Xiaoyand
Forest therapist Xinjun Yang likes to hug trees in Beijing
Hugging a tree is an art, a way of touching life, an emotional therapy, shared by young and old, mothers and daughters, friends and lovers, looking for relief from everyday tensions.
In Beijing’s central district, trees are everywhere: in parks, along roadsides, and in the yards of people’s homes. Many were only planted in recent decades.
Another, with wide trunks, has existed for centuries and is comforting to the touch: it is possible to form a arm chain around them, run the bark with your fingertips or put your ear to the trunk to listen to the silent work of the tree inside.
Hugging a tree is an art. This ability does not arise instinctively. Learn, he says Akanksha Awalanthropologist at the University of London, in an article in .
“Hugging trees It’s a way to have a touch in life”, the leader of a forest therapy community in Beijing told the anthropologist, Xiaoyang Wong35 years old.
Wong, who used to work in the film industry, recently converted to forest therapistafter the COVID pandemic left it with a feeling of loneliness and isolation.
At first, he says, many people they feel embarrassed with the idea of hugging a tree. But in forest therapies, Wong encourages them to understand the multiple worlds of the tree watching it closely, following the ants and other insects as they come and go, weaving themselves into the grooves of the bark.
Only after let yourself be carried away by curiosity and “talking” to the tree, encourages people to decide if they want to touch her or even hug her.
In Beijing, most old trees are fenced by local government, to protect them from harm; The most recent ones, however, remain accessible, so that people can touch them and gather around them.
Looking for relief
On weekends, and until late at night, Awal came across people, young and old, mothers and daughters, friends and lovers, hugging trees or leaning your back against a log, looking for relief for the stresses of everyday life.
These pressures intensified, especially after the COVID pandemicwhen loneliness and isolation became commonplace. Furthermore, as many young women in China contest the idea of marriagethey look for friendships and new ways to pursue a good life.
Trees, some academics argue, make young people feel “rooted” and “alive”.
In interviews he conducted with more than 25 young women and men, as part of an ongoing investigation, Awal discovered that there were more women than men to resort to forest therapy, seeking both friendship with the trees like with other people.
In these therapies, Wong adapted traditional “forest bathing” practices”, adding their own ideas to increase people’s involvement. Among them, the “vegetable role-play”, in which each participant could adopt the name of your favorite tree and be addressed by that name throughout the day.
Wong encourages therapy participants to share a gesture that they associate with the chosen plant, a gesture that describes how they imagine the tree would move.
In these sessions, Wong counts on the collaboration of other women who also had given up on demanding careers and instead, they embraced this part-time work to care for people, trees and plants in the city.
In one of these sessions, a tree hugger, Florian Moexpressed frustration at not being able to find and keep love in your life. He argued that one of the central problems of Chinese society was the stigmatization of the search for love at young ages.
Mo, aged 28, was still recover from a breakup. But for the young man, this was only because he had never learned to love as a teenager. If I had done so, not only would I be a better companion today, but I would also be able to overcome disappointment more easily love that consumed him.
For young people like Wong and Mo, trees emerged as spaces to hang out. to explore themselves and to build connections each other.
And although the story of Chinese urbanization is often told through images of polluted air, water and soilyoung people like Wong and Mo offer a alternative narrative: that new Chinese generations seek to repair the urban environment, connecting with others while caring for, nurturing and even hugging trees, with friends and strangers.
