The practice of staying
The start of 感生组 (gǎn shēng zǔ)
Friends, I want to invite you into a change in me recently. It’s roughly in the shape of a research project and personal decision: how might I, as a three-generation-uprooted person, learn to stay when I feel a genuine tearfulness with a place, community, ecosytem?
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, into 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.
I realized I needed to allow this project to hold parts that can't be quantified: the sensing that comes before thinking, realities that might require changing my assumptions, the creative elements, the conversations that seem to wander but actually weave understanding.
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? I'm learning from groups like the Shanshui Center about approaches that don't pit conservation against rural livelihoods. (inspired also by Chinese Felind Alliance, Maya, Ellie)
Spirits: How do adaptive spiritualities nourish ecosystems? Traditional beliefs are mixing with new circumstances, creating practices that help people stay connected to land and each other. (inspired by Tonglen, Cicheng, Yutaro)
Nomads: Can herding traditions survive desertification and policy changes? I'm exploring how Tibetan herders are adapting their practices while maintaining cultural connections. (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.
Thanks to Tonglen, Ellie, Edupunk and Yutaro for discussions about this introduction