The China Thread

[HVC]

Algorithm caught up to me and YouTube has started recommending videos about Chengdu's metro system enjoy

[Valmy]

I am so jealous when I see other countries able to build public infrastructure.

The best we seem to do is toll roads. And everything always seems to come late and way over budget.

[Sheilbh]

Nothing remotely newsy - but via 404 Media I absolutely loved this summary of a paper (and desperately hope China can save the porpoise):

A Porpoise Corpus with Purpose

Zhang, Yaoyao et al. "Range contraction of the Yangtze finless porpoise inferred from classic Chinese poems." Current Biology.


 Yangtze finless porpoise at the Baiji Dolphinarium of the Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Image: Wang Chaoqun

For centuries, people have been enchanted by the Yangtze finless porpoise, the only freshwater porpoise known in the world. Spectators across the ages have marveled at its elusive beauty, chronicling sightings of the porpoise in China's rich poetic tradition.

Now, scientists have mined this vast porpoise corpus for insights into the historic range and population of the iconic animal. This is a neat thing to do on its own merits, but it's also part of a broader effort to save the species from extinction—with only about 1,250 individuals left in the wild, the porpoise is considered critically endangered. 

As regular readers of the Abstract will know, nothing delights me more than scientific conclusions based on historical documents (see: milky seas and Transylvanian weather). Call it science from the stacks, where the library is the laboratory. All the better if it is for a worthy conservation cause.

To that end, the study's authors identified 724 ancient poems that reference the Yangtze finless porpoise over the past 1,400 years, since the Tang Dynasty. Roughly half of the poems included location details, allowing the team to roughly track its population distribution with a chronology of geospatial grids.


Grids of population distribution across 1,400 years. Image: Zhang, Yaoyao et al.

"Our study provides the first evidence from historical literature sources of major and rapid contractions in the range of the Yangtze finless porpoise," said researchers led by Yaoyao Zhang of the Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. "We used the occurrence sites in poems to map the historical distribution of the Yangtze finless porpoise. The number of grids with occurrences declined from 169 in the Tang Dynasty to just 59 in modern times, implying a contraction of 65 percent of the historical ranges of the Yangtze finless porpoise."

"Importantly, there was a sharp decrease from 142 grids during the Qing Dynasty to 59 in modern times, suggesting a relatively rapid shrinkage of range over the past century," the team continued. "Our study demonstrates that historical art forms provide valuable information that can be used to track wildlife range changes over time. Chinese poets, many of whom were well-educated intellectuals, sometimes portrayed animals with a high degree of accuracy."

The rapid decline of the Yangtze finless porpoise, driven by intense human activity, has been confirmed by all kinds of empirical evidence—field studies, genomic analysis, population models, and more. In that sense, the team's poetic sources corroborate what is already a well-documented phenomenon.

But as with past studies in this genre, the real novelty of this work is hidden in the supplemental information: In this case, two Excel spreadsheets that painstakingly record all 724 poetic references to the captivating creatures. For instance, the authors highlighted this evocative line from Emperor Qianlong, who lived in the 18th century: "Porpoises chased moonlight on silvered tides."


A Ming Dynasty woodblock-printed illustration that documents the Yangtze finless porpoise. Image: "Sancai Tuhui," compiled by Wang Qi (1573–1620)

As I am woefully monolingual (unless you count Dovahzul), I had to rely on Google Translate to comb through a sampling of the other collected verses. But even through this leaky linguistic bucket, you can catch fleeting glimpses of the river porpoises through the eyes of bygone poets. My favorite is a verse written from "Climbing the Yellow Crane Tower" by Jun Lin, who lived 500 years ago, which is listed in row 112 on the spreadsheet labeled "mmc3." 

"Green smoke and fragrant trees in Hanyang City, on a sunny day, porpoises worship the waves. The egrets turn around the painted tower sails past the shadows, and the cranes return to the sound of immortal pipes and flutes. Cui Lang's verses are the only ones left in ancient and modern times, and Fan Lao's feelings are hung in the halls and temples. Drunk, I strike coral and stroke my long sword, leaning against the sky and whistling alone at a peak."

In a few sentences, this poet brings us into the smells, sights, and sensations of this moment in time. While there is clear scientific value in these historical texts, as evidenced by the new study, they should also be appreciated as threads of cultural continuity. It's one thing to simply be told that we should conserve species like the Yangtze finless porpoise, but it hits on a different level to realize that future generations may never share these experiences of reverence and rumination from the past.

[Josquius]

https://www.newyorker.com/news/american-chronicles/the-chinese-adoptees-who-were-stolen?utm_medium=social&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=bluesky&mbid=social_bluesky&utm_brand=tny


A pretty interesting long read on Chinese adoption.
Not something I have ever really known much about. Apparently it was often a scam with the kids being kidnapped and sold, with the story of baby girls being abandoned on the street being a lie.

[HVC]

Seems all the Asian adoptions were a scam. Korea has some tragic stories too.

[viper37]

https://www.newyorker.com/news/american-chronicles/the-chinese-adoptees-who-were-stolen?utm_medium=social&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=bluesky&mbid=social_bluesky&utm_brand=tny


A pretty interesting long read on Chinese adoption.
Not something I have ever really known much about. Apparently it was often a scam with the kids being kidnapped and sold, with the story of baby girls being abandoned on the street being a lie.

It's more common than we think.

Guatemela had such a scam running too.  A then 30 year old Guatemalan from Quebec discovered in 2023 that she had been stolen as a baby while trying to find her birth mother.  Apparently, there were hundreds like here during the civil war (1980-1990).  Her adoptive parents had no idea, they met a local notary who presented them with all the legal papers signed by Guatemala authorities.  They paid what they thought were legal fees for the adoption.