Living the natural way

Zhang Yinghui and her two sons hike in Italy. [Photo provided to China Daily]

She brings up her children 'as Mother Earth intended', and her firm conviction has turned her into a fervent advocate and the founder of Beijing's first gathering of organic, sustainable producers. She insists she is still a mother above all else, and she tells Sun Ye why.

Zhang Yinghui's 13-year-old elder son Marco has an unusual complaint. He wants to know why he has not gotten sick like the other children.

"Everybody else gets ill and takes time off school," he told his mother a few-years back.

It's true. Marco has never been inside a hospital, never taken any antibiotics or any over-the-counter Western medication, and he and his brother recently skied twice as long and twice as far as their mother when they took a holiday in the Alps this winter.

Zhang, 49, is a ruby-complexioned stay-at-home mother and freelancer. Most of all, she is a champion of natural living, and she attributes her children's good health to a simple doctrine - living simple, and living "the way Mother Earth intends us to live".

Natural Living, Zhang's book, documents her parenting lifestyle from food choices to medical advice and was published in December by Tsinghua University Press.

She insists that it is not meant to be a lifestyle encyclopedia, but her readers believe it is.

At a recent seminar where she shared her experiences with 15 mothers anxious to learn more, Zhang was bombarded with questions ranging from how best to mop the floor to where to buy organic rice in Beijing.

Zhang had all the answers.