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Saw this email exchange between a client and my colleague, thought it’s really useful for anyone planning a trip to China in the fall.

Clients email: My husband and I are planning a trip to Asia in late September and are very interested in visiting Tibet and Lijiang.  We will arrive September 26th to Shanghai and will depart October 11th so we will have 14 days for touring.  We are very active and are open to cultural trekking, biking, etc.

My colleague’s answer covered a series of recommended activities and sites, but this is the most important message: Late September to early October is one of the best time to visit China as the weather then is mostly pleasant. However, during the week-long National Holiday ( Oct 1^st – 8^th ) or few days before/after, all places in China will see a lot of domestic tourists.  If your schedule is flexible, we would like to suggest we make the tour plan after Oct 15^th , when the weather is cooler and you will be able to enjoy the local culture as well as the beautiful scenery.

Avoid China during Chinese New Year and Oct 1-7th golden week at all costs. Too many domestic travelers.

When reading Orville Schell’s recent article in Conde Nast Traveler, “China’s Magic Melting Mountain,” readers might notice that the destinations in Yunnan he describes seem rather, well, touristy.

Schell is quick to outline the realities of these tourist meccas. Of Mt. Kawagebo, he writes:

“A distant rooster crows, and the sun bursts into full flame over the ridge. As if some switch were thrown to make them artificially glow from within, the mountains’ peaks become tinted with gold and orange. The Chinese tourists around me begin clicking away on their cameras with the intensity of tail gunners whose bomber squadron has suddenly come under attack.”

On Lijiang, Schell is even less forgiving; he calls it a “high-kitsch carnival of Naxi minority culture.”

 

Comments such as these beg the question: if Yunnan’s Lijiang and Mt. Kawagebo are so kitschy and crowded, then what is the point of visiting them? And, from a potential client’s point of view, why is AsiaTravel still visiting these areas? Don’t they promote “experiencing China differently?”

We, too, have often debated the issue of historical and culture value versus tourist developments and influx in these areas. In the spring and summer of 2009, we wrote a few blog posts on the issue. Our April 14, 2009 blog post, entitled “What We’re Reading: NYTimes Goes to Yunnan,” addresses the struggles of preserving the uniqueness of such a popular destination on our trips:

“For operators like AsiaTravel, it’s always a balancing act to manage sustainable development of a site while promoting its appeal to future travelers. On one hand, you might want to keep small places a secret so that they retain that je ne sais quo that made the place so appealing in the first place. On the other, you want to promote these amazing places and tell everyone about them so that they can share your experience.”

Three days later, we explained our philosophy regarding responsible tourism:

“For AsiaTravel, our goal of responsible travel includes providing travelers a greater understanding of local cultural and environmental issues… It means visiting Songzanlin Monastery, also referred to by Jenkins, but having monks guide us through areas normally off-limits and having tea with a top lama in his private chambers. And it means visiting local families in surrounding Tibetan villages, like Hamagu, where World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is working to build support for sustainable tourism as an alternative source of income to logging.”

We at AsiaTravel realize that as more tourists flood these areas, some aspects of local culture and environment are inevitably compromised. However, despite these realities, we strongly believe that we are still able to give our guests a unique travel and cultural experience.

How do we accomplish this? We travel away from the crowds. We engage in people-to-people meetings and interactions so that our travelers experience daily Chinese life. We offer once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, such as meeting with a Bimo shaman (see our Chinese Treasures itinerary). In smaller, more intimate Naxi villages nearby, we take our guests to local markets and community performances by village elders. It is through these personalized experiences and intimate looks at life in Yunnan that we are able to customize our travelers’ experiences and maintain the wonder of local cultures for our guests.

It’s also important to consider why these sites have become as touristic as they are. Why do thousands flock to Yunnan each year? There is clearly a reason why: Yunnan is one of the most diverse areas of China. Lijiang is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and an absolute must-see; Mt. Kawagebo is a spectacular and breathtaking sacred Tibetan mountain. While we cannot and do not deny that mass tourism does have negative effects upon these areas, the tourist culture in this area reflects the reality of Chinese domestic travel, and, for the reasons mentioned above, is justified.

