Introducing The Steppe - Report #2
Featuring: Indigenous & ecoliterature from China and Taiwan, sustainability at the new Hong Kong sports park, and protecting the critically endangered Yangtze finless porpoise
Introducing The Steppe – a roundup of my favorites in bookish news, podcasts I’m into, and what I’m reading about the environment & sustainability in China and beyond. Last month, I was accepting name recommendations for this newsletter. Thanks to everyone who reached out with suggestions! There were four contenders:
The Steppe
My Book and Road Initiative
Dream of the Green Chamber
The Shanzhai News
Full disclosure:
The Steppe is a ChatGPT generated name, though it took more than six prompts for it to spit out something satisfactory. I asked for something short and simple, with a natural theme inspired by China’s landscapes or ecoregions. Originally, The Steppe stood out to me as a homonym of “step”, for its connection to the name of my Substack, Another Day On The Terrace. But steppes are wild, grassy plains characterized by largely flat or gently undulating topography, drastically different from rice terraces located in mountainous regions cultivated for agricultural land use. Regardless, I like the name and it grew on me the more I thought about it as journeying into a vast, unknown land, much like my efforts on this newsletter and writing in general.
My Book and Road Initiative was my own idea, but this won’t just be about books and I also wanted to be careful about geopolitical connotations, which isn’t the focus. Dream of the Green Chamber, a reader suggestion (thank you Nico), appealed to me as a Chinese literature enthusiast. Alas, it would be a clever riff on a book I have not yet read. Lastly, as hilarious as The Shanzhai News is now, a part of me doesn’t want to be a gimmick forever.
Anyway, let’s get on with the news.
May 2025 Roundup:
Bookish News
Cha Journal Review:
Questioning Borders by Robin Visser
There’s something strangely alluring about books about books.
First, they probably feature a multitude of titles or even authors you’ve never heard of. Second, you might learn something new about a book you’ve enjoyed or view something you disliked in a different perspective. Or perhaps, it compels you to immediately start a novel you previously knew little about. Robin Visser’s Questioning Borders: Ecoliteratures of China and Taiwan has the potential to check all of these boxes.
Featuring Han Chinese and non-Han indigenous writers, Questioning Borders offers rare insights by comparing ecoliterature from various ethnic groups including Bai, Bunun, Kazakh, Mongol, Tao, Tibetan, Uyghur, Wa, and Yi. In this thoughtful review, Sonalika Chaturvedi describes how Visser hopes to shed light on the parochial mentality of conventional environmental narratives, which often focus on themes such as modernization from an anthropocentric or Han-centric standpoint. By analyzing Indigenous narratives, Chaturvedi writes, Visser begins to highlight how traditional philosophies transcend geopolitical boundaries, and emphasize instead the interconnected nature of ecology, be it through spiritual or physical means.
At first impression, Chaturvedi’s review is a few brainwaves ahead of the average reader. I found it ironic that she praises Visser for her ability to avoid “becoming jargon-laden or inaccessible”, yet the review itself is a little abstract. I struggled with terms such as “epistemologies”, “relational cosmologies”, and “ontologies”, all of which appeared in a single sentence. That’s a mouthful of academese and there’s no explanation for the less philosophically inclined.
Nevertheless, with a little research I have come to fully appreciate the ideas put forth. Chaturvedi wrote a well-balanced review, highlighting the author’s greatest accomplishments while gently suggesting where Visser “might have offered a more comprehensive picture.” I look forward to reading Questioning Borders once I’ve had a chance to get through more of the source material, or at least of those available in English translation.
Podcast News
Trash Talk on Radio 3:
New Hong Kong Stadium is all about sustainability
There are probably more people in Hong Kong talking about the upcoming Jay Chou Carnival World Tour or Black Pink concert than they are about sustainability. Regardless, Marcy Trent Long speaks with Orianna Wong and Kenneth Wan about the recently opened Kai Tak Sports Park (KTSP). The KTSP is a LEED and BEAM Plus certified green building, and a multi-use sports & entertainment facility complete with dining, retail, and a recreational center for community sports activities. Wong is the Food Safety and Sustainability Manager and Wan is Facility Manager at KTSP. This month on Trash Talk on Radio 3 they discuss the implementation of 3R (reduce, reuse, recycle) strategies for large events and the challenges of waste sorting at the ground level. The highlight of this episode is a large scale waste decomposition system currently in trial, that is capable of processing 600 kg of waste daily and converting it into compost.
