This article presents 15 autoethnographical texts detailing student experiences at Beijing Normal University in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. Contributions have been collected over 6 weeks between 15 February and 1 April 2020, edited by Hejia Wang (assisted by Moses Oladele Ogunniran and Yingying Huang), and supervised by Michael Peters. Through shared in-depth empirical feelings and representations from a wide variety of cultural, historical, and social contexts, the article outlines an answer to the question: How do students, connected virtually but separated physically in an internationalized university, deal with disruption brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic? Student testimonies offer reflections on Covid-19 and Chinese international education, experiences of online teaching and learning, reflections on university coping mechanisms, an account of realities and feelings related to changes in academic life, and discussions on coping strategies in Chinese international higher education. Contributors expose their individual feelings, effects, benefits, challenges, and risk management strategies. Collected at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, these testimonies are unable to offer systemic answers to challenges facing the whole world. However, these experiences and feelings will provide important inputs to global discussions about the future of the world, after Covid-19.

Grassland ecosystems on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau (QTP) provide numerous ecosystem services and functions to both local communities and the populations living downstream through the provision of water, habitat, food, herbal medicines, and shelter. This review examined the current ecological status, degradation causes, and impacts of the various grassland degradation mitigation measures employed and their effects on grassland health and growth in the QTP. Our findings revealed that QTP grasslands are continually being degraded as a result of complex biotic and abiotic drivers and processes. The biotic and abiotic actions have resulted in soil erosion, plant biomass loss, soil organic carbon loss, a reduction in grazing and carrying capacity, the emergence of pioneer plant species, loss of soil nutrients, and an increase in soil pH. A combination of factors such as overgrazing, land-use changes, invasive species encroachment, mining activities, rodent burrowing activities, road and dam constructions, tourism, migration, urbanization, and climate change have caused the degradation of grasslands on the QTP. A conceptual framework on the way forward in tackling grassland degradation on the QTP is presented together with other appropriate measures needed to amicably combat grassland degradation on the QTP. It is recommended that a comprehensive and detailed survey be carried out across the QTP to determine the percentage of degraded grasslands and hence, support a sound policy intervention.

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This article presents fifteen essays following a prompt on the changing map of international student mobility through three disruptions, namely Brexit, America First and COVID-19. These essays written by postgraduate students at Beijing Normal University were collected during the Spring semester of 2020 and edited by Stephanie Hollings and Zhang Man under the supervision of Professor Michael Peters. The fifteen texts, written in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, highlight the many factors and faces of the changing map of international student mobility from fifteen different perspectives. The world map is a key aspect of these essays as it is not only important as a geographical concept but as a discourse of knowledge, power, identity and ideas that will be reflected in each student’s interpretation of international student mobility. Each student draws on their own diverse background and lived experiences, some as Chinese students and some as international students in China, to give light to these disruptions through the eyes of ‘globally mobile’ students, making an important contribution to global discussions on international student mobility. These students, reflecting on being in the midst of a pandemic spreading across the world map, imagine the future post-COVID-19 and how that will interplay with the other two major student mobility disruptions of recent years (Brexit and America First) to impact international student mobility, international education, the ever-changing map of international student mobility and the discourse that comes from that changing map.