Family Environmental History

June 24, 2022 By: Lezi Yan

My parents and grandparents used to live in Qianshan County, which has now become Qianshan City. In the Zhou Dynasty, Qianshan was under the jurisdiction of the capital of the Wan State, which is the present Qianshan County. During the reign of Emperor Xian in the Eastern Han Dynasty (193 AD), Lu Kang, the governor of Lujiang, the county of Lujiang was moved to the city of Wan County for avoiding the war. Since then, Yuan, Cao and Sun have alternately ruled this place, and Wancheng has become a major town of military contention. During the Tang Dynasty, Qianshan County was once the seat of Shu Prefecture. In the first year of the Ming dynasty, Qianshan County was established, and Zhang Jiang, the first governor of Qianshan, set up the county seat in Qianshan County.[1] In the early years of the Republic of China, the Anqing Prefecture was abolished and Qianshan County was directly subdivided into Anhui Province: in April 1949, it was called Qianshan County of the Anqing Prefecture of the Northern Anhui Administration, and by the end of 1979, the Anqing Prefecture was changed to the Anqing Region, and then to the Anqing Administration. Qianshan County was established in the third year of the reign of Emperor Zhanzhi (1323). The name Qianshan was derived from the fact that it was in the northwest of the county.[2]

 

My grandparents were farmers, so their main job was farming and my parents needed to help with planting, fishing and catching loaches. During my parent’s time, they used to visit Tianzhu Mountain frequently. Many famous people in history, such as Emperor Han Wu, Li Bai, Bai Juyi, Wang Anshi and Huang Tingjian, have visited Tianzhu Mountain and left behind many popular poems and handwriting. From the early 1980s to 2003, the Tianzhu Mountain tourism market was roughly divided into four phases based on the number of visitors: a start-up phase before 1988, a rapid growth phase from 1988 to 1996, a high growth phase from 1997 to 2000, and a flat and fluctuating growth phase from 2001 to 2003. The Tianzhu Mountain tourism market saw a plateau period of fluctuating growth after the high growth phase. When my parents were young, they also used to go up to the mountains with my grandparents to collect medicinal herbs. Qianshan County is one of the ten major herbal bases in Anhui Province, where hundreds of herbal medicines such as Hou Pao, Gua Pao, Ling Zhi, Bei Mao and Lily grow.[3]

 

When my parents were around 20, they began to go out to work. They stayed the places, involving Shandong, Shanxi and Zhejiang, for a whole year, and would not return home until Chinese New Year. In the 1990s, there was a trend for young people from rural areas to go to the cities for work. My parents moved to Anqing with me in 2004 in order to provide better education, and they struggled to work hard to make a living. Therefore, I stayed in the countryside until the first grade and then came to the city to study. And now, I’m coming to Toronto to study. I am grateful that my parents worked very hard to pay for my education and create a better learning and living environment for me, growing up surrounded by love and expectations. When we compare our material living conditions with parents’ living, there are many differences. For example, in my parents’ generation, a mobile phone was a very expensive item, but for today’s life it is an essential and a very common thing. The standard of living has also improved a lot, the environment that my parents used to live in was rather harsh. And our life is more convenient in that we can go to the places we want to go by means of transportation such as high-speed train and plane.

 

In my parents’ generation, there was less pollution; in our generation, the development of the economy has led to problems such as air pollution and global warming, but in recent years, the state has taken note of the problem and has begun to address it. I hope that in the future it will still be possible to live in friendship with nature and achieve sustainable economic development.

 

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