Orville Schell does not sugarcoat his opinions of Lijiang, Mt. Kawagebo, and the current tourist climate in China. But he is still writing about them. Why? Because regardless of the tourists visiting these sites, they are still simply remarkable.

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We invite you to join us in our ongoing rethinking of tourism in China. If you have something to say about this topic, please leave a comment, or email Alex at alex.grieves@wildchina.com. We’d love to hear from you.

Talking to a journalist recently. He asked me: I’m thinking of going to China in Sept. or Oct. to do a story on China’s holy mountains. Have you been to many of them? Any particular one worth profiling?

Here is my answer:
I am sure you’ve researched, two different definitions of China’s holy mountains:
Wuyue, Five sacred mountains:
1. Tai Shan, Taoist mountain of the east, Shandong
2. Heng Shan Bei, Taoist mountain of the north, Shanxi
3. Hua Shan, Taoist mountain of the west, Shaanxi
4. Heng Shan Nan, Taoist mountain of the south, Hunan
5. Song Shan, Taoist mountain of the center, Henan

Four Buddhist mountains:
1. Wutai Shan in Shanxi
2. Putuo Shan in Zhejiang
3. Ermei Shan in Sichuan
4. Jiuhua Shan in An’hui

Shame to say, I’ve only been to Er’mei, which is stunning. Most of these places are very crowded with tourist, but if you opt for hiking up the mountain the same way the monks did years ago, it’s still really beautiful. Jiuhua Shan is close to the Yellow Mountain. There are some lovely villages nearby that’s worth your visit – Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon was filmed there – all those bamboo forests.

If you include Tibet on the list, then I have been the holiest of all Mt. Kailash. I hiked around the mountain myself for 2 days. It’s a once in a lifetime experience.

On the subjects of climate change, the Tibetan Plateau, and Orville Schell, our friend at New York-based Asia Society, Michael Zhao, recently sent us a video in which he combines and documents all three.

In his 3:35-minute film, Zhao captures the drastic physical changes of Asia’s most famous glacial peaks, shows the importance of glaciers to the livelihood of local cultures, and records Orville Schell’s insights on the importance of Chinese-American collaboration on climate change.

Orville notes in the video, “they’re [the glaciers are] the alarm system, and the alarm system has gone off. The question is, will we hear it?”

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Watch the video on Michael Zhao’s YouTube channel. You can also send him a tweet @MikeZhaoYunfeng.

Photo credit: tampabay.com

<From Philip on May 17th>

Today we didn’t go to the disaster-hit areas as we usually did. We took part in a press conference. I got some information released by the official channel.

There are also some touching stories by Melissa and Andrea at http://www.npr.org/blogs/chengdu/2008/05/we_found_fu_guanyu_and.html#more

1. Number of rescue team from military: 140,000 (PLA and armed forces), 71 high-ranking officer (general).
2. President Hu Jintao paid a visit to Wenchuan this afternoon (which is the hard-hit area and also the epicenter of the earthquake)
3. Aftershocks: by May 16th, there were 5210 aftershocks altogether, but it is shrinking
   
