In my own private reading, I’m enjoying an adult non-fiction study titled The Way of the Panda: The Curious History of China’s Political Animal by Henry Nicholls. I was fascinated to learn from that book that pandas are a relatively new discovery, if “discovery” is used in the same sense as “Columbus’ discovery of the the New World.”

Obviously, pandas have been around since the beginning, and Chinese people have known about them for thousands of years. History suggests, however, that they weren’t much known by anyone other than Sichuan-area locals. The complete lack of anything panda in China’s vast art and literary history suggests that their “national treasure” was a totally ignored animal, at least until recent times.

In the latter half of the 19th century, a foreign missionary and naturalist killed a curious animal and sent its hide back to a museum of natural history in England. Scientists were dumbfounded. They couldn’t figure out what this new animal was, and a sudden surge of interest swept the world. Hunting parties visited China in search of this strange new animal, and China’s leaders caught on to its popularity. Eventually, after it was discovered that pandas were quickly becoming extinct, China paced a ban on their hunting and began setting up preserves to protect this treasure. They also began using the animal as a political pawn, purchasing friendships with whole nations through the gifting of individuals pandas.

The Year of the Panda is a fictional story of a village at the edges of a bamboo forest in Sichuan. The forest is dying, on the downswing of a once-every-sixty-year disease that kills the plant and main food source for pandas. The animals have been seen leaving the woods half-starved and in search of food. The government has a plan to move the village elsewhere in order to plant new groves and heartier bamboo species, but the villagers aren’t yet ready to go.

This was a great story about conservation and animal protection that sparked a number of great conversations with my children. The following thoughts are some of the discussions it brought out.

I’m a naturalist myself, though I haven’t always been one. In fact, I grew up learning from my Christian community more about the “have dominion over all creation and subdue it” side of things than the “care for all creation” side. I learned to scoff at recycling and ignore labels like “endangered” or “deforestation.” I was told that “it’s all going to burn anyway, so use the Earth as you please.” Environmentalists were worshipers of a false god, I was always told, so don’t get sucked into their secular way of thinking.

It took me moving to China, actually, to get a sense of what environmental carelessness looks like—and I’m not a bad Christian for noticing it! Sure China has its nature preserves like the one described in this book, but much of the land I saw in China back in 2005 was a miserable garbage heap of litter and plastic, virtually unfit for habitation. Things have improved in China over the years—especially on Hainan island where no-plastic initiatives are taking root—but the people require a shift in mentality like what Lu Yi experiences in this book.

Mirium Schlein’s audience isn’t Chinese students, I understand, but children of all cultures and from all environments. The lessons implied are lessons we all need, no matter where live, and no matter if we see a starving panda or mistreated dog. We do have a responsibility to care for and tend this earth which is our home, for we are God’s gardeners. We have responsibility to limit the suffering of the beasts around us, if it’s in our power to do so, not because “we’re animals just like them” but because we’re God’s image-bearers and His stewards here on Earth. He gave humanity a job way back then in the Garden of Eden and it’s a job that been passed down every generation since: enjoy the Earth and all her resources and care for it.

I trust God will tell me “well done” in this regard, and I encourage you to consider how you’re helping fulfill your role (or not) as His steward of the Earth while you’re here. The environment isn’t the most important thing in life, I get it, but it is important, and it’s important that teach and exemplify this to our kids. Books on conservation like this are a great way to start.

©2020 E.T.