Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
ultimately, science fi ction tome. First, it begins with a poem set against an
image of natural calm: “It started as a sand bank / h en it grew into an island
/ Soon it will hold the world in awe / And what is it? / It is Dongtan.”
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h e
opening section is fi lled with gorgeous full-page photographs of the island's
natural beauty. h ese include pictures of riverbanks, goats, oxen, butterfl ies
on a fi eld of sunfl owers, and, last, a single spoonbill. h is section is topic-
ended with another epigraph, which reads, “With a timescale of seven years
/ we will / explore a new possibility of urban development / a new way of life
/ new methods of production and more . . . / above all, it is a journey.”
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h
e
so-called journey then proceeds as a series of quests.
First comes “Looking for Shanghai,” followed by “Looking for Black-
faced Spoonbill,” and the third is “Looking for an Eco-City.” In short, this
section presents the problems that Dongtan is aiming to answer. h e pre-
amble to “Looking for Shanghai” makes this abundantly clear: “Too much of
the world has turned to barren land where mankind has left its mark,” the
text superimposed over the image of a desiccated landscape. “Looking for
Shanghai” represents the local equivalent of “mankind's mark” as a series of
photos of individual skyscrapers next to one another. h is cutting and past-
ing of photos of individual skyscrapers rejects the possibility that the hyper-
urbanized landscape itself is a panorama. h is section also cuts and pastes
highways (88) and street crowds and cars (90) in a manic visual that is aimed
to produce a sense of fracture and chaos reminiscent of the movie
Blade Run-
ner.
h e problem, the authors of the topic argue, is pollution, and urban
alienation, combined with the scale of China's modernization.
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h e problems posed by Shanghai's urban alienation are immediately fol-
lowed by the presumptive solution, titled “Looking for Black-faced Spoon-
bill,” which extols the “natural capital” of the landscape.
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In short, the fi rst
two sections (“Looking for Shanghai” and “Looking for Black-faced Spoon-
bill”) visually and rhetorically set up the problems—intensive urbanization
and the starkly diff erent pathways to development. h
e answer to both, the
