Water is dying everywhere

Abstract

This flash piece asks what development means for rivers, indigenous farmers, and tourists when we redirect, move, and siphon water from one region to another. The work considers rivers as traces of time, peoples, and environments, following my chronology and physical residence(s) in California, Hunan, Guangxi, and Yunnan in China. I begin in the Bay Area, where I grew up, and move to my time spent on five rivers in Southern China: the Xiangjiang, the Li, the Jinsha, the Lancang, and the Nujiang.