What I’m Reading
The plight of the Yangtze river finless porpoise
EurekAlert!: A surprising link between river porpoise and ancient Chinese poetry
This article, titled “Ancient poems tell the story of charismatic river porpoise’s decline over the past 1,400 years” was thoughtfully recommended to me by
, writer of Earth Hope Substack. The story is a combination of two of my favorite things, a harmonious blend of Chinese literature and environmental narrative.Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences are using ancient Chinese poems to better understand the habitat ranges of the Yangtze finless porpoise, which are currently critically endangered. Through linking hundreds of references to the porpoises in poetry to the geographic location of reported sightings, the authors highlight the cultural significance of this animal across five dynasties to present time. Sadly, they found that historical distribution ranges remained relatively unchanged until fairly recently — within the past 100 years — when porpoise populations began to rapidly decline as a result of dam construction during the 1950s.
“Understanding and quantifying the historical range of threatened species can help inform conservation and restoration”, the authors write. Through this research, the hope is that conservationists can find a way to protect the porpoises and avoid a similar fate as the baiji, another species of freshwater dolphin endemic to Yangtze river that’s believed to be extinct since 2006.
Dialogue Earth: The paper park of Poyang Lake
As with many environmental challenges in China, the difficulty with species protection lies in enforcement. Although “there have been designated finless porpoise reserves on the Yangtze since the early 1990s” writes Dialogue Earth, “a study published by the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Hydrobiology found that some freshwater protected areas (FPAs) were not meeting conservation needs.”
Nearly half of the population of finless porpoises are found in Poyang Lake, one of the FPAs established by the provincial government in northern Jiangxi province. Unfortunately, the protection of the finless porpoise in these areas is hampered by illegal operations.
The trouble with the management of finless porpoise reserves is that they struggle with resourcing, and rely on volunteer activity by a handful of reserve rangers. But the bigger issue is that provincially regulated protected areas have limited funding. Poyang Lake is notoriously known as a ‘paper park’, or a reserve that is protected in writing but in reality is not managed or enforced appropriately.
Since the Yangtze finless porpoise is a critically endangered species, these reserves warrant elevated designation as a national protected area, which are jointly funded, and hopefully managed more effectively.
World Economic Forum:
Sustainable soy in China-Brazil trade talks
A visit by the President of Brazil to China was a major headline in May. Since both countries are world leaders in the trade of agricultural commodities, their meeting presents a crucial opportunity to discuss how sustainability can be combined with food security and economic development. In March 2025, approximately 75% of the 15.7 million tons of soy produced by Brazil was ear-marked for China, where copious amounts of soy are consumed as agricultural feed. This amount could increase still as Brazilian soy is expected to make up the difference as imports from the US drop. This World Economic Forum article explains what China and Brazil are doing to reduce deforestation in the Amazon, including a new agreement committing to trading 1.5 million tonnes of certified sustainable soybeans.
Carbon Brief:
What the people of China’s coal-rich Shanxi think about climate change
People of Asia for Climate Solutions (PACS) is a climate advocacy group dedicated to “promot[ing] people-centered climate solutions”. One of their key functions is to support people of the heavily coal-dependent province of Shanxi with the green energy transition into a low-carbon, diverse, and sustainable tech-driven economy. In this Q&A article, “What the people of China’s coal-rich Shanxi think about climate change”, Carbon Brief interviews Tom Wang, executive director of PACS, about a survey they conducted on nearly 10,000 individuals in Shanxi about their thoughts and opinions about China’s climate policies.
The discussion outlines several insights, and provides answers to various interesting questions, such as:
What are the demographic differences in awareness levels about climate change?
To what extent do people understand the impact of climate policies on their everyday lives?
What are some of the ways that assistance could be provided to people during the phasing out of coal?
What are potential industries that would support sustainable jobs in the future?
What are some lessons learned on issues of critical importance gained from the completion of the survey?
Thanks Debbie. By the way did you check out Fei Fei's 2-part podcast on Climate Watch about ancient wisdom and climate change? It should be right up your alley. How cool that you've seen those dolphins before! Sounds like there could be an opportunity to collaborate on an article featuring Poyang Lake, would you be interested? I love alliteration haha
Great post, Calvin. Not sure how you managed to cover so many things that I'm particularly interested in but there you go. The first book looks really interesting - but I'm flat out keeping up with all the incredible writings here on substack!! After having once seen pink dolphins on an obscure outlet of the Amazon river, I've been fascinated with pink dolphins, and rare dolphins ever since. Pink dolphins once found in HongKong. The 白鱀豚 is obviously not pink, but still drew my attention when one was spotted in the Yangzi some years back. And then there is Lake Poyang. I was reading a lot about that a few months back - for another endangered animal, the Siberian cranes, who use Poyang as a nesting ground. A lot of environmental work has been done around Poyang, but its never enough really, is it? I didnt know the 白鱀豚 was in that lake also. The link to porpoise poetry ( if you will excuse the alliteration) is fascinating. Apparently the name 白鱀豚 was coined back in the Qin and Han!!