University of Pennsylvania, Cornell University, Columbia University

The black water, filled with a mélange of industrial raw materials but showing no signs of life, aroused in me a sense of unease. The gray grass, covered in colorful, organic garbage but no flowers, disturbed me. It wasn't until a weekend last spring, when I finally returned to my native village, a small town near Jiangsu, that I had my impression of Chinese rural communities profoundly overturned. The scenery wasn't tidy or beautiful like it was in my memories of times past. Rather, it had become a place of utter rubbish, dirty and disordered. The river where I had learned how to swim, once…