“Natural” Disasters and Disaster Relief: Ecoethnic Politics in Alai's Epic of Ji Village 

This article discusses Celestial Fire, volume 2 of Alai's Epic of Ji Village, which depicts a major natural disaster—a wildfire—that hits the village during the Cultural Revolution and the subsequent relief efforts. This article examines how the natural disaster is woven into the texture of social organisms, appropriated by political powers, and maneuvered for building a modern Chinese nation. By investigating how the wildfire, as both a natural and a social event, changes the landscape and the communal structure of Ji Village, and how the state-orchestrated relief efforts fail to lead to salvation, the authors demonstrate the complexity in socialist China of “ecoethnic politics”: politics of ethnic, national, and class relations mediated through ecological changes and reshaping of nature. Nature is thus shown as an ecoideological tapestry into which gender, ethnic, and class politics are intricately interwoven.