Village Fengshui Forests of Southern China : Culture , History , and Conservation Status

The post-reform revival of fengshui has revitalized village management of “fengshui forests” (fengshuilin). This study examines the cosmological principles, landscape ecology, conservation status, and floristic diversity of forest patches comprising critical biological refugia in China’s subtropical broadleaved forest region. From 1949-79, fengshui was prohibited by the state, but many lineage villages continued to protect fengshuilin through nontraditional means. Village fengshuilin still lack official state recognition, which impedes systematic research and conservation planning. We assess the political ecology of fengshui practice, fengshuilin management, enforcement of harvesting bans, and tree species selection in seventeen villages associated with over forty forest patches. There is little species selection on the basis of utility, thus fengshuilin contain diverse taxonomic assemblages resembling patches of old growth forest. Strong village management traditions and a general lack of state intervention suggest robust local institutional capacity for maintaining and enhancing forest diversity and protecting unique indigenous landscape


Introduction
This research focuses on village fengshui forests, known as fēngshŭilín (风水林), which are common but understudied features in the rural landscapes of southern and central China's subtropical broadleaved evergreen forest region and southern China's tropical monsoonal rainforest region.Previous studies that recognize these forests as part of the Han Chinese rural landscape include those of E.N. Anderson and Marja Anderson, G.W. Lovelace, Wei Fan, Nicholas K. Menzies, and Youn Yeo-Chang et al. 1 More detailed field studies include those of Zhuang Xue Ying and Richard T. Corlett, Chris Coggins, Thomas C.Y. Chan, and H. Liang et al. 2 All of the latter studies focus mostly on Hakka 3 villages, and with the exception of Coggins, all are limited to Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta region of southern Guangdong.While it has long been established that Buddhist and Daoist temples in all regions of China have provided refugia for trees, understory plants, and wildlife, 4 much less is known about forests protected by lineage villages across many generations through local institutional practices and how such practices may have been shaped by the state.This research combines natural and social scientific methods in order, first, to reconstruct the history and map the geographical extent of fengshui forests and second, to ascertain their significance for the preservation of biological diversity and as part of an emerging discourse on nature conservation in China.
Fieldwork conducted in the summer of 2011 was the first phase of a multiyear investigation of village fengshuilin in ten to fourteen provinces.As such, it establishes a baseline for methodology, critical questions, and preliminary hypotheses regarding the cosmological concepts, discursive formations, and local resource management strategies that have sustained fengshuilin preservation as part of a suite of southern Chinese ethno-ecological practices over the longue durée.In ethnographic terms, this requires an understanding of the durability of vitalism in Chinese vernacular expression and everyday life, particularly as it animates the cosmo-ecology of fengshui landscapes.In historical terms, we examine breaks, continuities, and reconfigurations in the relationship between political power and local resource management from the pre-communist period (before 1949), through the era of authoritarian Maoism (1949-79), and into the post-reform period (1979-present).In the context of the last period, our long-term objectives are three-fold.First, we are analyzing the degree to which fengshuilin management practices have contributed to biological diversity and habitat heterogeneity in southern and central China.Second, we are examining the roles of local, regional, and national state institutions in recognizing and protecting fengshuilin, Third, we are investigating the relationship between fengshuilin management traditions and emerging conceptions of place, nature, and environmentalism in the popular imagination.
This paper adopts a political ecology perspective, focusing on the political, economic, and social factors that relate to conceptions of the environment and processes of ecological change. 5Given the fact that fengshui has long been a matter of ultimate cosmological concern for corporate lineage villages 6 across southern China, many of which were once largely self-governed, we argue first that village fengshui is a form of ecological vitalism-a system premised on the existence of supernatural forces connecting the living and nonliving elements of the landscape and felt to be essential for the survival of the lineage as a viable polity; second, that fengshui is simultaneously a set of conceptual bases and performative modes of practical action enabling collective management of plant resources (forests and croplands) and hydrological resources (streams, overland flow, and groundwater); and third, that fengshui forests have long been preserved for their ecological and hydrological functions rather than conserved for the economic utility of certain harvestable species, and for this reason, these forests and small groves exhibit high levels of species diversity.A final point of our work is that despite radically different official discourses on nature and culture before 1949, during the Maoist period, and in the post-reform period of economic and social liberalization, the fengshui forests that have endured can be understood as actants. 7In specific terms, that means that the forests themselves have had, and will continue to have, significant influence on the humans who must reckon with their multifaceted presence as ancient biological, cultural, spiritual, and aesthetic features in the landscapes of southern China.

