Hankies and baskets symbolize environmentalist's dream of a greener China

BEIJING, March 9 (Xinhua) -- Chen Fei came bearing gifts for his fellow deputies to the annual parliamentary session in Beijing: handkerchiefs. The squares of cloth symbolize his goal of doing for tissues what's being done for some plastic bags -- replace them.

On the sidelines of the First Session of the 11th National People's Congress (NPC), he gave 3,000 handkerchiefs to deputies and journalists and 56 bamboo baskets to representatives of ethnic minorities.

Chen, founder of the non-governmental environment protection agency, Green Association of Volunteers in Yongjia County, is one of the nearly 3,000 deputies to the NPC.

The sun-tanned farmer-turned environmentalist from the rich eastern province of Zhejiang never expected to enter the top legislature when he first took home-made baskets to the largest outdoor market in the county in 2000, trying to talk people out of using plastic bags.

"That summer, the scenic Nanxijiang River close to my home swelled with flood water and discarded plastic bags," said Chen, 53. "Soon enough, all the fish died."

Chen, who finished only junior high school, gave simple reasons for the one-man campaign that was to make him a household name in China. "I want the clean river of my childhood to come back, and I think plastic bags hanging on twigs make trees ugly."

He started by telling villagers along the river to stop using plastic bags. "They didn't believe me at first, so I collected evidence from newspapers and the Internet. People tend to believe things in print."

In 2005, Chen proudly hung up a tablet, declaring his home village of Zhu'an as "China's No. 1 village with no plastic bags".

Members of the 700 households in the village, he said, all take baskets to shopping trips or bundle up their groceries with straw ropes.

But Chen's dream of a cleaner world exceeds the confines of his small village. He has visited 19 large and mid-sized Chinese cities over the past eight years, swapping at least 10,000 baskets for plastic bags.

He presented baskets to Vice-Premier Zeng Peiyan, deputy head of the State Environmental Protection Administration Pan Yue and officials of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG).

He's been invited three times to award ceremonies at the Great Hall of the People in central Beijing. Chen, with his homespun clothes, a receding hairline and two baskets, was initially denied entry in 2005.

"The security staff insisted I couldn't take the baskets in. They gave in when I explained these were what actually brought me there."

"I have a dream," said Chen. "I'll take 2,008 bamboo baskets to Beijing to mark the 100-day countdown to the Olympic Games."

More than 400 people have supported him over the years as members of his group, including officials, teachers, peasants and people running businesses in Yongjia County. Their membership fees cover most of the group's local operating costs, but travel costs to other cities always come from their own pockets.