Green Student Forum - September 10, 2008

Green Student Forum – September 10, 2008

This is a sunny morning and I had been writing in my bedroom for several hours since I woke up at 5am. I had so much to say about my mere one day meeting that my blog had to be trimmed to fit on our website. But today is the real day. It is the first time I will be visiting a partner, one of the NGOs we work with in China – Green Student Forum. It is the foremost student environmental organization that is comprised of student groups across Beijing and the country. GSF is characterized by the discipline and enthusiasm of China’s new generation of leaders. Its director Fei Xiaojing is a pretty and disarming woman in her early 20s, currently a master student of forestry at People’s University of Beijing. She is soft spoken and articulated; when she smiles, her small eyes bunch into a thin line that amplifies her youthfulness. I met her for the first time when she came on the exchange PE put together. She was friendly but distant, mostly as a result of being fatigued with all the meetings she had gone through. I would ask her question and she would answer and trail off with a low sigh, unknowingly. Last night she called and said she would not be able to meet me until later on tonight because of school obligation. The coordinator who’s responsible for their water project will be showing me around.

When I finally got on the taxi and told the driver where I was going. He did not have a clue where it was. I was not surprised. GSF’s office was located in one of Beijing’s tens and thousands of residential complexes, like most NGOs. I called Wen Bo and he explained at length to the driver specifically how he gets there. I arrived at the gate and met Zhang Xiangui, the coordinator of the water project and another student who’s one of the volunteers. By the time I walked up the residential building and into the office, I saw 6 other students that had already been sitting in a circle waiting for my arrival. I had expected it but was still embarrassed by the reception. These kids were eager and shy. They shook my hand heavily and looked away as soon as I caught their eyes. I was sent to sit in the best chair in the midst of a room of tiny wooden stools. We went around introducing ourselves. These students came from the four teams of university volunteers who were assigned different sections of the Long River. They were responsible for organizing student volunteers from their own school to do survey of the river, compile information about the history and important sites in the area and interview neighborhoods along the river about their concerns. The end result would be a Green Map of Beijing’s Rivers. They showed me their draft which was closed to completion. It was hand drawn but very nicely done. Historical sites and other places of interests were marked with cute icons. They even found a Tao temple that was not marked in any official map and which will be included in their map. The plan was to include facts on the river and a conservation guide on the back of the map. This map would be distributed through various public events in schools and neighborhoods. They would also contact the Tourism bureau to see if they would be interested in carrying the map and distributing them. When I started asking specific questions about the project, Zhang said the report would be given tonight. Now we were to do a field trip to the Long River, one of the rivers covered in their “Water Cultures of Beijing” project.

About eleven students and I went on a bus to Jishuitan, one of the subway stops I was most familiar with as it was nearest to my house when I lived in Beijing almost 7 years ago. It was still familiar but visibly renovated. A giant new bike tent was created with rows of racks two levels high. Across from the station is a shining new shopping center. The Military Theatre next door had a complete face lift. It used to be an aging building with a stale facade and a dusty ticketing booth that was always closed. Now it’s an artsy glass structure with spiky steel bars rising to the sky and a digital display of its current shows. The sidewalks have all been fixed up and along the river that run through the area, it was landscaped with plants and trees along stone walls with carvings of calligraphies and were equipped with viewing platforms dotted with people fishing, couples cuddling and old people idling. A student from Beijing Normal University met up with us and served as local guide.

The students were pleased with the makeover but skeptical it would be kept up with after the Olympics. A decorated fountain was pumping up clear water that quickly merged into the deep green river too muddled to see through more than two inches deep. Occasionally there were tiny black fishes that swam right beneath the surface and they would be met with utmost enthusiasm by the students. I asked if people fishing here would actually eat them, they laughed. They fish for pleasure and always released them back in. The fishes are not eatable. Some fish grow in the most polluted rivers. We walked along the river on a stone path. There was a long patch that ran next to residential buildings and offices. It was a mile long path with no exit in between. All the entrances were sealed off with mettle locks reinforced with mettle fences. We just walked and walked and walked. Every section of the river was heavily maintained, either through careful landscaping or heavily secured fences. But clearly no one was keeping it sanitized because the path was dotted with spotty feces and trash that the students called bombs. We paused at various spots and saw people swimming right below “No Swimming” signs. They were mostly old people who clearly had retired and had nothing else to do on a Wednesday afternoon. They swam and played cards while their trunks were hung to dry on a cloth line nearby. At another section of the riverside park, a teenage girl was doing a photo shoot of her precious years. It is something very popular in China. People continue to be obsessed with photos. From the old days when every major event was documented with a photo, now it also includes every major stage of ones’ best years as a young man or woman.

Our last stop was the reality part of the tour of the river. We arrived at a section populated by the “floating population” as the students called them – migrants who came to seek jobs and managed to stay within the city as opposed to being out on the 4th ring road on the outskirt of no man’s land. We immediately came upon foul odors as we entered a narrow alley leading to a settlement. Amongst dilapidated houses there was a hair salon and a restaurant. Three teenage girls with various styles of colored and spiky hair were lounging around in shorts and fixing their nails inside the salon where there was clearly no business. We walked to the end of the alley and came upon a fenced off train track. The students said up until two weeks ago they were still able to cross the train track to reach the other part of the river. We stood around as Zhang tried to figure out the next step. It was very sunny and the poverty was brightened. A small hill of trash piled in front of a small house standing right next to the train track. I asked them to take a picture for me as the train was approaching and its head lights shining in the sun. It had rained last night and the trash was soaking in a puddle of water. There were flies and we didn’t want to stick around anymore. As we walked off I was starting to feel the itch on my feet. By the time we got out of the settlement we realized many of us had been bitten, hot red bums had appeared in both of my feet and I was obsessively scratching them.

After dinner, we finally returned to the office for the report. Again when I asked a question, Zhang advised me to wait after the slideshow. They then showed me a slideshow of basically their midterm report. Though at various points I had questions, my question was met with a more pressing desire to get through the slideshow. By the time the slideshow was done, it was almost 9pm. The only thing new in the slideshow was their plan for next year. Inspired by Fei’s visit to the US with the Green Corp, GSF wants to implement similar program in China. Through their experience working with other environmental NGOs, they feel that many NGOs’ main obstacle is lacking good leadership/organizers. They would like to establish a training program specifically to address that. The training would include team building, project management, technical understanding of environmental issues and other basic skills like material developments. Approximately five participants would be trained on this issue while taking on a community based project. They would then be dispatched to other established NGOs as interns during the summer to gain hands’ on experience in all the elements they had been trained on. They want the students to receive a certificate with Pacific Environment’s brand to signify that they had been trained by a professional and international environmental NGO. It would bring prestige to the training and help their professional career in the future and thus increased the attractiveness of participating in such training.

I was positive about the project but felt that it would be far too expensive with unpredictable results. Students usually have to return to their hometown during school breaks, I worried that although people may want to do that they may not be able to. As I looked around the room, most students including Fei and Zhang were not from Beijing, with many from the countryside which desperately needed attention to their most basic environmental needs. I suggested the project being base on people doing a project in their own hometown. Fei brought up some good points, that people may not be trained enough to run their own project in their own town where they may also not have existing environmental organization or network to work with. From the perspective of building a widespread environmental movement across China, including backwater regions, I felt that it was important to have an element in their training that involves students doing a small project to fix a small problem facing their own home town/village. They agreed that this would be appropriate at a more advance stage of their training, once they’ve been trained of all the elements of doing a project and gotten experience working with a successful NGO seeing how a project plays out in real life, it would then be a logical step to bring their new found knowledge to make a difference in their hometown.