Nevergreen: Interview with Liu Chuang
By Ysabelle Cheung
Portrait of LIU CHUANG. Courtesy the artist and Magician Space, Beijing.
The story of how the dioecious poplar tree, rapid-growing and short-lived, was planted in China is one that is rarely thought about while one strolls through the abundantly green streets of Beijing. Native to sylvan North America, broad-leafed, column-structured poplars can grow up to ten feet per year, which makes it a valuable commodity for industries that require increasing amounts of timber to spit out paper, cardboard, plywood, pallets and other ubiquitous materials. In the 1960s, a forestry bureau in China’s Yi County—once part of Beijing, now an area in Hebei Province—developed a species of poplar tree that would at once bring color to Beijing’s urban grayness and provide wood for manufacturing in the northern parts of the country. Not long after, however, it was discovered that every spring, the female poplars would burst, releasing allergen storms of cotton-like—and dangerously flammable—pollen.