4. Deaths and rescued, by May 17, more than 28300 people dead, among them 10290+ in Deyang, 9640+ in Mianyang, 4130+ in Chengdu, 2140+ in Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, and 2060+ in Guangyuan. 33,430 have been rescued from debris so far.
5. Transportation:The frequent aftershocks brought new damages to roads, electric lines and communication lines. New every efforts are being made to restore them.
   • About the roads: The road from Dujiangyan to Yingxiu will be opened (blocked again by landslides from aftershock.)  The road from Li Xian to Wenchuan is already made accessible.
   • The road from Rilong to Wolong now is basically made accessible.
   • The road from Lixian to Maoxian has been made accessible except last 10 km from Maoxian County Town.
   • The road from Maoxian to Wenchuan still has 27km not accessible.
   • Of the 4 roads leading to the townships from Pingwu County Town, only one is accessible(from Pingwu To Doukou Township).
   • Of the 4 roads leading from Mianzhu County Town to townships, all inaccessible. The road from Pengzhou to Yinchanggouis in accessible is inaccessible.
6. Telecommunications: Basically restored in Chengdu. Telecommunications service are available for working and emergency in Heishui, Maoxian, Wenchuan,and Pingwu. Of the 161 earthquake-hit towns and townships, in 92 telecommunications service are not restored.
7. Tourism: They are 7543 tourists stranded in the earthquake areas. They are safe. Of the 2264 overseas tourists, 1140 have transferred to a safe location or returned home while the rest are under evacuation.
8. Disaster- relief materials: Large amount of disaster-relief materials are being transported to hard-hit areas. 260 tents are ungently needed for temporary lodging, schooling, sick people and accommodation for rescue workers.
9. Water quality: Experts have been monitoring water all-hour round. Information from 52 water resources shows that water quality fit with the national standard. There is no big difference in the quality before and after the earthquake. Disease prevention work has been launched all around. There is no spread of endemic disease and public health emergencies.
10. Foreign rescue team: Six countries or regions have sent rescue teams to China to take part in the rescue activities. They from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, and Russia.
11. Support: News media have give timely reports on the situation of disaster-hit areas. Lots of ordinary people volunteered in disaster-relieving activities. For example, some farmers in Guanhan sent their fruits and vegetables to the disaster-hit areas. Local people in Jiajin Mountain are cooking hot water for rescue workers. Individuals drove their cars to transport donations or disaster-relief materials and transferred injured people to safe areas. However, large number of volunteer vehicles have caused some traffic jams were caused due to coming of. Thus individuals are suggested to send their donations to special donation-taking places set up by the province or cities so that rescue activities can be carried out more smoothly.

At 1 am Beijing time this past Saturday, I received this email below from my colleague, Sunshine. I am used to his quick email responses to my last detailed request for a flight or a trip proposal at those ungodly hours. This is one of the hardest working individuals in AsiaTravel’s Beijing office, and I often have to prod him to go to bed.

I have never seen him this emotional.

His email reads,

Last evening, we went to visit Yubeng Primary School in the upper Yubeng village, and sat down for a chat with the only teacher there, a Han Chinese girl from Hebei, who settled in Yubeng four years ago, now looks and acts like a local Tibetan, even her temperament.

It gradually got dark, and so enjoyable just staring at the flaming stove, drinking the ginger tea. Imagine the life of a girl who volunteers to teach in a remote Tibetan village, something I know I will never do in my life, then me, busy with work and life every day, like a clockwork rabbit, never stop, I have to say I got somehow touched, life can be so amazing and unique, here and this moment, really want to do something to help, no big promise, but something practical.

So I readily promised when she mentioned she would like to have some books about stones and plants, then she can tell the kids what the plant or stone is when they see it. I will buy the related books when get back to Beijing, welcome to join in. And if AsiaTravel wants, can also have a AsiaTravel library there, she refused TNC’s request of putting up the TNC exhibition there, but I guess she will be happy to offer one room for the library.

 

From Sunshine

 

 

Reading his email, I could practically see the flames and smell the wood burning. Yubeng is a magical paradise, hidden in the valley of Mt. Kawagebo in Northwest Yunnan (太子雪山). That’s where I took Ed Norton and Ann McBride of the Nature Conservancy to visit in 1999. On a beautiful October day, on those trails, we discussed the possible name for this business I planned to start. Wild World? No. Wild Asia? No. AsiaTravel? Yes. I wanted to build a AsiaTravel that is dedicated to showcasing the wilder parts of China in a sustainable way.

It’s now been 10 years; I am glad AsiaTravel’s staff still finds magic in that valley. It’s time AsiaTravel does something new to give back to the local villagers. A few books and a library is the least we can do.

———-

Stay tuned on the Wild Library progress, and in the meantime, look at our complete hiking trip to Yubeng Valley.

AsiaTravel’s t-shirts arrived at Sichuan’s Mupi Tibetan Village last week.  The village is located at, Pingwu county, one of the hardest hit counties from the Sichuan earthquake.

As Beijing continues to prepare for the 60th Anniversary of the People’s Republic of China on Oct. 1 and the weeklong National Holiday, we are receiving new updates on closures during this period:

– The Forbidden City will be closed from Sept. 30 to Oct. 1.

