“The seasons have changed. In the middle of the 8th lunar month it used to be already quite cold here. Now it’s warm until the 9th and even 10th month.”
If it’s true, as Lao Tzu said, that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, it may also be true that the Fridays for Future movement in China, population 1.43 billion, might begin with a single16-year-old girl.
Mind you, in a nation state noted for its wanton destruction of the environment, the authoritarian nature of its omnipresent, all-controlling government, and the ruthlessness directed toward any form of dissent, no one is holding their breath that Howey Ou, age 16, can change the minds of more than a billion people. Then again, much the same could have been said of Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, who was unknown little more than a year ago. Howey Ou has vowed to plant osmanthus plants around her home city of Guilin.
As reported just days ago by the German state-owned news agency Deutsche Welle, Howey Ou has started her very own school climate strike, choosing to plant seedlings of a plant noted for its ability to absorb carbon dioxide rather than attend school. She has not been to school for four months, according to Deutsche Welle.
And if you think China’s government — not to mention her parents — are fine with that, you’d be wrong.
As she told the news agency, plainly, “Protesting needs a lot of courage in China. But planting trees is something we can do.”
China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, which is saying something given the voracious appetite for consumption and the casual disregard of environmental protections in the US today.
Howey Ou learned about climate change and the effect of man-made pollution on the world’s
delicate ecosystems after coming across a copy of National Geographic at a local library in her home town on Guilin. The issue in question featured an article about plastic waste in the sea.
This past spring, students in more than 100 countries marched against man-made global heating and the growing climate crisis. China was not one of them.
She protested outside her local city government’s office with a hand-written cardboard sign this past May. She stood there for seven days. And after seven days, the police took her away.
She was lectured about the legality of protests — basically, they’re not legal, period — and police contacted her parents and told them in no uncertain terms to tell her to stop protesting, or else.
So she is planting trees instead.
“I am not that courageous,” she explained, though some might beg to differ.
Guilin, pop. 4.748 million (2010), is in a region of southern China noted for its dramatic backdrop of limestone karst hills. There is little if any land around Guilin that has not been cultivated; it is all spoken for. A sympathetic farmer, Tang Xiaodi, granted her permission to plant osmanthus fragran seedlings in front of his house, along a nearby canal.
“Fridays for Future are being ridiculed and cursed a lot on the Chinese internet,” Howey Ou told Deutsche Welle. “But I do get some positive comments. People say: ‘Look, the Chinese students are planting trees, while the foreigners just speak empty words.”
A forest, after all, begins with the planting of a single seed.
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