Lasting Wellbeing – Cities or Countryside? With Green Drinks Beijing

Big city life’ is what most of young successful people strive for today. Moving to big cities like Shanghai is often seen as a recipe for success: build a career by speed of light, earn a lot of money and after few years of hectic and stressed life simply change your job.

Life in the big cities is surely somehow comforting. Everything seems available at all times, quality social life, transportation, interactions that broaden our horizons, entertainment, convenient stores, bars, parks… It’s a never-ending running around. We are the slave of the city lifetime, always on-the-go, rarely stopping to self-reflect or to just have time to rest.

Join us for the Green Initiatives Session on June 12th in partnership with Green Drinks Beijing and naked Hub Dongdaqiao, to engage in a conversaion about our collective future. Will we thrive in cities or in the countryside? How could we bring about a balance in our lives, considering that for many of us there may be no 'black or white' option?

Some of the questions we would be looking to tackle are:

• Why is living in the countryside so attractive to so many people?
• Is it organic food, unpolluted air, clean water, a different kind of high-quality lifestyle?
• Did those individuals that Andy gives introduction to in his book gave up big city life for those reasons?
• Is Japanese counterculture movement of living in the countryside an alternative model for path forward more sustainable living?
• Is deciding to live in the countryside a big turning point that humanity will in the future strive for?

Note: Event will be completely in English. Questions may be address in Mandarin.

Event Itinerary:

• 18:30-19:00 Registrations and networking
• 19:15-19:25 Event introduction
• 19:25-19:40 Talk by Tianle Cheng, Organizer, Beijing Farmers' Market
• 19:40-20:15 Talk by Andy Couturier speaking on The Abundance of Less
• 20:15-20:45 Open discussion / Q&A with the attendees
• 20:45-21:30 Networking / end of event

The Abundance of Less - A Book by Andy Couturier

Andy Couturier, an American writer, has looked deep into the future of the most advanced economy on this planet – Japan, which is also the most urbanized nation with over 96% of its population living in cities and a consumer appetite that can be matched by few other countries. In the book, The Abundance of Less, Andy documents the lives of 10 Japanese individuals who  have left behind the clockwork of industrial economies and the obsession with consumption. Most importantly: they have succeeded in finding meaning in what they do outside the mainstream economic system.

They live in genuine satisfaction, care for a small patch of land, grow most of their food themselves and balance their intellectual interests with a long-forgotten trade and art. In his book, Andy gives them a platform to share their ideas and vision - one that we should collectively listen to because they point towards a single solution for many of the social & environmental challenges we face today.

About Andy Couturier

Andy Couturier is the American author of two books, Writing Open the Mind: Tapping the Subconscious to Free the Writing and A Different Kind of Luxury: Japanese Lessons in Simple Living and Inner Abundance. The Abundance of Less, his latest, is a revised and updated edition of his previous work.

He is the founder and creative director for The Opening, a center for creative writing. His essays and articles on ecology, sustainable living, and the problems inherent with nuclear power have appeared in The Japan Times, The North American Review, Adbusters, Kyoto Journal, The Oakland Tribune, and Creative Non-Fiction.

About Guest Speaker Chang Tianle

Since 2010, CHANG Tianle is the organizer of Beijing Farmers’ Market, a platform to support independent organic producers and sustainable food systems through weekly pop-up markets, community centers, education programs, farm visits, research and advocacy. She is also the founding editor for Foodthink, an online media platform to promote sustainable food system. In 2009, she joined a Minneapolis-based NGO Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy as its China program officer. Before that, she worked as a journalist for China Development Brief and China Daily. She studied journalism at Shanghai International Studies University and International Affairs at the New School in New York.

Note:

• Entrance fee goes towards supporting the TAOL campaign including travel, stay, speaker honorarium, and other resources.
• Please pay by scanning below QR code or visiting this link: https://yoopay.cn/event/46947340

For more details, check out  www.theabundanceofless.com or the official website for Andy's China trip www.taol.greeninitiatives.cn