Attention all Beijing residents (and those who happen to be around):

Greening the Beige 3 is currently running for a week from November 21-28! This year’s festival is based around the theme “Re-energize Beijing” and features an eclectic variety of events, live performances, film screenings and community activities.

The festival kicked off yesterday with an elegant performance by Beijing Dance group LTDX and plenty of rapid-fire humor from Beijing Improv. Proceeds went to Hua-Dan, an NGO that empowers China’s migrant and rural populations through community theater projects. Starting initially in Beijing six years ago, the organization recently took its work to Sichuan, where it worked with children affected by the Wenchuan earthquake. The event also featured live and silent auctions for local green-themed artwork, and displays of some funky recycled-material transportation.

On Wednesday, swing by Napa bar for a green-themed pub quiz night, and on Thursday, the Hutong School is hosting a useful green cocktail social for those looking to improve their energy-related conversational ability.

On Friday, the festival moves to Trainspotting Cafe for a film screening and dinner event featuring the documentary film “Hope in a Changing Climate,” which will be aired globally by BBC World on the same day. The film, which documents and dramatically demonstrates how large-scale ecosystem restoration can stabilize the changing climate, catalyze sustainable agriculture, and significantly reduce poverty, will also be screened at the climate change conference in Copenhagen next month.

Finally, this Saturday GtB3 will close with a fantastic collection of events, featuring a (currently full) recycled film workshop, Pecha Kucha Beijing’s design presentations, the 3rd Annual Eco-Fashion Show, and then musical performances courtesy of Acupuncture Records.

For full details visit GtB’s website: http://www.greeningthebeige.org/gtb/

I met with the president of the Professional Association for China’s Environment (PACE) a few weeks ago and he got the term “eco-civilization” stuck in my head. Ever since, I’ve been sticking “eco-” in front of anything that’s environmentally friendly. Upon a quick Google search though, I found that “eco-documentaries” is actually a term in wide use.

Anyways, I’m friends with a few people that are putting on the New Beijing International Movie Week. There are two eco-documentaries showing on March 7th at The Boat (address here). One is a full-length movie and one is a short (they have descriptions online in English and Chinese). The Facebook invite is here. The New Beijing International Movie Week also has a lot of other really interesting movies being shown, so I would highly recommend joining the Facebook group to stay updated on their events.

Feature length:

“Tales of a Yellow Bike,” directed by Canadian filmmaker Tina Hahn, tells the story of bike share programs in Europe, North America, Columbia and China. The film was inspired by the now defunct Toronto BikeShare program, a community-based bicycle-lending program in downtown Toronto that provided its members with access to bright yellow bikes from various “hubs” around the city from 2001 to 2006. The non-profit program ended because of a lack of funding, prompting Hahn to make an around-the-world journey to six cities, including Beijing, in search of bikesharing  best practices.

Read a review of the film in Beijing Today. Here’s an excerpt:

“Of the five countries we’ve been to, China has the largest number of bicycles with 470 million. Bikes used to be the only mode of transportation in the country,” Hahn said.

The director was impressed by some of the locals she met during filming. “We interviewed Wang Yong, manager of the Beikelantu Bicycle Rental company in Beijing. Wang tried to promote bicycle rental 15 years ago but failed. This year, he tried the same business again and succeeded,” she said. “It is exciting to see his blue bikes moving along Beijing’s streets.”

Short:

“One Cup of Coffee” follows Rohan Marley, son of Bob Marley, and his family on their quest to “continue the legacy of their famous father by setting new standards in ethical coffee farming.” Their company, Marley Coffee, sells products that are certified organic and sustainably grown.

From the NBIMW website:

They combine the ideas of organic farming, fair-wage farming, and sustainable farming under one umbrella - ‘Ital,’ which is the Rastafari word meaning pure, vital, and natural. In this way, they are beginning to bring new hope to rural Jamaica and to farmers all over the world.

View the trailer of the film here.

(Editor’s note: Please welcome our first post by contributing blogger Sophia Mendelsohn about some of the benefits of luxury consumption and “lifestyle” publications in China!)

China’s public is receiving a mixed message from mainstream media. On the one hand, they are told development is destroying the environment. On the other hand, the messages equate luxury and consumption in China with the ever sought after higher living standard.

This means that an effective media campaign promoting environmental protection is going to have to embrace the inevitable consumption by offering the consumer a green option that is sexy and fashionable. This also serves to counter the idea that environmental problems are too large for the average person to minimize.

