Chinese believe in geomancy and feng shui.

To predict the future, they often turn to fortune tellers and feng shui masters for help. If someone is told after consulting a fortune teller that he lacks “water” in life, he is advised to add “water” by changing his name in a way that evokes “water” (one of the five elements).

Or he might even create water, literally, in his environs, by living next to a creek. By the same token, if a man lacks “earth,” he will be advised to live in proximity to nature.

It’s clear that from time immemorial, Chinese tend to seek comfort from nature, an integral part of their life.

Nowadays, if many Chinese choose to have their fortunes told, they will probably lack “earth” — literally.

They have been removed from nature and soil for too long.

The expansion of Chinese cities has come at the price of rural China. The new round of urbanization, which was revved up not long ago, has thus caused grave concerns about whether it will go down the same ill-conceived path. Many observers have called for protecting villages from being gobbled up by urbanization.

That is also the official line now, and having been expressed in a poetic way, the message has hit home to a general audience.

At the recent top conference on urbanization, attended by President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang, it was decided that future urbanization should keep our nostalgia of rural China alive — by preserving rural China. “Citizens will be able to see mountains, water, and remember how their native land looks,” it was announced at the meeting.

Appreciating rural beauty

Compared to the often jargon-filled, technocratic language of our officials, this appeal is really down-to-earth and accessible.

Accessible, but not necessarily endorsed by everyone. It is disturbing that in the minds of many Chinese, village has become a byword for backwater, and is despised for the rustic and poor life it embodies. In no way can it evoke any sense of pastoral beauty.

Beauty is now overwhelmingly defined by the glitzy skyscrapers and weird-looking structures that dominate the urban skyline. They represent the new orthodox version of beauty in the eyes of quite a few Chinese. The power of this orthodoxy is so strong, and tragically homogenizing, that even officials overseeing third- and fourth-tier cities have been convinced of its superiority.

Spellbound, they razed traditional villages and appropriate farmland. In their place rise high rise flats, squares and sculptures, oh wait, let’s not forget those criminally luxurious government office buildings, built often as a travesty of such landmark sites as the White House, with Roman pillars, domes and fountains.

The distortion of beauty’s definition has been the root cause of the threat confronting rural China. The encroachment of urbanization on villages exists not just in geographic terms, but in aesthetic terms as well.

It’s painful that migrants who go back to their hometowns after a long absence often find them completely disfigured, deprived of all the familiar fixtures.

As Xinhua noted on December 23, local cadres in their quest to enhance GDP have felled the trees, filled in the ponds, and knocked down the houses people have grown up with.

Amid the din of bulldozers, these links to the past are gone for good. Myriad villages have become empty shells of memory, devoid of soul and heritage. And with their disappearance, the cultural lineage that often spanned centuries has been cut off.

After we’ve built imposing emblems of beauty in cities, however, we find that we haven’t achieved the good life we had pictured. Cities are simply overcrowded, both by people and by cars, the roads often congested, and the hazy air unbreathable. At this point, we long to go back, go back to the countryside, to inhale the fresh, unpolluted air, eat uncontaminated, organic food, and even dream of becoming farmer one day.

But when the last rural retreats are now under threat by unbridled urbanization, where can we go?

Despite the stigmatization of countryside, most of us have rustic origins. Rural China is the repository of traditional virtues such as humility, thrift and industry. Pulverizing rural China would be equal to severing our own roots. A people without roots is without identity, pathetic.

At a top agriculture meeting on December 23 and 24, leaders agreed that peasants should be made proud of their occupation. A great idea. Ingenious ways must be formulated to keep farming alive, and dignified, as it is important to the nation’s food security.

It is funny that many Chinese tourists are taken aback by the beauty of rural Europe, little knowing that back home they have similar villages, which are now withering because of the exodus of inhabitants, if they have not already been bulldozed.

What’s even funnier, and ironic, is that some cadres, in their blind attitude toward history, have torn down real, derelict relics and put up ersatz ones.

For years, noted writer Feng Jicai has been agitating for the protection of old hamlets. “In the past decade, an average 80 villages has disappeared every day,” said Feng. “Their destruction means not only loss of history, but also of culture, customs, inherent work habits, man’s relationship with the heavens, ancestral worship and beliefs.”

Intellectuals like Feng try very hard to hold back the bulldozers, with occasional success, but often more failures. They merit our thanks.

Equally deserving of commendation are some late intellectuals, who dedicated their life to saving the past for future Chinese.

Tourists to the Japanese cities of Nara and Kyoto will marvel at the relics perfectly modeled on the architecture in Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD), when Japan was a disciple of everything from China. What they often don’t know is that these relics are still there, largely thanks to one Chinese, famous architect Liang Sicheng (1901-1972).

Lessons not learned

Toward the end of World War II, before Allied troops began their air raids on Japan, Liang, the son of renowned reformist politician Liang Qichao, visited the Allied Headquarters in Chongqing.

He advised commanders to avoid bombing the cities of Nara and Kyoto, rich in architecture, relics and history. He pointed them out on maps.

And so the Americans did, thus leaving many precious relics intact. Grateful, the Japanese erected a statue of Liang in Nara in 2010.

Nonetheless, Liang and his wife Lin Huiyin, also a famous intellectual, couldn’t save the ancient city walls of Beijing in the 1950s, despite their best efforts. At the behest of Soviet experts, who knew nothing about Chinese history, these magnificent walls, which had survived over 1,000 years of dynastic vicissitudes and regime changes, were ruthlessly reduced to rubble to make way for a polished “modern” capital. Nowadays, only a 1.5-kilometer-long section remains of what was once a historical wonder.

Officials today should be told the story of Liang, a story of painful contrasts.

They ought to be reminded that they will go down in ignominy (it is hoped) and will be haunted by guilt if they put GDP before heritage.

As urbanization picks up, the authorities have spelled out what it should not be like. But without specified punishment for violations, there is no guarantee that urbanization will not lead to an impasse again, especially when the same people are steering it and the same faulty incentives (boosting GDP) are in place.

After all, we cannot expect every official to be conscientious and reflective after hearing the story of how Liang was able to saved relics in Japan, but not in his native country.

Hopefully, our urban managers can come to grips with the fact that the village is not the antithesis of the city. Rather, it warrants protection. It should not become a dumping ground for pollutants, and fertile land should not be flooded and centuries-old homes should not be flattened in frequent land grabs.

A desolate countryside cannot evoke nostalgia for pastoral roots, nor will farmers be proud to work the soil.

We all have our roots, don’t we?

This column is named after the head-butting bird that feeds on pests.