Writer finds she's a natural in the wilderness

Zhou Wei, teacher at Beijing Foreign Studies University.

How to See Deer. This is the title of Zhou Wei's book. But she doesn't provide any clues on how to spot the animal. What her newly published book does do is remind city dwellers of the beauty of nature.

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Once a minor genre in China, nature writing is gaining popularity here. The public has gained awareness of such works through Cheng Hong, a renowned scholar on American nature writing and the wife of Premier Li Keqiang.

Different from other nature writings, which usually depict the wilderness of one place, such as The Forest Unseen and One Square Inch of Silence (both were translated into Chinese) that are part of the same book series published by the Commercial Press earlier this year, Zhou's book has a strong consciousness of "places".

Visiting a local farm, hiking with a birdwatching group and studying plants in the backyard are just some of the 50 stories Zhou recounts in her book, which details her encounters with nature during her time living in Mount Vernon (Washington State), Beijing and Reno (Nevada) in the past decade.

Zhou picked the title of the book from American poet Philip Booth's poem of the same name.

"The word 'deer' should not be taken too literally, as it symbolizes all things beautiful and elusive in nature, or an epiphanic moment in nature, a sudden realization of truth and beauty," Zhou says.