Learning by Heart

This is the caption on the giant mural that fills one wall of the airport in Lijiang, a small city in China’s Yunnan province. The mural is inspired by a traditional expression of Lijiang’s indigenous Naxi people, whose religious texts describe humans and the nature deity (shu) as children of the same father but different mothers. ¹ Each brother was given a separate domain: Humans took charge of crop growing and livestock grazing in the valleys, while shu ruled the natural world beyond human habitation and cultivation, including the mountains, rivers, springs, and streams and all wild animals. Over time, however, humans grew greedy and began to violate shu’s realm by overcutting the trees, killing game, and fouling water sources. People were then punished with disasters and diseases until three agreements were negotiated. These agreements allowed humans to clear land and cut wood, but not excessively. Humans could also hunt an appropriate amount of wild game if their domestic animals did not provide them with enough food. But people were strenuously forbidden from excavating mountainsides or polluting water sources. Research on Naxi communities (Yang Fuquan 1999, 2009) suggests that the patient teaching of beliefs such as these helped motivate both individual stewardship and sustainable forms of collective resource management. Studies also document the emotional intensity that surrounded these beliefs: people did not just know the rules. They felt them.