Exercise #2: Family Environmental History
October 23, 2025 By: Grace Fang
HIST 3991: Environmental History
Student name: Grace Fang
October 23 2025
Exercise #2: Family Environmental History
My family spans three very different ecological and social environments, from my grandparents’ rural Guangdong, my parents’ urban Shanghai, and my current immigrant life in Vancouver, Canada. This migration path reflects the drastic social and ecological transformation of China over the past century.
My maternal grandparents were born in Meixian District, Meizhou, Guangdong Province in the 40s of the 20th century, a hilly area surrounded by the remnants of the Wuyi Mountains. In the forties and fifties of the last century, it was still a typical rice-farming society. Local natural resources are centered on land and water. My grandfather often told me that when they were young, they made a living by growing double-cropping rice in the terraced fields. In those days, “environment” was not an abstract ecological concept, but an extension of livelihoods. The relationship between people and land is direct, dependent and close. The grandparents’ generation is in awe of nature, believing in “relying on mountains to eat mountains and relying on water to draft water”, but they also know the threats and uncertainties of nature. They follow the farming logic of circular agriculture, using oxen instead of machinery for spring plowing, hand pulling instead of herbicides, and crushing the harvested rice stalks back to the field [1].
Later, my family moved to Yangpu District, Shanghai, where my parents grew up and settled. In the eighties and nineties of the last century, Shanghai was at the peak of industrialization and urban expansion, and the banks of the Huangpu River were full of chemical plants and shipyards, and the air and water pollution was serious. However, at the same time, in the 1990s, Shanghai also began to implement urban environmental regulation and ecological park construction, such as Century Park and riverside green space, symbolizing a new understanding of ecological value [2].
After my parents got married in the 90s, Shanghai was catching up with the development and opening up of Pudong, high-rise buildings rose from the ground, and private cars became standard for families. In 2013, there was severe smog in Shanghai, schools were closed, and masks were worn outdoors [3]. During this period, many people became environmentally conscious: energy-saving light bulbs were replaced at home, mothers brought their own bags to the supermarket, fathers changed to the subway to commute, and so on. What impressed me the most was the implementation of garbage classification in Shanghai in 2016, when my parents drew a dry and wet garbage comparison table and pasted it on the refrigerator, and donated their old clothes to public welfare organizations. I think their generation’s environmental awareness has slowly shifted from passively dealing with pollution to actively reducing waste.
I was born in Shanghai, and my childhood environment was exquisite man-made nature, with well-manicured lawns and cherry blossom trees in the community, and I often went to Century Park to feed pigeons on weekends, but I rarely saw wild animals and plants. It wasn’t until I immigrated to Vancouver with my parents that I truly felt the symbiosis between man and nature for the first time.
In my new home on Vancouver Beach Ave, I can see seals basking in English Bay every day, flocks of Canada Goose flying overhead in the fall, and Douglas Fir in Stanley Park thicker than the tall buildings of Shanghai. “Eco-friendly” here is not a slogan, but a detail that is integrated into life. For example, supermarkets do not have free plastic bags, every household has compost buckets to fill the fields with food waste, and schools organize trips to the Fraser River to clean up rubbish along the riverbanks. The first time I participated in a community garden event, the leader was an elderly Squamish who taught us to recognize the native blueberry bushes and said that these plants lived here thousands of years before us. This made me suddenly understand that my grandparents’ concept of reverence for the land is actually related to the ecological stewardship of the aborigines.
Now I ride my bike to Beach Ave on weekends to pick up trash, and I will also remind my parents to use less disposable tableware. I want to take the initiative to protect nature, such as paying attention to salmon migration conservation in Vancouver and refusing to buy food containing palm oil [4].
Looking back at the environmental history of three generations of my family, I found that regional changes have deepened our understanding of the environment. I deeply realized that environmental history is also a story of identity. My family spans three stages: agricultural civilization, industrialization, and eco-citizenship, and each step changes our relationship with nature. But what remains unchanged is the interpretation of friendly living with nature in different eras.
Reference:
- Meizhou Municipal Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. (2022). Report on the Protection of Hakka Traditional Farming Culture in Meizhou. https://www.meizhou.gov.cn/zjmz/lsyg/kjwh/mindex.html
- Shanghai Municipal Archives. (2019). Selected Archives of Shanghai Industrial Environment in the 1960s and 1980s https://www.shda.gov.cn/datd/dacq/
- Liberation Daily. (2014). “Source Analysis” of Shanghai’s smog: Only 20% is external pollution https://news.sohu.com/20140415/n398238387.shtml
- City of Vancouver. (2024). Greenest City Action Plan Greenest City Action Plan | City of Vancouver