Rue never had the luxury of defining herself by geography, language, or genetics — she’s Black and White with a Persian name, more hair than any brush can handle, and a childhood spent all over the world. It gave her adaptability and a global perspective, but sometimes leaves her feeling like she belongs nowhere.
Beijing, 2008 | Age 4
INTERVIEWER: What’s it like living here?
RUE: Good! Our neighbors bring us food when our stove breaks — and even when it’s working fine. Everybody in this hutong just helps each other. Baba says it’s the best alley because nobody has to do anything alone.
Beijing, 2025–2026 | Age 21
INTERVIEWER: Take me back to the day you landed in Beijing again.
RUE: I cried before I even saw the hutong. I hadn’t been back since I was seven — more than a decade ago.
INTERVIEWER: Would you say your travels are sustainable?
RUE: Not always. I flew here, and that’s a footprint. China is still the world’s largest plastic producer, with a takeout culture generating enormous single-use waste. But it’s not simple: China’s clean electricity capacity just passed 52%, overtaking fossil fuels for the first time, while it still emits more carbon than any country on Earth. Progress and damage, both can coexist. I couldn’t just observe it.
INTERVIEWER: So what did you do?
RUE: Started small — turning off the tap, refill stations instead of bottled water. Then further: local markets with my own reusable bags, Avocado Tree for its recyclable packaging, Xishi Magic Bag for restaurants’ unsold food before it’s binned, and family-style dining with reusable tableware instead of ordering solo. For transport, Alipay got me onto the metro, buses, and rental bikes instead of taxis. For clothes, Xianyu for anything secondhand. None of it made me a perfect environmentalist — just a more honest one.
INTERVIEWER: So what actually changed you?
RUE: Sitting with a man who’s lived in my old hutong for years. He never once said “sustainable.” He described two neighbors sharing one e-scooter, families eating together because cooking alone in a shared courtyard never made sense. Nothing branded, nothing optimized — it simply made the sustainable choice the shared, easy one. The thing I’d flown around the world to learn was sitting in the alley I was born into.
California, 2026 | Age 22
INTERVIEWER: How are you continuing this journey?
RUE: This summer I’m guiding forty high schoolers through Stanford’s Global Sustainability Innovation Leadership Program — sustainability science, environmental economics, AI-driven research. Every session, I bring it back to that alley: real sustainability isn’t just a metric, it’s a structure people build together.
INTERVIEWER: What do you wish for Rue, ten years from now?
RUE: That she’s still building alleys, not just measuring emissions — that the answer to what motivates her is still a community.
References:
https://sdgs.un.org/goals
https://eset.stanford.edu/gsil
www.earth.org/china-plastic-pollution
www.reuters.com
www.chinadaily.com.cn
Resources:
Alipay App
HelloBike App
XishiMagicBag: WeChat mini-program
www.goofish.com
https://aqicn.org/city/beijing
