Everyday Energy Transformations in Urban China

Eric Liu interviews his mother, Yeli Zhang, about her childhood memories growing up in a small city in midwestern China and then moving to Beijing for college and graduate school. Yeli describes changes in transportation, from walking and bicycles to buses and trains, and finally the rise of car culture. She explains home heating and cooking, based on firewood and coal. She describes local and seasonal diets and the challenges of food storage without refrigeration, drawing a contrast to the United States. She reflects on the end of seasonality and an immediate relationship with nature with the growth of big state-sponsored energy infrastructures like the electric grid, powered in her city by natural gas.