ST ANTHONY, Minn. — A local woman is traveling the world with the goal of inspiring people who live along rivers to protect and love them.
Just two weekends ago along the Mississippi, Ping Wang held a festival where she invited the community to create prayer flags. If poetry is a wish from the heart, Wang has been carrying a lot of wishes.
"The flags you see is only a part of the thousands of flags, they're prayers made for rivers and mountains from all over the world," Wang said.
Wang, a St. Paul writer, poet, and former professor said she started the Kinship of Rivers project inspired by the life that rivers spur. Originally from China, Wang saw parallels between life along the Yangtze and life along the Mississippi.
So she went to communities along those rivers, asking folks to make prayer flags like the ones they make in Tibet.
"Every time the wind blows, a prayer is uttered, and spread to the world," Wang said, describing how prayer flags work. "So I borrowed the concept-- and I just thought I'd like to have people write poetry and make art for the Earth. I would travel and install along the rivers and mountains."
By now, the project's first set of flags is 12 years old. The flags are more worldly than most, having traveled far and wide along with Wang.
"These flags have been traveling to the entire Mississippi River, the entire Yangtze River, the Nile, the Amazon, the Ganges, and many other rivers around the world," Wang explained. "And also went up to Everest three times, and also Kilimanjaro. They were blessed by Dalai Lama, his Holiness."
If poetry ever needed a reason, Wang has a very good one for wanting to collect so many.
"This project gathers people's goodwill, people's hearts and joy to like co-exist and protect and love this beautiful earth, this beautiful water, parks, and mountains and good air," she stated. "It takes billions of years to make this good Earth, right? And it takes only like a few years to destroy it."
Each flag carries wishes for protection and love, for something that gives so much life. She said it's the least the beneficiaries of any river could do.
"It's time for people to get together to become more aware, and wake up and do something for our Earth, for ourselves," Wang said. "Saving the Earth is saving us."
Kinship of Rivers began as an extremely active Facebook Group that remains engaged to this day. Wang posts regular updates, and talks about the next journey she will be taking the flags on.
WATCH MORE ON KARE 11+
Download the free KARE 11+ app for Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV and other smart TV platforms to watch more from KARE 11 anytime! The KARE 11+ app includes live streams of all of KARE 11's newscasts. You'll also find on-demand replays of newscasts; the latest from KARE 11 Investigates, Breaking the News and the Land of 10,000 Stories; exclusive programs like Verify and HeartThreads; and Minnesota sports talk from our partners at Locked On Minnesota.
- Add KARE 11+ on Roku here or by searching for KARE 11 in the Roku Channel Store.
- Add KARE 11+ on Fire TV here or by searching for KARE 11 in the Amazon App Store.
- Learn more about the KARE 11+ app for Apple TV in the Apple App Store.
- Learn more about KARE 11+ here.
Watch more Lifting Voices:
Watch all of the latest stories from Lifting Voices in our YouTube playlist: