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conditions of our environment. What’s wrong
with the water and rivers in Beijing? Bearing
this question in mind, in March of 2007, a group
of water lovers in Beijing set out to find out the
true circumstances of the rivers. That’s the be-
ginning of Leshuixing, literally meaning «jour-
ney for the love of water». In the following three
years, over 15 thousand participants joined Le-
shuixing in Beijing. Every Saturday, people are
guided by water experts, walking along rivers,
to see the real water environement.
Leshuixing inspires not only the public’s
concern about factural water condition around
where they live, but also their desire to solve en-
vironmental problems. However, limited knowl-
edge about the environemnt, environmental
policy and related public facilities and industry
diminishes the public capacity of judging envi-
ronemtal issues, protecting their own rights, and
participating in environmental decisioan-mak-
ing process. In May, 2009, Leshuixing started
up a public environmental class every Sunday,
serving as a platform for more comprefensive
knowledge for the public to participate in envi-
ronmental protection. This indoor environmen-
tal class, in accordance with the outdoor river
walks, has made Leshuixing a perfect public en-
vironmental education model.
The basic form of Leshuixing is walking
along rivers, which is called doing river walks.
The river walks are divided into two teams,
the short-journey team, covering 5 km each
time, and the long-journey team, covering
10 km to 20 km a time. We have five basic ob-
jectives for the river walks:
1. Participants stay close to nature, find and
feel the beauty and sickness of nature.
2. Participants understand basic water
quality standard and evaluations.
3. Participants master basic ways to define
common environmental problems, with both
sensory and monitoring instrument.Partici-
pants have a general idea about how the environ-
ment and human society influence each other.
4. Participants have a comprehensive idea
about urban water-supply systems.
To achieve these objectives, river experts
give instructions about what participants see
along the way. The instructions cover more
than environemental knowledge. As we under-
stand that the environment relates to people
in various ways, and that environmental prob-
lems root in various aspects of modern society,
we selectively choose environment, biology,
history, architecture, energy and sociology
(as the themes?) and design a highly structured
curriculum based on the actual conditions of
rivers in Beijing.
Four or five river walks compose a series
with a theme. Most of the themes are set ac-
cording to different waterbodies. We also have
special themes introducing Cultural heritage,
eco-tourism, and official waterworks etc.
These themes are designed by experts i n Le-
shuixing Water Research Center. 70 % of them
are professional scholars on related areas. Oth-
ers are grassroots experts, who concern much
about the river and water environment and
have respectable insights on these issues.
For each river walk, participants listen to in-
structions, monitor water quality and complete
a river report with the help of the experts. They
are also encouraged to express their opinions
and share their stories on what? This process
helps them see a river as an exo-system, appre-
ciate cultural heritage of a river and understand
the relationship betwwen human society and
water.
The diversed curriculum attracts different
groups of people, ranging from school children
to the retired. Leshuixing has established co-
operative relationship with over 30 universities
and middle schools in Beijing, offering extra-
curricular activities to students?. Students al-
together make up 70 % of the participantion.
Some of the participants are so active that they
become core volunteers and assist in B e ijing’s
Water Research Project — an annual indepen-
dent research project by Leshuixing Water Re-
search Center.
Leshuixing public environmental class
was in the first place meant for public report
of Beijing’s Water Research Project. In 2008,
Leshuixing Water Research Center started an
independent research project. Every year, Le-
shuixing experts choose four or five topics on
specific water issues in Beijing. The 2008 Bei-
jing’s Water Research includes «Water and
sustainable development of Beijing», «Rescue
and restore rural ponds in the suburb of Beijing»,
«The decline of pagodas and towers near rivers —
a reflection of cultural diverge on the relation-
ship between human and nature» and «A survey
on reservoirs in and around Beijing». Public re-
ports of these researches were quite success-
ful. With an average audience of 30, those re-
ports fell into two hours’ report on the research
and one hour’s discussion with the audiences.
The audiences, most of which were Leshuix-
ing river walkers, were active in the discus-
sion section, expressing their own opinions and
sharing their own related experiences. We saw