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.

"This volume makes a unique and valuable contribution to our understanding of the interactions between religion and nature/environment in China, both past and present. Not only does it cover Chinese religion in its multiplicity (not being restricted to Buddhism, Daoism, or Confucianism alone), it also turns a critical eye on how these two interact." Worldviews - Seth Clippard Hung Kuang University, Taiwan