Opposing reports have hit the web regarding a supposedly new trend in China, which claimed that young Chinese people were taking cabbages for walks as a way to deal with loneliness and depression.

Most recently, young people were seen attending a music festival in Beijing and dragging cabbages behind them on leashes. The cabbages were identified as a platform through which teenagers could express adverse emotions and meet like-minded individuals.

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However, it seems that these occurrences are less of a new trend and more of an ongoing art project by artists Han Bing.

Han has been using cabbages as an art form for the last 14 years, stating that the cabbage is the perfect representation of sustenance and comfort for poor Chinese. By walking or dragging the cabbage, Han is in fact turning these ideas upside down and pointing a finger at China's changing value structure.

Having a large stock of cabbage for the winter once represented opulence, but in the modern age the cabbage has been replaced by large shows of ostentation. However, for the poor who struggle financially in China, the importance of the cabbage remains the same.

Various young people joined Han in dragging cabbages on leashes at last weekend's Midi music festival in Beijing and informed media outlets that the art project was meant as a reflection upon contemporary society.

Han's statements oust the original belief that sibling-less Chinese teenagers were going to extremes in order to contend with feelings of isolation and depression which plague young people in this densely populated country.

It was also believed that this was a rising trend in response to China's strict one-child policy which discourages couples from having more than one child, therefore creating a society in which young people have greater feelings of loneliness and more pressure from being the sole offspring.