Rodrigo Brincalepe Salvador
The Arctic University Museum of Norway, UiT – The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway.
Email: salvador.rodrigo.b (at) gmail (dot) com
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10644006
In April 2023, the gacha game Honkai: Star Rail was launched, published by miHoYo/HoYoverse, a Chinese company now very famous for its hit game Genshin Impact. The game is a space opera focusing on a group of interstellar adventurers that travels across the universe to eliminate dangerous artifacts known as Stellarons. The player builds their team with a variety of anime-style characters (23 in total as of writing) earned from a brutal[1] gacha mechanic.
So far, Star Rail has followed a similar recipe to Genshin Impact: the first world is based on Europe and the second one in China. In the Chinese-inspired Xianzhou Luofu, you run across a character called Sushang[2]. There’s not much of note about this character per se, except that in her Ultimate she summons a giant chicken. That is already fantastic on its own, but when a character uses their Ultimate, the player can also see their splash art (Fig. 1).
Clik here to view.
Sushang’s splash art immediately caught my eye, because it features birds – more specifically, tree sparrows (Fig. 2). And, as Sushang is a Chinese-inspired character, my first thought was “Well, that’s odd.” because modern China has a dark history with tree sparrows.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
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Actually, let me put that correctly: the Chinese government, and Mao Zedong in particular, has a horrid history with sparrows in what is probably the world’s most unnecessary ecological tragedy. It is a tragedy so big that it could and should be used exhaustively as a cautionary tale in any environmental arguments made today – and yet, it isn’t. Instead, China’s war on birds remains largely unknown, which I find rather odd. So, I decided to write a bit about it. I promise that I will come back to games in the end of this article, but first we will take a closer look at the birds and at China’s folly.
MEET THE TREE SPARROW
The tree sparrow is a nice little bird recognizable from other sparrow species by the black markings on its “cheeks” (Fig. 3). Males and females look alike in this species, contrary to what is the rule in other species of sparrows (Clement et al., 1993). These birds build their nests in cavities in trees, rocks, and buildings. When establishing their nests, they might choose to do so in close proximity to other sparrows, forming a loose type of colony (Hegyi & Sasvári, 1994; Summers-Smith, 1995). Tree sparrows feed on seeds and grain throughout the year, but will also capture small invertebrates, particularly when they are feeding their young (Summers-Smith, 1995, 2016).
Clik here to view.
The tree sparrow is thought to have originated in Asia, potentially in China, around 5 million years ago (Summers-Smith, 1995; Päckert et al., 2021). Today, it is a widespread species across Eurasia and some of the Atlantic and Pacific Islands, and it has been introduced to countries like Australia, the Philippines, and the USA (Summers-Smith, 1988, 1995, 2016). Its scientific name is Passer montanus but that is misleading, because these birds do not typically live on the mountains. In Europe, it is a rural species preferring more natural habitats, while the house sparrow (Passer domesticus) is an urban species. In Asia, it is the other way around: the house sparrow sticks to more natural areas while the tree sparrow is urban.
Both tree sparrows and house sparrows evolved alongside humans to become our commensals (Summers-Smith, 1988, 1995). They have adapted to live in our settlements, villages, and now cities. This was studied in greater depth in house sparrows, in which thicker skulls and a greater capacity to digest starch is linked to a diet based on grains (Ravinet et al., 2018). The grains that people cultivate.
THE FOUR PESTS CAMPAIGN
Only three countries in the entire world were foolish enough to wage war against birds: Australia, China, and the USA. They all lost – miserably so.
Australia lost a war to the emu and the US lost to house sparrows. The former is a rather amusing story, so I recommend you look it up. The latter has a dark undertone, as the attack on house sparrows was filled with racist and xenophobic connotations creating a parallel between the introduced birds and the new waves of immigrants then arriving in the US (Fine & Christoforides, 1991). But we are not interested in those stories here, so let us get back to China, who – as you might have guessed by now – went to war against tree sparrows (麻雀).
The Great Leap Forward was a social and economic campaign established by Chairman Mao Zedong during 1958–1962. One of its first actions was a great leap forward into the abyss: the so-called Four Pests campaign (Fig. 4). The goal of the campaign was to exterminate disease vectors (rats, flies, mosquitoes) and sparrows. The latter was obviously not a disease vector, but was thought to eat too much of the grain produced in China. The actual accusation was that each sparrow ate around 1.8 kg of grain per year (Time, 1958).
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As one of China’s greatest environmental activists, Dai Qing, said “Mao knew nothing about animals. He didn’t want to discuss his plan or listen to experts. He just decided that the ‘four pests’ should be killed” (Luard, 2004). Typical. One of his main slogans was “Man can conquer nature” (Shapiro, 2009; Steinfeld, 2015).