Despite the common conception that state-controlled media doesn’t report bad news, a large part of the environmental news in China covers major disasters in country. Much of the rest goes to playing the blame game with the U.S. and other developed nations.

In December 2005, chemical pollution in the Song Hua River near Harbin, endangered the water supply for millions, making for some very telling pictures. In 2007, Taihu Lake near Shanghai turned blue and green from human and industrial pollution. That same year, over 15,000 kilograms of dead fish floated en masse to the surface of Wuhan’s East Lake. The bad news was that this was not the first time.

(Photo of Taihu Lake via PacificEnvironment)

These events, and others, were covered heavily by state-run media, discussed on personal blogs and in chat rooms. With this kind of coverage, it is easy to understand the belief that environmental problems in China are beyond the control of the average person.

The other environmental news that filters down to mainstream press in China is often focused on blaming the U.S. and other Western nations for climate change and global warming. Part of that argument is that the West has an excessively lavish a lifestyle and consumes too much, thereby emitting greenhouse gases.

Of course, you don’t have to look farther than Shanghai’s Nanjing Xi Road or Beijing’s Wangfujing to see the”luxurious” Western nations are in good company. And it seems the more the merrier. Gucci plans to open another five stores in China within the next year.

As luxury brands barge their way into the market, they are accompanied by their close cousin, the lifestyle magazine. Though in a twist away from the stereotype, many of these magazines are talking about more than just clothing and movie stars. Recently a number of lifestyle magazines have featured “green stories,” covering everything from eco-trends to socialite environmental heroes.

Although it would be fair to grumble about a certain amount of “greenwashing,” lifestyle publications serve an important role in educating the Chinese public about environmental issues. “Green glam” brings an element of sexiness to the change and effort that is involved in improving a new consumer’s lifestyle.

They also offer a softer, more approachable angle than newspapers running stories about whole eco-systems being taken down by heavy industry. Without these publications, the public’s main access to eco-issues would be all doom and gloom.

Trends Magazine’s Chinese-language publications let loose a frenzy of green stories in ‘07 and look to be keeping it up in ‘08. Trends publishes about every glossy magazine you see on the corner kiosk—think Cosmo, Bazaar, Esquire, National Geographic Traveler, and Men’s Health, to name a few.

Trends established a website focused on their eco-travel for their readers. The site opens to words like “trendy environmental protection” and panoramic views of snow-topped mountains in Tibet and other western provinces in China.

You could fairly argue that the very snow photo-shopped onto the site will melt away with the carbon emissions produced by traveling to them. However, with the Chinese domestic tourist industry moving around one billion people a year, we can safely argue that those emissions are going to be emitted regardless.

But sites like this still serve an important purpose. They reach out to tourists with plane ticket already in hand and alert them to the drastic increase in tourism, and how it is affecting the local eco-system. While promoting travel, these sites declare environmental protection must be taken into account. In addition, Trends directs readers to non-profit environmental organizations like Greenpeace and WWF China. It’s true that they are not promoting tents over five-star hotels, but awareness like this on an attractive platform is a step in the right direction.

Just like China’s consumption, “green glam” coverage does not stop at travel. The upscale fashion magazine, Bazaar (November 2007) suggests easy steps you can take in your own home to reduce your environmental impact, like shutting off lights and successfully making LEDs seem as precious as Chanel. It also promotes the “I am not a plastic bag” bag as more than an extra purse but to actually cut down on use of plastic.

Like travel and fashion, glamorous eco-friendly weddings are not to be left behind as China revs up.

Cosmo (July 2007) covered green weddings particularly well, making a direct connection between the extravagance of a wedding and the extra greenhouse gases produced as a result. Similar to the American way of measuring everything in football fields, the Chinese-language site notes “the carbon emissions from your wedding could not even fit in six swimming pools.”

This month Esquire magazine has green billboard advertisements up with banners declaring the publication to be a fighter for the environment. You can find them in Shanghai’s main shopping street, right next to the permanent Tiffany & Co. billboard.

While organizations that promote the restraint and reduction of consumption deserve great credit, we need to look at alternative strategies as both shopping and pollution spread out from Beijing and Shanghai to every corner of China.

Lifestyle media’s trendy promotion of small environmental changes in an answer to two problems.

• One, it empowers a public easily left feeling helpless by the scale of the problem, or vindicated by heavy industry’s role in causing it.
• Two, it acknowledges the inevitable path of progress and works with consumer’s cravings, rather than against them.