– On Oct. 1, from 9:30 am to 12:30 pm, the Beijing Capital Airport will cancel all domestic flights, and international flights will be postponed to 12:50 pm.

– From now until Oct. 8, the Tibet Tourism Bureau in Beijing will stop issuing the Tibet travel permit, which is required to enter Tibet. AsiaTravel is working with our local partner in Tibet to remain updated on this matter.

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Need more information? Email us at info@wildchina.com.

Climate change often seems like an abstract concept to many of us. But as renowned China scholar Orville Schell writes in “The Thaw at the Roof of the World,” his recent New York Times op-ed, the effects of global warming can be clearly seen in a part of China close to AsiaTravel’s heart: Yunnan province in the southwest.

AsiaTravel recently ran a trip for Orville and a few of his friends from the Asia Society to Yunnan and the Tibetan Plateau so that they could examine these environmental changes up close. As he writes, most people visit Yunnan’s majestic Jade Dragon Snow Mountain for the beautiful views — unaware that the mountain’s Baishui Glacier No. 1 has receded 830 feet over the last 20 years due to climate change. While in the short run, the melting of the glacier will result in plenty of water, in the long run, it will in fact result in water scarcity — a serious issue, given that the glaciers on Jade Dragon Snow Mountain feed water into the uppear reaches of the Yangtze River, a major water resource for much of China.

Given that water resources are already dwindling worldwide, it’s no wonder that conservationists are drawing more and more attention to the pressing need to solve the climate change problem.  It certainly becomes much less abstract when you think about the people and lives that will be hugely affected, for the worse, by the environmental changes.

AsiaTravel recently embarked on a series of initiatives to improve local practices in rural areas in southwest China. This is the second of a three part series examining efforts to improve life for those in rural areas and the technologies that enable a better standard of living.

At the upper reaches of the Minjiang river and the edge of the Tibetan plateau sits Shenxi village, the remote home to a group of Chinese villagers. Shenxi village, an hour hike from the nearest paved road, seems a world apart from the rest of civilization. However, the activities of this town profoundly influence the rest of Sichuan province and surrounding areas. Shenxi village sits atop the Sichuan water basin, which stores water runoff from the Himalayas and supplies vital water to Sichuan and regions downriver.

Water cleanliness is a persistent issue for China’s water lifelines that carry snowmelt from the Himalayas eastward to the Pacific Ocean, from which one quarter of China’s population drinks contaminated water every day, according to the United Nations (PDF). These issues with water cleanliness are often the result of unsanitary conditions and practices in human settlements that border major rivers.

Seperated by only a mountain from the epicenter of last year’s earthquake, Shenxi village was devastated by the damage it inflicted. Aside from the toll on human life, many of the buildings in Shenxi collapsed outright and those still standing suffered heavy damage. Villagers who returned to Shenxi village after the earthquake rebuilt their homes with the limited resources available, and the result was a village that lacked adequate sanitation. AsiaTravel recently completed a three day project building bio-friendly toilets in this area.

Working with WildGrass, an NGO dedicated to providing sanitary living conditions in earthquake stricken areas of Sichuan, AsiaTravel sent a group of high school students to Shenxi village. The students hiked into Shenxi, where the winding mountain road is still in disrepair from the earthquake and certain stretches have disappeared altogether. The students worked together with locals and AsiaTravel staff to build six waterless latrines with self-sterilizing technology for the village.

WildGrass incorporates new technology into their waterless toilets. The toilets are built from bamboo and locally recycled materials, and use underground fermentation with ash from local plants to sterilize the waste.  The byproducts are then used as crop bio-fertilizers. These toilets save nearby rivers and the waterbed from waste pollution. Moreover, the toilets provide a resource to the local farmers, who can economize on locally purchased fertilizer. WildGrass is in the process of building these toilets in earthquake ravaged areas of Sichuan.

After the project, one of the villagers for whom the students had built a toilet cooked a meal for the students as a show of gratitude. AsiaTravel has another trip planned for a group of students to return to that area in early November.