FENGSHUI AND THE POLITICAL ECOLOGY OF FOREST CONSERVATION
China is widely considered a "forest poor" country, with per capita forest coverage that is one-fifth the world average, and per capita standing forest stock that is one-eighth the world average. 8Most of China's forest coverage was lost many centuries in the past, and by 1949 forest coverage was roughly 8.6 percent. 9Due to state-led reforestation efforts undertaken since then, including the Sloping Lands Conversion Project (SLCP) (2001-2010), 10 China now has a total forest coverage of over 175 million hectares, or nearly 20 percent of the total land area. 11However, at least one-third of this consists of biologically impoverished conifer plantations, most of which are managed by the state, and only about 12 percent of the land area has vestiges of the original tropical and subtropical broadleaved evergreen forests of southern China, the mixed deciduous-broadleaved evergreen forests of central China, and the deciduous and coniferous forests of the north and northeast (Figure 1).In terms of the number of tree species, China's subtropical broadleaved evergreen forest and mixed deciduous-broadleaved evergreen forests are the most biologically diverse of their kind in the world. 12These forest regions have also long been noted for their biological affinity with the forests of Eastern North America, the result of a disjunct distribution following the breakup of the Laurasian landmass at the end of Cretaceous Period. 13ven the relative scarcity of even successional remnants of China's primeval forests, preservation of existing mature and late-successional forest patches is critical.In this regard, we must note the complex political ecological relations between the state and local people, which are manifested in a variety of environment and development projects and associated conflicts.While the SLCP is a national program geared toward forest and watershed conservation and is a form of governmentality that nurtures the production of environmental subjects and "environmentality, " 14 the local state-at the level of the county, township, and even village governments-is deeply involved in brokering commercial development schemes that appropriate village crop and forest lands, often to the benefit of officials and private corporations.The December 2011 "Wukan Revolt, " in the eponymous village in southern Guangdong, is arguably exceptional only because it became a high-profile international spectacle.As a grassroots protest against allegedly illegal sales of long-term leases on farmland and forests to private developers for the construction of industrial parks and apartment complexes, the case is emblematic of an enormous wave of land tenure conflicts across China, with estimates of "mass incidents" ranging in number from an official figure of 10,000 since the mid-1990s, to a Chinese sociologist's estimate of 180,000 in 2010 alone. 15s Liu Xiaobo notes, "In more than twenty years of urban modernization and across a 'great leap forward' in real estate values, officials wielding the power of the state and invoking government ownership of land have colluded with businessmen all over the country to carry out a kind of Chinese Enclosure Movement." 16 Citing a series of "manifestos" written by Chinese farmers' organizations that demand what Liu characterizes as rural land privatization, he states that "At last farmers are speaking for themselves, loud and clear, and a silent nation is hearing a cry from deep inside its heartland." 17 While it is beyond the scope of this article to examine the likely mechanisms and possible ramifications of full-scale land privatization in China's countryside, an historical political ecology of fengshuilin management requires an account of how fengshui principles and practices have long served to constitute lineage villages in cosmological terms that are inextricable from both the habitus of everyday socio-ecological practices and the political struggles and clashes that define the modern history of China's countryside.We begin with a review of key terms.
Fengshui, or "wind" (fēng, 風) (and) "water" (shuĭ, 水), is a colloquial term for the ancient Chinese way of conceptualizing and regulating the flow of vital forces or substances (known as qì, 氣) through the landscape.Fengshui theory and practice seek to optimize the locations and site conditions of houses, temples, tombs, and settlements in order to harmonize the human realm with the natural and supernatural forces and agencies associated with nature and the cosmos (tiān,天).Formal terms for fengshui include "dìlĭ" (地理, earth principles)-the modern word for "geography"-and "kānyú" (堪舆), the canopy of heaven and the chariot of the earth, a term emphasizing the cosmic relationship between heaven and earth.The symbolic systems found in fengshui are based in correlative cosmology, and canonical fengshui theory can be traced back to the early Han dynasty (202 BCE -89 CE), when it was already deployed in the construction of cities and palaces. 18Parallel with this "great" tradition are myriad rural folk practices that have both drawn from and informed fengshui doctrines passed down through texts.These have roots in both Han and non-Han cultures of southern and southwestern China, where geopiety (religious regard for terrestrial features) and animism are still common. 19The "great tradition-little tradition" dichotomy provides little in the way of an accurate history of core-periphery relations, and a scholarly consensus on the place of fengshui and fengshui forests in state-local relations during premodern times has yet to emerge.Research on this topic is scant but includes promising leads.
