“Between Living and Travelling” of the traditional society
China is vast in territory, including plateau, desert, plain, grassland, mountain area, lake district, island, forest and many other landscapes, each with it’s uniquegeographical and natural conditions. People in different areas, with different ethnicities have formed their own multi-cultural values and living styles according to the specific ecological system in their specific geographical areas.Settled life based on planting, “work at sunrise and go home at sunset” predominates the plain areas, while nomadic life chasing the water and glasses predominates the plateau areas.
Settled life or nomadic life depends on the natural environment, natural resource, and specific technical conditions. Take tent for example, Mongolia grassland’s Mongolian yurt, Ewenki hunter’s “Cuoluozi", and the European Sami’s Tipi tepee have many aspects in common in materials and building methods.
After borrowing, mixing the living and travelling, we have “Between Living and Travelling”.Traditional society’s “Between Living and Travelling” is a living style for only a few people, part of whom are Migration flow of agricultural population, and the rest are wondering great men, like Xu, Xiake who has the whole world in their heart.
Take a close look at the historical development of other areas in the world, all have experienced the similar ecological process. Settled life and nomadic life evolved continuously between the conflict and balance of production, living and ecology.
“Between Living and Travelling” of the future society
Comparing current society and the traditional society, the key factors affecting settled life and nomadic life has changed dramatically.
1.The basic elements of production has changed. In traditional society, People’s living highly depends on land, and in areas with poor farming conditions, people’s living depends on hunting, fishing and so on. In current society, food is a commodity that can be purchased, and the main living style is to get paid by participating in business activities, which made more and more people separating themselves from the land. This change made the weight of “Between Living and Travelling” increase gradually.
2.The need of society communication has changed. Compared with traditional society, internet has completely changed people’s communication ways: people who never met in real life can be neighbors in the internet, people can share beautiful scenery and their feelings at any time during their travel, and more and more people walked out of their house. Face-to-face communication in traditional society has been substituted by connections across mountains and rivers in modern society, and constantly changing their living place, experiencing life during travel have become the living style young people are seeking for.
3.The weight of space and time has changed. In traditional society, building house is family’s one important job and space is the one people pay most attention to, while modern people pay more attention to how to plan our time. From this perspective, the difference between living and travelling is not the house which denotes space, but is more of the time which connected to “Between Living and Travelling”.
Therefore, whether from supply and consumption perspective, or from society development perspective, modern society’s settled life and nomadic life both need to balance the three society’s benefits of ecology, economy and society. “Between Living and Travelling” is a method and direction following the change and realizing the balance, which will become the living style of more and more people’s choice.
“Between Living and Travelling” perfectly suits the two natural laws. The first is mobility, object’s changing is mobility, which will never end. There’s no fixed settled life and nomadic life. The second is entropy law. The boundary between living and travelling will become more and more vague, which in the end will finally lead to no boundary between the two. Therefore, the future “Between Living and Travelling” will become more and more balanced and living and travelling will become more and more free.