Mao’s government then bombarded its people with collectivist slogans, pseudo-scientific rhetoric, and propaganda posters (Fig. 5), inciting citizens to take up arms against the pests (Sun, 2017). They encouraged people to band together in task forces or “sanitation teams” and kill each and every single pest they found (Sun, 2017). To deal with the sparrows, people shot or slingshot them, set traps, and climbed on trees (including during the night) to strangle the birds, break their eggs, and destroy their nests. People would also station themselves on roofs and under trees, constantly waving flags, beating drums, and clanging pots and pans to terrorize the sparrows (Fig. 6). The noise and commotion prevented the birds from landing, forcing them to keep flying around and eventually making them die of exhaustion.
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Image may be NSFW.
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It is impossible to say how many birds were killed during that time (Fig. 7). In three days, an estimate of 800,000 sparrows were killed in Beijing alone (Han, 1959). Thus, it is expected that several hundreds of millions were killed country-wide (McCarthy, 2010).[3]
As a result, the tree sparrow was driven almost to extinction in China (Summers-Smith, 1995; Dvorsky, 2012). “But wait a second, didn’t you say that China lost the war against the sparrows?” Well… call it karma, divine punishment, science, or ecology, it does not matter. There was instant retribution.
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In the following year, 1959, the number of insects (notably locusts) infesting and destroying the crops exploded. The already problematic agricultural system in China was dealt a major – and fatal – blow (McCarthy, 2010). The failing crops led to the Great Famine, which would kill millions of people.
SCIENCE & VINDICATION
When the Four Pests campaign was announced, ornithologists (scientists who study birds) in China tried to have a say in the matter. Chief among them was Tso-hsin Cheng (1906–1998; often transcribed as Zheng Zuoxin) from the Chinese Academy of Sciences Zoology Research Institute, who realized the government (and many people) were blinded by prejudice against sparrows. He argued – correctly – that serious studies were necessary before such hardline extermination policies were put into practice (Zhang, 2019).
Cheng repeatedly asked the government to reconsider the inclusion of sparrows in the Four Pests campaign, but to no avail (Zhang, 2019). As he (1) was a scientist, and (2) directly opposed Mao’s policies, he was declared a criminal, forced to wear a badge that read “reactionary”, subjected to “re-education” through manual labour (sweeping floors, cleaning toilets, etc.), had his salary reduced to a bare minimum, was arrested for a time, and exposed to public mockery in a literal sense (Nowak, 2002). He was even told by the authorities that “birds are Capitalism’s pets” (Nowak, 2002), which has got to be one of the most ridiculous lines any scientist has ever heard.
Still, Cheng led a team on the first thorough study on tree sparrows in China. By studying stomach content of birds from across China, they showed that while sparrows did eat grain, they also (and mostly) ate insects, playing a major role in controlling the number of the insects that were actual agricultural pests, like the locusts (Beer, 2019). It became clear then that killing the sparrows led to an explosion in the numbers of insects, who found themselves with virtually no predator and hence free to do as they pleased. That, in turn, was a key factor leading to what is now regarded as the worst famine in History.[4]
With more than enough proof on his side, Cheng continued to advocate through newspaper articles and seminars (Zhang, 2019). Finally, after the near-extinction of the sparrows in China the government capitulated and the sparrows were removed from the Four Pests in 1960, being substituted by bed bugs.[5] In the years that followed, China even imported sparrows from Russia to boost the populations of the species inside its borders (Townshend, 2015). But then it was already too late: the damage was done and the death toll of the famine, which lasted from 1959 to 1961, was around 36 million people.[6]
The Great Famine is still kind of taboo in China. Elsewhere, the ecological causes of it are (understandably) put in second place after the human loss and suffering of the era. Sometimes, however, the ecological factor is not even considered; for instance, most purely economic models and assessments about the time do not even seem to know that birds and insects exist (e.g., Li & Yang, 2005; Wang, 2015).
In any event, as I noted before, a self-inflicted ecological catastrophe of this magnitude, with millions dying because of a poor decision of a political leader, should be more often used as an example against all the dangerous environmental policies (or lack thereof) we continue to see. The take-home message is evident, as Steinfeld (2018) put it “ignore science at your peril.” Case in point, China’s recent Zero Covid policy and its early-2000’s SARS policy have both been considered a failure to learn from the great sparrow debacle and a repetition of the Four Pests mistakes (Luard, 2004; Reddy, 2022).[7]
But there is at least some sort of silver lining for the birds. After the tragedy, people not only did a one-eighty in their stance towards the tree sparrows but also started to have a higher appreciation for bird conservation in general (Obermann, 2021). When China was deciding on a national bird, the tree sparrow was one of the main contenders against the leading red-crowned crane. The sparrow was considered by many to better represent the people, while the crane was perceived as an “elite” bird (Canaves, 2008).[8] Moreover, tree sparrows are now a protected species in China and it is prohibited by law to kill, eat, or sell them, and killing more than 20 is treated as a criminal offense (Sun, 2017). So modern instances of ‘sparrowcide’ often make the news in China because they evoke painful reminders of the Four Pests campaign and the Great Famine (Sun, 2017).