On the one hand, we have a view of rural isolation and village autarky, 20 on the other hand, in Late Imperial China there were state efforts to promote the lineage village model as a precondition for the rights of land ownership and incorporation in the administrative system. 21Working in Hong Kong's New Territories, Eugene and Marja Anderson were among the first cultural ecologists to undertake a study of village fengshui.They note that in rural regions of southern China before 1949 "state control was almost nonexistent; anarchy prevailed, order being preserved by the lineages and other associations…anarchy in peasant villages meant not chaos and strife, but a dependence on mutual-aid and kinship ties to preserve order and efficiency." 22 Showing how social relations were largely mediated by the "unique science of site planning, " that is fengshui, they add that "The perfect plan is roughly as follows: the house, village or grave must be situated on a slope or raised place.Projecting spurs should partially encircle it.Trees and plants should grow lushly, and in particular there should be a grove of large trees just behind (upslope from) the village." 23 In these and other passages, the Andersons stress the depth of interconnection between landscape management, social order, and local governance.Careful to avoid reductive functionalist assumptions about the "ecological purposes" of fengshui, they treat it more as a set of cogni-tive models and performative practices in the (re)creation of a harmonious cosmos.In this view, it was critical for communities that were often politically and economically marginal to draw upon magico-religious conceptions of the environment in a system geared toward ecologically adaptive site planning and landscape management.While this view is compelling, it is important to keep in mind the possibility that the state not only promoted lineage villages and the keeping of ancestral records as preconditions for corporate membership, but also that there is evidence for imperial involvement in fengshui forest management as early as the Song Dynasty (960-1279). 24hile details of premodern state-local relationships involving fengshuilin management remain unclear, perhaps it is not surprising that in some of his earliest writings on revolution in the countryside, Mao Zedong targeted lineage organizations and fengshui as major structural (and "super-structural") barriers to modern progress, progress that was to be based on the inculcation of class consciousness and a sense of historic and political agency among the peasantry.Early in 1927, the year that the Nationalists (Guomindang) largely destroyed the Chinese Communist Party in Shanghai, and while Mao was still concurrently a member of the Guomindang and the Communist Party, he completed the now classic "Report on an Investigation of the Hunan Peasant Movement." In this treatise, based on almost two years of experience organizing peasant associations in rural Hunan, Mao wrote that in the countryside men were subject to three repressive systems of authority: the state and formal political authority; the clan system, including central and branch ancestral temples; and the "theocratic authority" of gods and spirits.Women were subject to these and the additional system of patriarchy, embodied in the form of "the authority of the husband." 25 Under such conditions, landlords and lineage temple heads had to be overthrown, idols smashed, temples demolished or converted to schools, and fengshui abandoned as superstition.
In the countryside I, too, agitated among the peasants for abolishing superstitions.What I said was: "One who believes in the Eight Characters (bāguà) hopes for good luck; one who believes in geomancy [fengshui] hopes for the beneficial influence of their burial grounds [xìn fēngshuĭ wàng fénshān guàn qì].This year the local bullies, bad gentry, and corrupt officials all collapsed within a few months.Is it possible that till a few months ago they were all in good luck and all under the beneficial influence of their burial grounds, while in the last few months they have all of a sudden been in bad luck and their burial grounds all ceased to exert any beneficial influence on them?" 26 After 1949, land redistribution was carried out across China, and during the Great Leap Forward (1958-61), croplands, bamboo forests, and fengshui forests were usually designated as collective lands (jítĭde tŭdì) and only productive forests and other lands at greater distance from the village were designated as national lands (guóyŏude tŭdì).Thus, in spite of the prohibition of overt practices and public discourse on fengshui, fengshuilin were in many case as effectively protected as before, and this was a socio-ecological legacy of centuries of local management institutions.As villagers in southwest Fujian explained, many fengshuilin were too remote to be useful for industrial purposes, even during the Backyard Iron Smelting Movement (Dàliàn Gāngtĭe), and when fengshuilin were threatened by state projects, villagers often defended them on practical grounds for their role in protecting the village from wind and erosion, or in providing a shady respite from field labor. 27Thus, during the numerous political campaigns that swept through the countryside between 1949 and 1979, fengshuilin normally fared much better than the ancestral temples (cítáng), earthgod shrines (tŭdìgōng, gōngwáng), and small Daoist and Buddhist shrines (ānmiào) with which the forests were (and are once more today) closely associated (see below).

