Family Environmental History
April 15, 2026 By: An Chen
When I try to picture the environment of my childhood, I see two things: gray concrete and green leaves. Growing up in Shanghai’s Xuhui District during the early 2000s, my world was a mix of old French concession villas turned into offices, narrow nongtang (lane) alleys, and the sudden rise of brand-new apartment towers. But my grandparents remember a very different Shanghai. Looking back at my family’s environmental history—from my grandparents, to my parents, to myself—I see a story of rapid change, from a world of natural waterways to one of air conditioners and car exhaust, and finally to a hopeful search for green space in a city of steel.
My grandparents grew up in the 1950s and 60s in what is now the western edge of Xuhui, near what used to be open farmland. Their environment was “natural” for a big city. Their neighborhood wasn’t paved with wide roads but with dirt paths between rows of small houses. The most important natural resource was water. The Huangpu River and a network of smaller creeks and canals provided fish for dinner and a way to transport vegetables from nearby farms. My grandmother remembers washing clothes in a creek near her home, something that sounds impossible today.
This environment was not untouched nature, but it was largely “native” and agricultural. Most plants were local vegetables and rice. The only “exotic” things, transformed by European influence, were the famous plane trees (wutong) planted along what would become Huaihai Road. The French planted them decades earlier, but for my grandparents, those trees were just big, shady neighbors. Their relationship with the environment was one of direct use and hard work. As working-class people, they didn’t think about “conservation.” They thought about growing food, fetching water, and staying warm. My grandmother’s job in a textile factory also introduced her to the first real pollution—coal smoke and dye chemicals dumped into those same creeks they once used. But for them, the environment was a living, working thing, not a postcard.
My parents grew up in the 1980s and 90s, just as China’s economic reforms took off. Their environment began to change from “natural” to “human-made.” The creeks my grandmother used were filled in or covered over to build roads. The farmland disappeared under new housing blocks. By the time my parents married in the mid-1990s and moved into a small apartment in Xuhui, the sound of construction was constant.
The key natural resource for them was no longer water or land, but energy—specifically, electricity and coal. Their lives were powered by the city’s grid. Their environment was increasingly “exotic” and industrial. They bought their first refrigerator, then a TV, and finally a clunky air conditioner. My father, a mechanic, helped transform the environment by fixing the trucks and buses that now filled Xuhui’s once-quiet streets. The air grew hazy with smog. My mother stopped hanging laundry outside because it would get gray with soot. For them, the environment became a source of convenience but also frustration. Their relationship was more distant than my grandparents’. They valued a clean, modern apartment more than a clean creek. As a lower-middle-class family, their dream was not a garden but an elevator building. The environment was something to be conquered and controlled for comfort.
I grew up in Xuhui District from 2000 to 2008, a time of dizzying change. My family bought their first house near Zhaojiabang Road. From my window, I could see the old plane trees of the French Concession on one side and new glass skyscrapers on the other.
My environment was human-made. My “nature” was the small park my mother took me to on weekends. The Suzhou Creek, which my grandmother remembered as a place to catch shrimp, was a black, smelly ditch during my early childhood. The sounds of my environment were not birds, but car horns and the ding-ding of the old metro line.
My relationship with the environment was shaped by my class and being a young boy. I walked or took the crowded bus everywhere. This gave me a close relationship with the street-level air. As a boy, my environment was a classroom, a shopping mall, and a concrete playground.
My grandparents lived within their environment, even when it was polluted. My parents used their environment, trying to escape its dirt for modern comfort. I was separated from my environment, experiencing nature as a rare event. I never learned to fish in a creek or fear a flood. Instead, I learned to fear smog days and traffic. Sometimes I want to experience my grandparents’ world of dirt paths and hand-washed clothes. I also do not want my own future children to only know nature through a glass window or a phone screen. I hope for a Shanghai where the environmental history does not just read “nature lost.” I hope for a future where the plane trees are not just exotic decorations but part of a truly livable city, where the air is clean enough to play outside, and the last remaining creeks are places for life, not just memories.