SUZUME
It is hard to say why tree sparrows were used in Sushang’s splash art in Star Rail because there is not much material available out there about things like character creation processes and artistic choices in the game. It might be a natural choice because, as mentioned above, the tree sparrows are now well regarded in China. In fact, they have had a marked presence in Chinese art for centuries before Mao started his crusade against them (Summers-Smith, 1995). That tradition stretches back to at least the Five Dynasties period, when Huang Quan (903–965) developed a more naturalistic style of painting birds and became one of the founders of bird-and-flower painting (huaniaohua, 花鸟画) (Yu, 2023). An example of one of his paintings containing tree sparrows can be seen in Figure 8.
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However, HoYoverse’s games lean heavily on the anime aesthetic, so the sparrows in Sushang’s splash art could have a Japanese influence behind them as well. After all, these birds (スズメ, ‘suzume’) are much more common in Japanese stuff. As in China, they are also present in art – likely even more prominently so. Bird-and-flower painting arrived a few centuries later in Japan and evolved into its particular style. When the era of ukiyo-e woodblock printing started, bird-and-flower paintings (then known as kachō-e, 花鳥絵) became very widespread and tree sparrows were commonly featured (Fig. 9). Today, they appear everywhere in anime/manga and Japanese games as well (Fig. 10) – now that you know what these birds look like, try and keep an eye out for them.
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Image may be NSFW.
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Figure 10. Examples of tree sparrows in another gacha game, Fate/Grand Order: final ascension artwork of the characters Beni-Enma (illustrated by Harada Takehito) and Sei Shounagon (illustrated by Mika Pikazo). Beni-Enma is based on the Japanese fable “The Tongue-Cut Sparrow”. Source: Fate/Grand Order Wiki (https://fategrandorder.fandom.com/).
Like for many other animal species, and birds in particular, not all is well for tree sparrows. In the past fifty years, there has been a sharp decline in their numbers in Europe, although the species is not considered endangered yet (Field & Anderson, 2004). The same decline might be happening in Asia as well, in large part due to relentless urbanization (e.g., Mikami, 2009; Zhang & Zheng, 2010). Researchers are now calling for better urban planning with greener cities that can support our urban wildlife (Zhang et al., 2008; Schilthuizen, 2018).
REFERENCES
Beer, A.J. (2019) Sparrows. Bloomsburry Wildlife, London.
Beijing News. (2008) 丹顶鹤以候选国鸟上报国务院 因争议至今未获批. [The red-crowned crane was submitted to the State Council as a candidate national bird but has not been approved due to disputes.] China News. Available from: https://www.chinanews.com.cn/gn/news/2008/09-04/1370490.shtml (Date of access: 18/Jun/2023).
Clement, P.; Harris, A.; Davis, J. (1993) Finches & Sparrows. An identification guide. Helm, London.
Dikötter, F. (2010) Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962. Walker & Company, London.
Dvorsky, G. (2012) China’s worst self-inflicted environmental disaster: the campaign to wipe out the common sparrow. Gizmodo. Available from: https://gizmodo.com/china-s-worst-self-inflicted-environmental-disaster-th-5927112 (Date of access: 19/Jun/2023).
Elbein, A. (2019) When is a bird a ‘birb’? An extremely important guide. Available from: https://www.audubon.org/news/when-bird-birb-extremely-important-guide (Date of access: 17/Jun/2023).
Elbein, A. (2020) What’s the difference between a ‘borb’ and a ‘floof’? Available from: https://www.audubon.org/news/whats-difference-between-borb-and-floof (Date of access: 17/Jun/2023).
Field, R.H. & Anderson, G.Q.A.b (2004) Habitat use by breeding Tree Sparrows Passer montanus. Ibis 146: 60–68.
Fine G.A. & Christoforides, L. (1991) Dirty birds, filthy immigrants, and the English Sparrow War: metaphorical linkage in constructing social problems. Symbolic Interaction 14: 375–393.
Grimm, R.G. (1979) Special Report: Ornithology in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Condor 81: 104–109.
Han, S. (1959) The sparrow shall fall. The New Yorker 35: 43–50.