PRELIMINARY FIELD RESEARCH
Our field research in the summer of 2011 focused on fengshuilin in Hong Kong and the provinces of Guangdong, Fujian, and Jiangxi.Most of the field surveys were conducted in the Meihuashan, Jinggangshan, and Chebaling (national-level) nature reserves (Figure 2).This study analyzes the relationship between fengshui cosmology, indigenous landscape ecology, and the structural and functional characteristics of fengshuilin as forest patches vital to a belief system that is at once social, ecological, and spiritual.We approach this subject emically, that is in terms of the logic of fengshui theories codified in texts and passed down in everyday practice, and etically, in terms of the ecological services and social functions that help define fengshuilin in natural and social scientific terms.Village-based research included indoor, semiformal structured interviews with individuals or small groups.This was followed by less formal, less structured interviews and discussions and by outdoor research in fengshui forests that involved discussions with villagers and forest assays.The latter included species identification and measurement of diameter at breast height (dbh) of the five largest trees in each forest patch and the identification of all trees over 20 cm dbh in 10 x 10 m quadrats in selected forest patches.All interactions were conducted in Mandarin and recorded on survey forms, digital videotape, digital audiotape, and with digital photography.GPS data were recorded and will be incorporated into a geographic information system after more field data have been collected.

Settlement Data
Of the seventeen villages where full surveys were conducted, eleven (65 percent) were located within nature reserves; two additional villages had fengshui forests designated as protected areas by the state (at the national level in Congtou, Fujian, and at the township level in Yanzao, Guangdong) (Table 1).Fifteen (88 percent) of the villages were inhabited by Hakka.Estimated ages of the villages ranged from 59 to 1,000 years, with an average age of 470 years.The reported number of generations in situ ranged from 6 to 30, with an average of 18 generations, and according to these estimates, there is an average of 26 years per generation.Primary economic activities in all of the villages consist of a combination of extra-local employment associated with high rates of labor outmigration by young and middle-aged adults (up to 70-80 percent of adult laborers in some villages), and economic land uses associated with agriculture and forestry.Meihuashan villages devoted nearly all productive mountain slopes to the propagation of mao bamboo (Phyllostachys pubescens) in pure stands.These villages devote nearly all agricultural lands of the valleys and lower slopes to commercial vegetable production.Jinggangshan villages continue to grow rice for local consumption and to produce some timber in Chinese fir (Cunninghamia lanceolata) plantations, and Chebaling villages had a similar land use profile.Ecological Data on Forest Patches-Tree Species Selection All of the forests surveyed were either broadleaf or mixed.Identification and measurement of the five largest trees in each forest patch resulted in a total of 56 individual broadleaved trees and 29 individual needle-leaved trees (Table 2).With only one exception, the largest individuals in mixed stands were needleleaved trees, most commonly Cryptomeria fortunei (Chinese cedar), followed by Taxus chinensis (Chinese Yew), Tsuga longibracteata (or Nothotsuga longibracteata, Chinese hemlock), and Cunninghamia lanceolata (Chinese fir).Informants in Meihuashan, where needleleaved trees are a much more common forest component, believe that Cryptomeria, Taxus, and Cunninghamia in pure and mixed stands were planted by village ancestors.Broadleaved species were the predominant element in both mixed and broadleaved forests, and are believed to have grown without human selection, propagation, or direct management.Of the largest trees measured, there were 25 species of broadleaved and four species of needleleaved trees represented.None of the broadleaved trees were described by villagers as having particular economic value, thus they were not planted or selectively protected for utilitarian purposes.From this it is clear that the broadleaved and mixed fengshui forests have been managed for what are now deemed "ecosystem services" rather than as sources of timber or non-timber resources.As a result they are far more diverse and structurally complex than the monocultural tree plantations that make up the majority of reforested areas