cultures possess important environmental knowledge and that environmental protection in minority regions should go hand in hand with protecting traditional minority cultures (Liu et al. Reference Liu, Zaifu, Youkai and Jinxiu2002; Xu et al. Reference Xu, Ma, Tashi, Fu, Lu and Melick2005). Some publications, however, go even further, articulating some of the more sensitive ideas embodied in the minority environmental discourses, albeit in a scientific façade. A recent academic article by three scholars from Beijing and Inner Mongolia, for example, suggests that Mongolian herders possess important knowledge that policy makers should embrace. Moreover, the article states that the “characteristics of nomadic culture prove its advantage or superiority over agrarian culture in the northern grassland regions” (Zhang, Borjigin, and Zhang Reference Zhang, Borjigin and Zhang2007, 22). Following this statement, the three authors, two of them Mongols and the third one three-quarters Han and one-quarter Mongol, criticize the “[p]olitical and technical mistakes in grassland care and management in northern China over the last 50 years,” and call for “a return to the principles embodied in nomadic culture” (22).

Elsewhere in their article, Zhang et al. (Reference Zhang, Borjigin and Zhang2007, 20) propose provocatively that “[i]f one culture is transplanted artificially to another region it seems inevitable that conflicts and misunderstanding will arise.” This statement clearly hints at the conventional wisdom among many Mongols from Inner Mongolia that their relationship with China and its Han Chinese majority has been colonial. Toward the end of their article, echoing the ethno-nationalistic sentiments that were expressed in some of the songs analyzed in this article, the three scholars boldly suggest that “[t]he surplus human population [in Inner Mongolia] should be transferred out of the region to Southeastern China…” (24). The article by Zhang et al. provides another example of how minority people are using the environmental discourse combined with the discourse of indigeneity to try to achieve political goals, particularly more control over their life, land, and other natural resources in their territories.

Epilogue

Most of the songs analyzed in this article were created in the late 1990s and the first half of the 2000s and thus are over a decade old. Nevertheless, these songs are probably the best-known minority environmental songs that have been created in China to date, and not less importantly, they have also laid the foundation for a whole new genre of popular minority songs that started to develop ever since they were released. Indeed, since the mid-2000s, the ethno-environmental theme has become increasingly prevalent in China's minority popular music, as an increasing number of minority pop and rock singers have joined the new trend. This trend is not confined to popular music alone and is also evident in minority literature and film, and, as already noted, in academic writings as well.

But more significantly perhaps, over the last decade the minority environmental discourses that I discussed in this article have also been translated into socio-political action and have played a role in inspiring at least two major cases of ethnic unrest. One took place in 2006 after the Dalai Lama called on Tibetans to stop the buying, selling, and wearing of pelts of endangered wild animals. This call was informed by the same ethno-environmental discourse that links wildlife protection with Tibetan identity which I discussed in this article, and it triggered a wave of public burnings of animal pelts by Tibetans across the Tibetan areas in China (Spencer Reference Spencer2006; Yeh Reference Yeh2013). The movement soon led to clashes with the Chinese authorities, and it has been interpreted as a harbinger of the mass protests that erupted in Tibet a couple of years later in 2008. The second case is the Mongolian protests that erupted in Inner Mongolia in May 2011 and were the most serious ethnic unrest in the region in the last thirty years. Although the immediate trigger for the protests was the death of a Mongolian herder who was run down by a coal truck driven by a Han Chinese driver, much of the underlying tension stemmed from the severe ecological degradation in Inner Mongolia and its ethnic implications (Baranovitch Reference Baranovitch2014; BBC Chinese 2011). It remains to be seen, however, what impact, if any, China's minority environmental discourses will have on governmental policies.