While they can be easily dismissed as “greenwashing,” glossy covers do more good than we give them credit for. They contribute to popular awareness of the issues and suggest realistic small solutions that your average Zhou have a chance at. These possibilities are well worth the trees they are printed on.

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For more information about luxury consumption in China, browse these links:

• China Luxury Summit: “An annual gathering of luxury executives for the hottest issues concerning China’s luxury market.”
• WorldWatch: “Luxury Spending: China’s Affluent Entering ‘Enjoy Now’ Phase of Consumption”
• Amazon.com: “Elite China: Luxury Consumer Behaviour in China,” by Pierre Xiao Lu
• TNS Consumer Survey: “Luxury Brands in China” video
• McKinsey Quarterly: “The new Chinese consumer” and “The value of China’s emerging middle class”

(Photo credit: Luo Hong, via China Daily.)

Chinese photographer Luo Hong was featured in the People’s Daily Online for no particular newsworthy reason other than that he is “hopelessly” in love with flamingoes and dedicated to saving the environment through his art. (See a gallery of his images at the China Daily site.)

Flamingoes are the subject of many pictures of the photographer, who is famed for advocating environmental protection through displaying photos featuring landscape and wild animal and making donation to environmental protection campaigns.

Luo Hong made more timely headlines last year when he exhibited his Africa photos at the United Nations Office at Nairobi as part of the United Nations Environment Programme’s 2006 World Environment Day celebrations.

The exhibit, titled “The Globe - Our Homeland,” was divided into four thematic groups: “The Gift of God - Natural Scene;” “Art of Life - Creatures and Nature;” “The Hardship of Survival;” and “Beauty is Harmony - Swans.” Proceeds from the sale of his photos benefited the UNEP’s charitable projects.

Last November, Luo donated 250,000 U.S. dollars to establish an environmental fund at UNEP, with half of the amount earmarking for flamingo conservation. He also pledged to increase the fund amount to 1.25 million dollars within the next five years.

In an interview with China Radio International, Luo said,

“The more pictures I took, the more clearly I realized nature has been relentlessly damaged by man. All the damage results from man’s uncontrolled temptations. As a man, I feel guilty. As a photographer, I feel I have a responsibility to show the public with my photos the spectacular aspects of nature as well as the damage it suffers to arouse people’s concerns for environmental protection.”(Photo credit: China.org.cn.)

Luo’s work can also be found year-round in Beijing subway stations, according to the People’s Daily.

Turns out, photographer-cum-environmentalist Luo Hong is also a baker, serving as the president of Holiland, China’s biggest cake bakery chain (whose motto is “Love is At Your Side”) Yummy.

The bakery mogul puts his money to good use in his own country, too. Last year, he donated more than 600,000 yuan to aid victims of heat and drought in Sichuan, his home province, according to CCTV International.

Related links:

• UNEP Art for the Environment - Luo Hong bio

Mr. Hong is quoted saying: “I firmly believe that the earth is the only home for human beings, and, that the animals are our best friends. We can only make the earth more beautiful if we all live in harmony.”

• WWF Environmental Photography Galleries
• National Geographic Photography

[tags]China, Luo Hong, environmental photography, flamingoes, United Nations Environment Programme, Holiland[/tags]

Can music save our planet?

Probably not, but hopefully it’ll get people in China thinking about saving the planet.

The Live Earth concert in Shanghai features nine acts, who will perform on the steps of the Oriental Pearl Tower, which is hardly the most environmentally friendly building in the world, or China, or even Shanghai, for that matter. (Not to be confused with the proposed “zero-energy” Pearl River Tower in Guangzhou.) The blog “Mad About Shanghai” uses the pink and purple space-age structure as a backdrop for its Air Pollution Index photos, dubbed the “Oriental Pearl Tower Visability Index.”

If you didn’t realize already, China is DIRTY. Pollution kills 460,000 Chinese a year, according to the World Bank, which also said China is home to 16 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities. A recent Bank conference study found that health costs of air and water pollution in China amount to about 4.3 percent of the country’s GDP.

Maybe Live Earth will change some people’s habits, the Shanghai Daily reports.

Practicing the Live Earth message, tissues and hand soap used at the concert site will be recycled, and volunteers will pick up litter around the site. To encourage more people to take public transport, the organizer changed the concert time from 8pm to 7pm to make sure those who attend can catch the last Metro train home.

Can’t attend the concert in Shanghai but still want to participate? Check out Live Earth’s official Web site and blog.