Chinese teenagers befriend cabbages to conquer depression and loneliness?

BEIJING, May 6 (UPI) -- According to some reports, Chinese teenagers have taken to walking heads of cabbage on leashes as if they were dogs in order to battle depression and loneliness.

The vegetable walkers were spotted at the Midi Music Festival in Beijing. Apparently walking a cabbage is a good way to strike up a conversation with another person who has decided to make a vegetable their pet.

“It's not about finding a boyfriend or girlfriend, just about having someone to talk to and share things with, a statement of youth isolated in the big cities," said Beijing University psychiatrist Wen Chao, the Austrian Times reported.

"The idea is simple -- you feel as lonely and as simple as a cabbage, so you begin to act like one and befriend one. And in that acceptance comes change."

It could be said the teens are stopping themselves from feeling blue by going green.

"I feel I can transfer my negative thoughts about myself to the cabbage, go for a walk with it and come home feeling better about myself,” said cabbage-walker Lui Ja Chen. "In fact afterwards, I can throw the cabbage away and feel that I have tossed my feelings out with it."

Other media outlets say they cabbage walkers were just engaging in performance art.

The Culture Trip reports that the cabbage walk was simply an art project by Chinese artist Han Bing. Han's website reports the Chinese cabbage is "a quintessentially Chinese symbol of sustenance and comfort for poor Chinese turned upside down."