Xiaozheng Lan
A digital guide that helps people with limited biology knowledge but strong goodwill to protect aquatic animals.
According to a statistic in 2020, 18.3% of the Chinese population are Buddhist (China Religions – Demographics, 2020). In the doctrine of Buddhism, every animal lives in this world, including humans, other animals, and even insects. For this reason, there is a traditional religious activity that releases captive creatures. Buddhists buy life creatures from markets (most of them are sold as food) and release them back to nature. Then chanting and praying for these creatures never to be captured again. The majority of creature they purchase from markets is aquatic animals, such as fish and turtles (Buddhism in China, n.d.).
The release activity has a very long history. In the Buddhist doctrine. This activity was started by the abbot of the Tiantai temple, Zhiyi Shi in the Sui dynasty. The temple was located along the coast of Zhejiang province. Where lived a lot of people live by fishing. Zhiyi convinced some of them to release some of their catch and pray for these creatures. This release activity then started to spread in temples. In 759 A.D. the king of the Tang dynasty ordered to build 81 special locations for release activities across the country. (Shiu & Stokes, 2008) This was the first recorded national supported release activity. Very similar orders were given in Song Dynasty in 1025 A.D. Larger number and scale of releasing pool was built. When the time came for Ming and Qing Dynasty. People release on new year day as a gesture of kindness (Liberating Animals in Ming-Qing China: Buddhist Inspiration and Elite Imagination | The Journal of Asian Studies | Cambridge Core, n.d.).
Figure 1: a typical religious releaser activity
But this release of creature activity adversely affects the aquatic ecosystem—especially ecological invasion. For example, Tilapia mossambica and Trachemys scripta elegans. Tilapia mossambica is a kind of fish original in Africa and introduced to China for the fishery. They are artificially bred in China and quarantined within the local ecosystem. But these religious activities bring them to most rivers and lakes in Southen China (Shuai et al., 2019). This fish has severely squeezed the living resource of local species (Gu et al., 2019). A very similar case is Trachemys Scripta Elegans, a kind of turtle from Brazil. They are much fiercer than local turtles, and the population quantity of local turtles keeps decreasing (China Focus: China Faces Growing Threats from Invasive Alien Species—-Chinese Academy of Sciences, n.d.). The situation is that many Buddhist try to do something good for animals and the ecosystem, but what they actually did are destroying them.
Figure 2: Tilapia mossambica and Trachemys scripta elegans
To prevent the damage from resealing and also respect the local religious tradition. A digital platform named CyberBodhisattva is under development. The backend is an extensive database of Chinese aquatic creatures, and several research institutions provide these data. It includes identified invasion species and vulnerable species. This database links to a front-end application that provides these functions:
1/Location identify: The app asks the location of users to know the ecosystem around the users
2/ Computer vision identification of species. When users buy animals from markets, they can take pictures of these animals, and the app will tell you which species is this and classify them as “good to release”, “ok to release” and “never release”, also providing a short vedio introducing this species. Which helps users to choose the species to release in the religious activity. But limited to the budget for algorithm development and very tiny differences between different fishes. This CV identification could possibly go wrong. The solution of the development team is setting another database of trade names and local names for common species. Users could enter the name manually or directly pronounce it to the app (because many local words in Chinese localism don’t have letters that could be entered) to help the identification.
3/ Link to scientific research institutions and conservation institutions. There are institutions studying ecology, breeding endangers species, and releasing breeding groups. The platform could link religious groups and these institutions. Let these religious groups help with the releasing and give them knowledge of ecosystems.
4/ Link to temples and official religious groups. The initial reason for this releasing phenomenon is the guidance of official religious groups. They lack biological knowledge and could not identify the effects of different species. The development team will invite aquatic scientists to communicate with religious groups and provide them with basic knowledge about invasive species. Then these religious organizations could teach their followers and provide help.
It is obvious that this program is not aiming for business success and does not has a large space for making a profit. But the development and maintenance of the platform and its connection to scientific and religious organizations also need expansions. So, a special business model, imitate from several NGOs are set. The initial development cost of the software was provided by stone investors and donations. After the platform accumulates a certain number of users. The dividend from the telecom operator could cover most of the operating expansion. Also, the app provides advertising for religious articles also could be a steady income.
For now, this CyberBodhisattva platform is still developing and will be beta tested this year. It’s a new trial combining traditional religion and sustainable development. And we believe this platform will efficiently improve the Chinese aquatic ecosystem.
References
Buddhism in China. (n.d.). Asia Society. Retrieved 1 June 2022, from https://asiasociety.org/buddhism-china
China Focus: China Faces Growing Threats from Invasive Alien Species—Chinese Academy of Sciences. (n.d.). Retrieved 1 June 2022, from https://english.cas.cn/newsroom/archive/news_archive/nu2014/201412/t20141231_133829.shtml
China Religions—Demographics. (2020). https://www.indexmundi.com/china/religions.html
Gu, D. E., Yu, F. D., Yang, Y. X., Xu, M., Wei, H., Luo, D., Mu, X. D., & Hu, Y. C. (2019). Tilapia fisheries in Guangdong Province, China: Socio-economic benefits, and threats on native ecosystems and economics. Fisheries Management and Ecology, 26(2), 97–107. https://doi.org/10.1111/fme.12330
Liberating Animals in Ming-Qing China: Buddhist Inspiration and Elite Imagination | The Journal of Asian Studies | Cambridge Core. (n.d.). Retrieved 10 June 2022, from https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-asian-studies/article/abs/liberating-animals-in-mingqing-china-buddhist-inspiration-and-elite-imagination/519DDD79C07E154364E1229DA5808491
Shiu, H., & Stokes, L. (2008). Buddhist Animal Release Practices: Historic, Environmental, Public Health And Economic Concerns. Contemporary Buddhism, 9(2), 181–196. https://doi.org/10.1080/14639940802556529
Shuai, F., Li, X., Liu, Q., Zhu, S., Wu, Z., & Zhang, Y. (2019). Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) invasions disrupt the functional patterns of fish community in a large subtropical river in China. Fisheries Management and Ecology, 26. https://doi.org/10.1111/fme.12368