Published on January 22, 2020.
In response to the emergence of the novel coronavirus from Wuhan, China, this essay criticizes China’s sanitary conditions, hegemonic ideology, human-rights repression, air pollution, and surveillance society. It praises Isabella Bird, the British woman who traveled the world in the nineteenth century and recorded the realities of many countries, contrasting her with Greta Thunberg and arguing that modern environmental discourse fails to confront China’s problems directly.

January 22, 2020
Unlike a fool such as Greta Thunberg, Isabella Bird, the British woman who traveled the world in the nineteenth century and left travel writings describing the actual conditions of various countries, was truly remarkable.
A new coronavirus has once again emerged from China.
Even without seeing it, one can imagine the appalling sanitary conditions of the market in Wuhan, where it originated.
Unlike a fool such as Greta Thunberg, Isabella Bird, the British woman who traveled the world in the nineteenth century and left travel writings describing the actual conditions of various countries, was truly remarkable.
She was, quite literally, a great woman of action.
It is only natural that she became a special member of the Royal Geographical Society.
Until she visited Seoul, she had thought that Beijing in China was the filthiest and dirtiest city in the world.
Why are people in the Chinese cultural sphere untroubled by filthy environments?
It is no exaggeration to say that this, too, comes from their essence, which is “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies.”
Greta, in any case, whether it is air pollution equaling global warming, new influenza viruses, evil hegemonic ideology, the Belt and Road Initiative that is its product, human-rights repression, or the realization of the surveillance society depicted by George Orwell, it is no exaggeration to say that all evils lie in China.