Hegyi, Z. & Sasvári, L. (1994) Alternative reproductive tactics as viable strategies in the tree sparrow (Passer montanus). Ornis Hungarica 4: 9–18.
Hsu, W. (1999) Obituary. Tso-hsin Cheng (1906-98). Ibis 141: 167.
Jisheng, Y. (2012) Tombstone: The Untold Story of Mao’s Great Famine. Allen Lane, London.
Li, W. & Yang, D. (2005) The Great Leap Forward: anatomy of a central planning disaster. Journal of Political Economy 113: 840–877.
Luard, T. (2004) China follows Mao with mass cull. BBC. Available from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3371659.stm (Date of access: 19/Jun/2023).
McCarthy, M. (2010) The sparrow that survived Mao’s purge. The Independent. Available from: https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/nature-studies-by-michael-mccarthy-the-sparrow-that-survived-mao-s-purge-2068993.html (Date of access: 19/Jun/2023).
Mikami, O.K. (2009) The decline in population size of the Tree Sparrow Passer montanus in Japan. Japanese Journal of Ornithology 58: 161–170.
Nowak, E. (2002) Erinnerungen an Ornithologen, die ich kannte (4. Teil). Der Ornithologische Beobachter 99: 49–70.
Obermann, K. (2021) A new hope for China’s endangered animals. The China Project. Available from: https://thechinaproject.com/2021/02/17/a-new-hope-for-chinas-endangered-animals/ (Date of access: 19/Jun/2023).
Päckert, M.; Hering, J.; Belkacem, A.A.; Sun, Y.H.; Hille, S.; et al. (2012) A revised multilocus phylogeny of Old World sparrows (Aves: Passeridae). Vertebrate Zoology 71: 353–366.
Ravinet, M.; Elgvin, T.O.; Trier, C.; Aliabadian, M.; Gavrilov, A.; Sætre, G.-P. (2018) Signatures of human-commensalism in the house sparrow genome. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 285: 20181246.
Reddy, K.S. (2022) Zero Covid, one child, four pests and one big lesson for China. The Times of India. Available from: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/china-forgot-the-dead-sparrows/articleshow/96007626.cms (Date of access: 18/Jun/2023).
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About the author
Dr Rodrigo B. Salvador is a biologist specialized in the study of snails, though he sometimes does research on birds as well. Tree and house sparrows are among his favourite birds and he has a small collection of suzume-related items from Japan, from gacha capsule toys to more artistic ones. He is enjoying Star Rail so far, but he doesn’t use Sushang in his lineup – perhaps if her Ultimate was a giant sparrow instead of a chicken…
[1] And I play FGO!
[2] Though you can get her in the regular gacha before that.
[3] When a species is a target of extermination like this, it is common that other species that are similar-looking are also killed by mistake. In this case, it would be the house sparrows (Passer domesticus) and the cinnamon sparrows (or russet sparrows, Passer cinnamomeus) which also live in China (Clement et al., 1993) – not to mention other birds of similar size like finches, etc., which were likely also caught in the “crossfire”. However, I could not find any information about that.
[4] While the ecological imbalance was the major immediate cause, there were other factors contributing to the famine such as faked harvest numbers, maintenance of high export quotas, a shortage of workers, and the indifference of the government towards its people’s hardships and suffering (Dikötter, 2010).
[5] Despite all the troubles he went through, Cheng is reported to have deeply loved his work and the Chinese bird fauna (Hsu, 1999; Nowak, 2002; Ward & Chen, 2017). He published his landmark work “Distributional List of Chinese Birds” in 1978 (though it’s dated 1976) and went on to become the father of modern ornithology in China (Grimm, 1977; Zhang, 2019). Later on, in 1987, he published the monumental “A Synopsis of the Avifauna of China”. Cheng was also responsible for rebuilding the bridges between Chinese ornithologists and the global scientific community after the end of the Cultural Revolution in China (Hsu, 1999; Nowak, 2002).
[6] The estimates of the famine’s death toll vary quite a lot. The largest number that officials have admitted to is 20 million, but Yang Jisheng, who studied documents of the period in China proposed the number 36 million (Jisheng, 2012). However, others still consider that to be a quite conservative estimate and have proposed instead around 43 to 46 million (Dikötter, 2010). In comparison, the Covid pandemic has killed around 7 million people according to the World Health Organization (https://covid19.who.int/; but again, an underestimate).
[7] China is not alone in that, as the nightmarish Covid policies (or lack thereof) of countries like the USA and Brazil clearly exemplify. Not to mention the ecological and environmental disasters in those countries and in others.
[8] Ironically, China’s national bird, the red-crowned crane is also known as Japanese crane (its scientific name is Grus japonensis). This fact was pointed out at the time by Chinese authorities who were against the idea (Beijing News, 2008).