感生1. The practice of staying
The start of 感生组 (gǎn shēng zǔ) project
（中文往下滑）
Friends, I am learning how someone like me can connect with practitioner communities that adapt and coexist in dynamic harmony with each other, the ecosystem, in the long term.
I started this project in March as a PhD focused on the fieldwork-to-modeling pipeline for collective animal behavior. Then I went to Black Mesa in Arizona to support the Lanes Family, who are Diné and resisting relocation from their ancestral herding ground.
The sheepherding attracted me from a scientific perspective. But the Lanes helped me see that their herding cannot be separated from their ways of life and cosmologies. The traditions always change, mix and adapt.
My brief stay left me both moved and unsure. I was drawn to the indigenous way of relating to land, but I don't have that ancestry. My family has always been migrating - into cities, factories, money, displaced by war, by family divisions. I've had the privilege of traveling during college while others stayed and committed to their homes in ways I haven't learned to commit to mine. I really do enjoy talking with elders and herders. I love walking with animals and winds. But am I just a visitor commodifying their struggles?
I remembered my seven years in Hawaiʻi feeling like a tourist, then revisiting the Mauna Kea protest and finally understanding what the elders were protecting.
I remembered returning to China after four years of COVID separation, crying when I listened to local elders in Yunnan jam with young musicians over songs about fleeing and love and seasonal insects.
The feeling surprised me with its intensity. If I hadn't left, I wouldn't feel this particular tension and release of reconnection. This is how migration shapes feeling. How do I follow through on this feeling?
The follow-through is an ongoing exploration. I was reading what the Lanes mother, Rena Babbit-Lanes, was saying at one of the Black Mesa gatherings. She spoke of humans as “just little babies, already causing trouble”, how one of the elders to learn from is Mother Earth, because “we sleep on the same Mother Earth, she nourish us with plenty food”. And most of all she spoke of what we need to do.
This is how it is, my children.
You need to think about it very carefully.
You need to realize it fully and totally.
You need to make an offering and pray about it as hard as you can.
And then you need to do it.
Her words accepted both my yearning for connection and my fear of causing harm. They positioned me as a little baby with much to learn and a long time to learn it. This felt honest.
The project addresses a pattern I've noticed in myself: I start with genuine excitement and connect with people and ideas readily. But when obstacles arise or things get complex, I tend to float away to new projects instead of staying through the difficult parts. I'm learning that real contribution requires staying long enough for relationships and understanding to mature.
This work is teaching me to ground myself through relationships with people, places, and practices so I can remain committed when things get challenging. Instead of disappearing when I face obstacles, I would like to maintain a network of people who can witness me and remind me why this matters when I forget.1
I'm also sharing this story because I think others might recognize similar questions: How do we act on the awe and responsibility we feel toward places and people? How do we develop genuine connections across difference? How do we stay committed to what we love when the work gets difficult?
Current phase
The project name 感生组 (gǎn shēng zǔ) captures this desire for feeling to become action with people and ecosystems:
感 (gǎn): to sense, feel, respond
生 (shēng): to grow, live, sustain
组 (zǔ): a group, a gathering
I'm currently in China from May to July engaging with community-based conservation groups. In August I'll start the research phase within a PhD program. I hope this project becomes more entangled with other lives in the coming years. During May I focused on getting involved with conservation groups and their work in the Chinese context. I also listened to more people talk about spiritual lineages, economic trends, and the gaps between central policies and local realities that academic frameworks often miss.
Several themes are emerging from this time:
Agriculture: How can farming support both wildlife and community resilience? (inspired also by Chinese Felind Alliance, Maya, Ellie)
Spirits: How do spiritual traditions mix with each other and with new circumstances to let people adapt to the changes in the land? (inspired by Tonglen, Cicheng, Yutaro)
Nomads: Can herding lifestyles survive desertification and policy changes? (Inspired by Ting, Yizha, Lanes)
Elders and ancestors: What supports good elderly life in rural areas? Many rural communities are aging as young people migrate to cities. How do I relate to experienced elders as a young outsider? (Inspired by Shreya and my grandmas)
I'm developing practices that integrate different ways of knowing:
Body: How do movement, emotion, and sensing inform research? I'm working with somatic practices that help me stay present with what I'm learning rather than immediately analyzing it. (inspired by Juusho, Mango)
Science: How can modeling and observation serve eco-cultural life? I want to develop scientific tools that are useful to the communities I'm learning from, not just extractive. (inspired by Yinong, Li Li, Magali)
Art: How do stories, drawings, and oral histories invite co-existence? Creative expression seems to capture aspects of ecological relationships that data alone cannot hold. (inspired by Diba, Nana, Ujeza, Anusman)
Open call
If you have resonance, stories, questions, or recommendations about any of this, I'd love to listen or collaborate. This is meant to be a group effort - a way of learning together how to live well with the land and each other.
