Introduction Part 1: Ecology and the Classics 1. Ecology and the Classics 2. Conceptualization of Earth and Land in Classical Chinese Texts 3. "The Great Virtue of Heaven and Earth:" Deep Ecology in the Yijing 4. "Hard-Hearted" and "Soft-Hearted" Ecologies: A Rereading of Daoist and Confucian Classics 5. Gods and Nature in Highest Clarity Daoism 6. When the Land is Excellent: Village Feng Shui Forests and the Nature of Lineage, Polity, and Vitality in Southern China Part 2: Imagining Nature in Modernity 7. Finding Nature in Religion, Hunting Religion from the Environment 8. Globalizations and Diversities of Nature in China 9. Is Chinese Popular Religion Compatible with Ecology? A Discussion of Fengshui 10. Ecological Migration and Cultural Adaptation: A Case Study of the Sanjiangyuan Nature Reserve, Qinghai Province 11. Reverse Environmentalism: Contemporary Articulations of Tibetan Culture, Buddhism, and Environmental Protection 12. Earthwork, Home-Making, and Eco-Aesthetics among Amdo Tibetans

James Miller is Professor of Chinese Studies and Religious Studies at Queen's University, Canada.

Dan Smyer Yu is the Research Group Leader at the Department of Religious Diversity at Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Germany.

Peter van der Veer is Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Germany.

This book sheds light on the social imagination of nature and environment in contemporary China. It demonstrates how the urgent debate on how to create an ecologically sustainable future for the world's most populous country is shaped by its complex engagement with religious traditions, competing visions of modernity and globalization, and by engagement with minority nationalities who live in areas of outstanding natural beauty on China's physical and social margins. The book develops a comprehensive understanding of contemporary China that goes beyond the tradition/ modernity dichotomy, and illuminates the diversity of narratives and worldviews that inform contemporary Chinese understandings of and engagements with nature and environment.