throughout China.In order to understand the species composition and raison d' être of the fengshuilin, we must consider the broader purposes of village fengshui.Fengshui -Vitalist Cosmology and Rural Landscape Ecology: The Lineage Village as Wind-Water Polity Interviews with fengshui masters (fēngshuĭ xiānshēng) and other villagers revealed that fengshuilin are essential components of a vitalist cosmology premised upon managing village environs to optimize the spirit and vigor of landscapes and their living and deceased inhabitants.Recognizing the lack of a suitable term in English to describe forces and substances that infuse and animate both the organic life forms and the non-living components of a landscape, we use vitalism as a proxy term.Modern scientific cosmology rejects the notion of "life force" and the possibility of a vital energy or matter that animates and unites humans (both living and dead) and non-human elements of the landscape.As Latour explains, "the modern constitution" insists upon a separation of humans and "culture" from nonhumans and "nature, " which is maintained through practices of "purification." 28 This discursive formation can make it difficult, if not impossible, to conceive of other ways of knowing and being in the world, although we note some recent and vigorous efforts among western social theorists and philosophers to conceive of more vital relationships between humans and non-humans. 29s a vitalist cosmology, fengshui provides guidelines for the siting and improvement of yángzhái (陽宅), houses of the living, and yīnzhái (陰宅), tombs, or "houses" of the dead.Qì (氣), the primary substance or material of ultimate concern, flows through lóngmài (龍 脈), or shallow subterranean "dragon veins".It takes the form of shāqì (殺氣)-qi that kills or weakens the landscape and its denizens-or wàngqì (旺氣)-qi that promotes the spirit (shén, 神), prosperity, and health of all beings and elements within the village landscape.Of particular significance for our purposes is the fact that the flow of qi is mediated by wind, water, sunlight, terrain, and vegetation.For instance, dangerous qi is conducted within shāfēng (殺風, "killing wind") and shāshuĭ ( 殺水, "killing water"), which are associated with the destruction caused by high velocity winds and high velocity overland flow of water, respectively.Fengshuilin ameliorate the effects of shafeng and shashui because the flow of qi underground is fairly shallow and is thus affected by sunlight, which adds yang (陽), or positive qi.Thus a given site's exposure to sunlight is generally salutary as long as the area in question is not exposed to the effects of deadly winds and waters. 30or these reasons, fengshuilin are situated immediately behind and upslope from the village (Figures 3 and 4), on what is called the zhŭshān (主山), or master (also "host" or "owner") mountain. 31Ideally the village is located at (or in) the "lair" (xué, 穴), which rests on a slope above the floodplain croplands, a site where yin and yang energies are believed to be (or need to be) in balance.Since China is in the northern hemisphere, it is considered best to "sit in the north facing south" (坐北朝南 zuòbĕi cháonán); in other words, villages and individual houses should "face" the sun, which is in the southern sky for the duration of the year.Direct sunlight promotes the growth of rice crops, which are ideally located in a broad floodplain south of the village, and the sun's rays provide warmth for the village in winter at the same time that winds from the north are blocked by mountains "behind" the village.Figure 3 thus denotes an ideal location for a house or village, using the analogue of the human body, with the xue fronted by a míngtáng (明堂) or ("bright") hall reflecting celestial qi from the sun into the xue.The fertile and generative xue is surrounded and protected by the master mountain in the north, and spurs or ridges to the west (the white tiger, báihŭ, 白 虎) and to the east (the azure dragon, qīnglóng, 青龍).Higher mountains extending farther north from the master mountain include the parent mountain, grandparent mountain, and Kunlun mountain, a series that both partially replicates the lineage structure and connects the village to the sacred originary point of gods in the Daoist pantheon. 32In fact, the Gonghe village ancestral record (zŭpŭ) describes the dendritic pattern of qi flow into the village as having its origin in the Kunlun Mountains of the far west. 33his general crescentshaped configuration is replicated at all scales of the built environment, from tombs, to shrines, to temples, to the villages as a whole (Figures 4-7).
