This project explores a grassroots organic food movement in Chengdu, China through a case study of an organic co-op in Anlong Village in the outskirts of the city. Due to its small size and inadequacy of official organic certification standards, the Anlong farmers refer to their produce “ecological” vegetables, as opposed to “organic” vegetables. Since the farms converted to “ecological” production in 2006, small, but growing number of Chengdu urbanites has turned to Anlong farms for a source of healthy and fresh organic produce while other affluent urban consumers enjoy organic products at metropolitan supermarkets. Given that the produce of these farms in Anlong is not officially certified, and given the fact that the cost of the produce is still on par with certified organic produce, why are they gaining popularity among urban customers who could easily buy similar produce at a shopping center nearby? Based on analyses of semi-structured interviews I conducted with Anlong farmers and customers and field observation, I argue that the consumption of Anlong products carries significance that extends beyond actual processes of production to suggest a symbolic purity untainted by the government association. In China, due to a series of reports on counterfeit food labels and the limited success of government regulations on food industry, government certified labels hardly evince moral attributes of organic foods, but generate negative interpretations. Anlong’s produce absent an official label shuns such suspicion and validates honest values that the organic agriculture elicits. 

 For thousands of years, the Chengdu Plain in Sichuan, China has been characterized by the linpan settlement pattern, a system where the family compound is located amongst the lands they farm as well as thickets of bamboo and trees, creating a patchwork of farmland and human life across the Plain. A recent Chinese government program entitled “A New Socialist Countryside” threatens this unique pattern through nationwide reconsolidation of rural households into concentrated villages. This style of living undoubtedly places a new ecological strain on the Chengdu Plain, an effect believed to be more serious due to the concentration of environmental pollutants compared to the former dispersed pattern of waste flows. I sampled water in an area with both new and old settlement patterns, measuring the levels of nitrates, phosphates, ammonia and chemical oxygen demand. Through a comparative study of the results, initial findings point towards supporting the hypothesis that consolidated housing is more ecologically harmful than the linpan. The consolidation of the Chengdu Plain presents the exciting opportunity to capture and record the effects of modernization within rural farmland.

In recent years, multi-cultural education has become commonplace in policy making and public discourse. While policy makers, educators, parents and community members surely make an earnest effort to seek out and implement standards and practices which fairly address multiple cultures, many children and young adults remain faced with intense challenges in the form of curriculum and social pressure. This study sought to better understand how students in a South Seattle refugee community negotiate identity and achievement while engaged in this American public education system. It also attempts to explore how and why certain aspects of social fabric are maintained and others dismissed in favor of mainstream American culture and the ways which these interact with this system. The common view of multi-cultural education is based on supplementing otherwise standardized curriculum and the creation of certain types of spaces. This process of supplementing pre-existing curriculum is problematic because it leads to the exclusion of increasing numbers of students from both the public education system and future socioeconomic advancement in the United States. While this system deeply affects the lives of children, young adults, parents and community, these issues remain underexplored. Therefore, this study engaged participants from South Seattle’s Yesler Terrace neighborhood to explore these concerns using ethnographic data collected based on a “mosaic approach”, including one-on-one and group participant led interviews, photo-voice, social mapping and participant observation. Using these methods, this study explored two sites within this neighborhood. The first is an after school tutoring program run by Catholic Community Services at the Yesler Terrace Community Center which pairs students one on one with tutors for help outside of the classroom. The second is a first grade classroom at a neighboring elementary school. This study has found that the complexities faced by young people in the United States education system are incredibly individualized experiences. One of the primary goals of this research is to emphasize the importance of these individual experiences over those understood through collective sets of data. It is hoped that this study may open doors for further exploring the lives of individuals in order to better serve them in the public education system. Simultaneously, this study focuses on the anthropological process and the relationships that arise from it, the various roles of anthropologists and the impacts of research.

This study attempts to examine China’s New Socialist Countryside Construction policy and its potential environmental and socio-political consequences. Aggressive urbanization threatens the traditional landscape and governance structures of Sichuan province’s Chengdu Plain. Current scholarship on this subject examines potential reconstruction models and population densities on villages throughout Sichuan. I examine Zhanqi Village as a case study, an experimental region which is currently undergoing transformation. This study explores how alternative development strategies can be deployed to maintain the cultural and historic landscape, while maintaining local planning goals. I employ current urban planning theories focusing on population density and anthropological theories of spatial relationships. Using data collected from consultations with experts and critical reading of existing scholarship I provide a historical overview of the physical landscape and discuss potential redevelopment schemes currently being considered by local authorities. Lastly, I conclude with a discussion on the challenges and obstacles that will arise as a result of these programs. I hope that my research will inform local authorities on the challenges of current development models and contribute to a broader discussion on sustainable countryside development in China.

The Yi people lives in the south west of China, leading a life of the combination of growing and grazing which has lasted for hundreds of years. They have a rather distinctive culture characters with their own writing system, religion, customs, and clothes. Jieshy and Vala are two kinds of capes that play an important role in Yi people’s daily life. They are made of wool and have several similarities in outlooks but are functioned differently, especially in social lives and celebrations.However, as modern life is eventually influencing the life of the Yi people, Jieshy and Vala are less worn in daily life. In order to know the status of these two traditional clothes in Yi people’s modern life, we did several field researches in three Yi counties in Sichuan Province, China, during the summer of 2013. Our research focused on the productions and the application of these two kinds of clothes in modern life, and the Yi people’s attitudes toward them. Through our observations and interviews with local people and scholars, we know that nowadays, Jieshy and Vala are still used in funerals and traditional weddings and have almost been considered as a symbol of the group. But there is indeed a trend of reduction in the use of these two kinds of traditional clothes. The goal of our project is to present how modernization shapes the tradition and how people react to the changes.