Utopia in Practice

This book is a collection of texts on one of China's boldest social experiments in recent years: the rural reconstruction project in Bishan.The Bishan Project (2011-2016) was a rural reconstruction project in a small village Bishan, Anhui Province, China. The writingsdescribe and criticize the social problems caused by China's over-loading urbanization process and starts a acontemporaryagrarianismand agritopianismdiscourse to resist the modernism and developmentalism doctrine which dominated China for more than a century, answering a globaldesirefor the theory and action of the alternative social solution for today's environmental and political crises.This practical utopian commune project ran for 6 years and caused a national debate on rural issues in China, when it was invited to be exhibited and presented abroad. This collection of writing will be of interest to artists, China scholars, architects, and the cultural community at large.