Our research in Fujian yielded the most complex systems of fengshuilin siting within the three-province set of field sites (Figure 4).In short, there are four types of fengshuilin according to the local typology, and while the first was observed in all study areas, the other three were only observed in Fujian.The four types are: 1) Houlongshan fengshuilin (後龍山風水林), which are immediately behind and upslope from the village, protecting it from erosion caused by overland flow, helping ensure a year-round supply of ground and surface water, and protecting the watersheds of the incoming streams which comprise the primary water supply for crop irrigation and everyday use (Figures 5 and 8).All of the houlongshan fengshuilin observed consisted of broadleaved forests or predominantly broadleaved forests.2) Shan' ao fengshuilin (山凹風水林), which block winds that enter the valley through wind gaps (shān' āo 山凹).In Fujian these consist almost exclusively of Chinese cedars (liŭshān, 柳杉, Cryptomeria fortunei) growing in saddles and along the streams that descend from them, and these trees are said to have been planted by village ancestors.3) Shuĭtóu (水頭) or cūntóu (村頭) fengshuilin, which consist of Chinese cedar or broadleaved forests that serve some of the same purposes as the aforementioned forests.4) Cūnkŏu/wĕi or shuĭkŏu/wĕi (村口/尾 or 水口/尾) forests, which are typically broadleaved forests that  perform many of the same functions, but are unique in that they are supposed to "hold in" the village's wealth and prevent it from flowing away with the water or wind that exit the village space down-valley.
Each of these forest types is also closely associated with one or more of the following kinds of temples and shrines: 1) cítáng (祠堂), the ancestral temples that are typically placed at or near the center of the village and directly in front of the primary (houlongshan) fengshuilin (Figure 5); 2) tŭdìgōng/gōngwáng (土地公/公王), the earthgod shrines that in Fujian may number two to five in a single village and are located in or near virtually all feng-  shuilin (Figure 6); 3) ānmiào (安廟), small covered shrines that house Buddhist and Daoist deities of particular local import; and 4) qiáomiào/fēngshuĭ qiáo (橋廟/風水橋), which are bridge-temples-covered bridges housing elaborate shrines, in the first case, and more recently built uncovered bridges that are also believed to improve village fengshui, in the second (Figure 7).As Guan Tuchun, a fengshui master in Guizhuping village (Meihuashan, Fujian) explained, these sacred sites and the shen (gods and spirits) that dwell within them cannot endure without good fengshui.So it is necessary to maintain healthy fengshuilin in close proximity to each temple and shrine. 34om an emic standpoint, the fengshui settlement system optimizes the flow of beneficial qi; mitigates destructive qi; draws in and retains wealth, health, and longevity; and confers blessings upon the ancestors, the living, and generations of descendants.From an etic standpoint, it provides a cognitive map for the production and conservation of wet rice agro-ecosystems through a system of forest management, soil conservation, and erosion control that ensures long-term watershed protection and hydrological stability.Maintaining forests and other vegetation on slopes surrounding the village supports an agro-ecosystem based on closed feedback loops of matter, with fertilizer traditionally being derived from human and livestock wastes as well as from the ashes of herbaceous plants of the forest understory that were gathered and burned for this purpose. 35Endowing this indigenous landscape ecology with cosmic significance constitutes the village as a coherent lineagecentric space that unifies members of the community within a watershed, which is thus a cosmic center both materially and ideationally.Corporate communities can thus be understood, at least before the ideological indoctrinations of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist modernity, as wind-water polities.

Enforcement of Harvesting Bans
In all of the villages surveyed, residents stated that before 1949 there were customary punitive measures to prevent tree cutting in fengshuilin.In some communities the belief in supernatural retribution was sufficiently strong to act as a deterrent, and there was purportedly no need for a system of surveillance and punishment.In other villages, traditional punitive measures added weight to the fear of supernatural effects.Today these traditional forms of prohibition on cutting have been enhanced or replaced by fines imposed by the state or by village managers.In villages of Chebaling, traditional human enforcement measures were believed to have been unnecessary.In Hewu village, trees in the fengshui forests were believed to have magical powers of regeneration (healing rapidly if not fully cut down) and tree cutting was believed to cause illness in humans.In Xiba, a Yao village, it is still believed that spirits who reside in the fengshui forest can cause retributive illnesses in response to tree damage.In all of the villages of Meihuashan the traditional punishment for tree cutting was a fine of one full grown pig-a draconian penalty for most families.In Jiangxi, two villages reported that customary law required that all timber illicitly harvested from the fengshui forest must immediately be burned (perhaps as a sacrificial offering); one village punished offenders with detainment, beating, and deprivation of food; and one village reportedly needed no specific punishment.