中文
朋友们，我正在学习如何与一片土地-生态系统-社区长久共处。
我从三月开始这个项目，作为我的博士研究，专注于集体动物行为的实地考察到建模的流程。随后我去了亚利桑那州的黑山（Black Mesa），支持Lanes一家，他们是迪内族（Diné），正在抵制从他们祖传的牧场搬迁。
放牧最初从科学角度吸引了我。但Lanes让我明白，他们的放牧与他们的生活方式和宇宙观密不可分。传统总是在变化、融合和适应。
我短暂的逗留让我既感动又迷茫。我被那种与土地相连的本土方式所吸引，但我没有那样的血统。我的家人一直在迁徙——进入城市、工厂、追逐金钱，被战争、家庭分裂所流离失所。我在大学期间有幸旅行，而其他人则留守并坚守他们的家园，这是我尚未学会的对我的家园的承诺。我确实很喜欢和长者、牧民交谈。我喜欢与动物和风同行。但我仅仅是一个为了自身利益而利用他们困境的访客吗？
我回想起在夏威夷的七年，感觉像个游客，然后再次到访莫纳克亚（Mauna Kea）抗议现场，最终才明白长者们在守护什么。
我回想起在中国经历四年新冠隔离后回到中国，当我在云南听到当地长者与年轻乐手一起演奏关于逃离、爱情和季节性昆虫的歌曲时，我哭了。
那种感觉以其强度让我感到惊讶。如果我没有离开，我就不会感受到这种特殊的重新连接的张力与释放。这就是迁徙如何塑造感受。我该如何将这种感受付诸行动呢？
将这种感受付诸行动是一个持续的探索。我读到了Lanes母亲，Rena Babbit-Lanes，在一次黑山聚会上的讲话。她谈到人类“只是小婴儿，已经制造了麻烦”，以及地球母亲是我们应该学习的长者之一，因为“我们睡在同一个地球母亲身上，她用充足的食物滋养我们”。最重要的是，她谈到了我们需要做的事情：
“孩子们，事情就是这样。 你们需要非常仔细地思考。 你们需要完全、彻底地认识到这一点。 你们需要尽最大努力进行供奉和祈祷。 然后，你们需要去做。”
她的话语同时接受了我对连接的渴望和对造成伤害的恐惧。它们将我定位为一个有许多东西要学习，并且需要很长时间来学习的小婴儿。这让我觉得很真实。
这个项目解决了我自己身上注意到的一个模式：我一开始充满真正的热情，并且很容易与人和想法建立联系。但当出现障碍或事情变得复杂时，我倾向于转向新项目，而不是坚持度过困难的部分。我正在学习，真正的贡献需要足够长久的坚持，以便关系和理解得以成熟。
这项工作正在教我通过与人、地方和实践的关系来扎根，这样我才能在事情变得具有挑战性时保持承诺。我希望在面对障碍时，不是消失，而是维持一个能够见证我，并在我忘记时提醒我为什么这很重要的人际网络。
我分享这个故事也是因为我认为其他人可能也会有类似的问题：我们如何将对地方和人民感受到的敬畏和责任付诸行动？我们如何跨越差异发展真诚的联系？当工作变得困难时，我们如何坚持我们所热爱的一切？
当前阶段
项目名称感生组 (gǎn shēng zǔ) 抓住了这种希望感受能转化为与人与生态系统共同行动的愿望：
感 (gǎn): 感知、感受、回应
生 (shēng): 生长、生存、维持
组 (zǔ): 团体、聚集
我目前在五月至七月期间在中国，与社区保护团体合作。八月，我将在一个博士项目中开始研究阶段。我希望这个项目在未来几年能与其他生命更加紧密地交织在一起。五月期间，我专注于参与中国的保护团体及其工作。我还听更多人谈论精神传承、经济趋势以及学术框架经常遗漏的中央政策与地方现实之间的差距。
这段时间涌现出几个主题：
农业： 农业如何同时支持野生动物和社区韧性？
精神： 精神传统如何相互融合并与新环境结合，使人们适应土地的变化？
游牧： 放牧生活方式能否在荒漠化和政策变化中生存下来？
长者与祖先： 什么支持农村地区的老年人过上好生活？许多农村社区正在老龄化，因为年轻人迁移到城市。作为一个年轻的外来者，我如何与经验丰富的长者建立关系？
我正在发展整合不同认知方式的实践：
身体： 运动、情感和感知如何为研究提供信息？我正在练习身体实践，帮助我保持当下，专注于我正在学习的内容，而不是立即分析它。
科学： 建模和观察如何服务于生态文化生活？我希望开发对所学习的社区有用的科学工具，而不仅仅是掠夺性的。（受到尹农、李丽、玛格丽的启发）
艺术： 故事、绘画和口述历史如何促进共存？创意表达似乎能捕捉到仅凭数据无法容纳的生态关系方面。
开放征集
如果你对其中任何内容有共鸣、故事、问题或建议，我都很乐意倾听或合作。
Thanks to Tonglen, Ellie, Edupunk and Yutaro for discussions about this introduction