Whatever the traditional punishments for violation of tree cutting and plant harvesting may have been in the past, fengshuilin in several villages had become subject to state enforcement policies and punishments, even if reporting of illicit activities was mostly seen as the responsibility of villagers themselves.By 2011, two of the fengshuilin had even been converted to state protected areas.In Yanzao (Shenzhen) the fengshuilin has been converted to a township-level nature reserve.Fengshui forests in the Meihuashan reserve are overseen by villagers and reserve managers, and tree cutting is punishable by law.In Congtou (Meihuashan), where the fengshui forest has become a national protected area, villagers view the state as more responsible for forest protection than the village.In Jinggangshan, fengshui forests associated with villages in the core area received greater state protection than those in the buffer zone.Interviewees in Chebaling reported that currently their communities are the most important arbiters of fengshuilin management.
In regard to management decisions relating to potential resources in the fengshui forests, including plant propagation, gathering, and understory clearance, there is presently no state involvement.Although there was some bamboo cultivation in the fengshuilin of Meihuashan, it had not resulted in severe understory clearance (despite the fact that even herbaceous plants in well-managed bamboo stands are cut down to ground level at least once a year).Commercial plant cultivation was minimal in the fengshui forests of Chebaling and Jinggangshan and these forests typically had extremely dense shrub and herbaceous understory layers.In none of the three major study areas was understory clearance a regular part of the management regime.

CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH
Preliminary research indicates that the Chinese lineage village can be viewed, from an historical perspective, as a wind-water polity based on an indigenous landscape ecology intended to sustain life by attending to vital flows and currents.Fengshuilin are presently among the best long-term intentional tree refugia for biodiversity because they have been protected to serve immediate, local environmental needs without anthropogenic selective pressure based on species utility.Fengshuilin are also actants in the persistence of rural fengshui and village community ecology.It remains to be seen whether growing knowledge and awareness of the forests will inspire new conceptions of human-nature relations in rural southern China, and whether they will increasingly become incorporated within modern forest conservation policies and structures, including nature reserves and other protected areas. 36In any case, fengshui, fengshuilin, and lineages comprise a central node in land tenure and biodiversity politics, and the implications have yet to be fully recognized.
Further research will focus on 1) the total distribution of village fengshuilin in ten to fourteen provinces and the development of a county-level GIS; 2) additional analysis of the political ecology of fengshui practice with regard to gender, age, affect, and the politics of nature under a regime of state-managed capitalism and mass urban-rural labor migration; and 3) present and potential roles of fengshuilin in new social constructions of nature and society, with special regard to conservation planning, land tenure conflict, and environmentality. 37These three areas of research are essentially related because while the former will provide the first accurate view of the distribution of village fengshuilin in China beyond the Hakka culture region, the second will enhance our understanding of how these forests figure in the lives of rural residents and, in some cases, urban visitors as well.Policies associated with the New Socialist Countryside (新社会主义农村, xīn shèhuìzhŭyì nóngcūn) 38 and national forest protection programs 39 are likely to affect village land use in complex ways.Ongoing multidisciplinary research on fengshui forests will strengthen our study of biodiversity conservation and other contemporary environmental challenges in China.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.China's subtropical broadleaved evergreen forests and mixed deciduous broadleaved evergreen forests are the most floristically diverse of their kind in the world.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. In the summer of 2011, preliminary field work was conducted in Hong Kong; more systematic work was carried out in the Meihuashan Nature Reserve in Fujian, the Jinggangshan Nature Reserve, in Jiangxi, and in (and around) the Chebaling Nature Reserve, in Guangdong.Research was also conducted in one village, Yanzao, on the coast in Shenzhen.

Figure 3 .
Figure 3.The structural configuration of fengshui sites can be likened to a human body.Shown here are ideal house sites and village sites.

Figure 4 .
Figure 4. Fengshuilin types are associated with specific locations relative to the settlement.

Figure 7 .
Figure 7. Bridge temple (qiaomiao) in Mafang Village (Meihuashan, Fujian) with broadleaved fengshuilin in background.Bridge recently widened with cement slab to form new "front" of temple.Originally those who crossed the bridge had to enter through the sides that are now walled off.