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A friend and I are considering bringing both of our families to China for a reunion next summer. My kids are 6 yr, 3 yr, and 9 month old. His 3 girls are 9, 7 and 3.  So here are his questions: ” Should we take Josh’s Tangula express to Lhasa?   Or do we want AsiaTravel to organize a princess tour of the wonders of China? Tibet?”

Here are my answers:

Tangula express would be cool, but not for kids. It’s too long a ride and kids get antsy. I know mine can’t handle it. I actually think it’s best to anchor kids at one place for 3 days, have lots of little fun stuff for them to venture from one base.  I would say, hang out somewhere near Guilin or Dali, go on short hikes, bike rides, fishing, crafts, etc.

Orville Schell recently wrote about his journey to Yunnan with AsiaTravel, discussing the climate change issues on the Tibetan Plateau. However, what is beyond the melting glacial peaks in the region?

AsiaTravel’s Alex Grieves sat down with Jia Liming, AsiaTravel’s Director of Operations, to get a sense of the diverse natural and cultural wonders that exist between the Yangtze and Mekong Rivers.

Alex Grieves: How did you initially get involved in Orville Schell’s trip? Why were you a part of this experience?
Jia Liming: In early 2009, Mei [Zhang, AsiaTravel’s founder] told me that Orville [Schell, Asia Society’s China scholar] wanted to write about glaciers in China. As a member of the Operations team and someone who is quite familiar with Yunnan, I was asked to explore which routes would be most appropriate for the trip and to travel with the group.

AG: What route did you end up taking?
JL: We essentially went in a large loop. We first drove alongside the Yangtze River to Deqin, and then followed the Mekong River south again, first to Cizhong and then to Weixi. We visited the Mingyang Glaciers and Lijiang’s Jade Dragon Mountain, both of which are, or are home to, low latitude glaciers.

AG: What impressions did you take away with you while on this route?
JL: The journey down the Mekong River is simply incredible; it really is as if one is traveling through time. When you’re on the route, you travel through a myriad of contrasts: high to low altitudes; Tibetan to Lisu culture; buckwheat crops to rice fields; different styles of architecture; and colder to warmer climates. It’s amazing what one can see on just one 9-hour drive.

AG: What was your strongest impression from the trip?
JL: Driving past a Lisu village at sunset. As we passed by, I saw farmers singing in the fading light while working with cows in the rice fields. They seemed incredibly content. That was a really powerful moment. More generally speaking, the drive from Cizhong to Weixi is incredibly beautiful – there is no industry in these areas, and the natural beauty is untouched. One thing really interesting about the this area is that many villages are driven by clean energy and sustainable practices. The government subsidizes their bio-gas for cooking and heating, which enables the community to waste less and preserve their natural surroundings. It’s also very well-organized, and should serve as a model for other rural communities in China.

AG: Tell me more about the Lisu minority and their community.
JL: The Lisu people are an intriguing ethnic group, as about 20 percent of them are Catholic. Many can be found in Myanmar, since a large number of them emigrated to that area in the past.

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Want to learn more about Yunnan and the Tibetan Plateau? Send us a tweet @AsiaTravel, or email Jia at liming.jia@wildchina.com.

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.

———–

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.

I was munching on my chicken salad sandwich when my colleague popped into my office, “ Oh, sorry. Here you go. Conde Nast Traveler Magazine issue you’ve been waiting for!”.

I probably didn’t look my best in my small office in an old house on East West Highway.  At least, the munching image didn’t quite live up to the dream brought alive on the cover of the magazine:

“135 Travel Experts who can change your life (Trust Us!)”

“FANTASTIC GETAWAYS! Living the Dream in Italy, India, Kenya, Eypt….”

I wiped away the crumbs, and turned the magazine to page 120.  Yes, there I was, for the first time, chosen by Conde Nast’s Wendy Perrin as one of the travel experts for China.

“Zhang wants to show you the “authentic China” beyond anything you’ll read about in guidebooks, and—as a Yunnan Province native, Harvard MBA, and former consultant for The Nature Conservancy—her vast Rolodex of in-country experts in nearly every field can make this happen…and get you farther off the beaten path than any other company can. Her cultural connections run deepest in Southwest China—Yunnan, Szechuan, and Guizhou provinces—where you might find yourself having tea with a practicing shaman, catching a private Naxi music concert at the home of the village head, or camping in luxury mobile tents on the Tibetan Plateau ”

This news reached me last week by email. So, the initial excitement has since settled, but never the less, the pride brought by this listing is still ringing.

It was exactly, almost to the date, 10 years ago that I started AsiaTravel. At that time, I was a couple years out of business school, still owning a couple of black suits that I wore to glassy office buildings in Hong Kong, New York and Beijing. Still was quite used to flying business class.

Somehow, Travel changed my life. I took some time off McKinsey to travel around the world. Puff, 4 months was gone without a blink. I was sitting in the cabin of an oil tanker truck (only choice for a hitchhiker), rocking my way up to the Tibetan Plateau from Kashgar. We rocked and rocked, I fell asleep and woke up. Wow, a whole night was gone. The snow-covered landscape replaced the desert where we started. But the milestones said, 125 km!! A whole night, we covered 80 miles in distanced, but close to 15,000 feet in elevation.

My heart started to beat faster, breathing became more labored, the landscape increasingly looking austere and moonish. The Tibetan antelopes galloped in the distance. I started to cry, for no reason. One was just touched by being so close to pristine nature. I knew there were risks, for me, being the solo woman traveler on that route. But I knew I was one of the lucky few, who had the money, the time, and the right passport (Chinese) to travel to these remote corners of Tibet.

Sometimes, I, woke from sleep in that rocking truck, stared out the window, and asked myself, “What if the truck tumbled over the edge? Is there one thing I would regret for not doing?”

The answer came back loud and clear, “Building my own business”.  That was the beginning of AsiaTravel.

Travel, somehow, has had magic powers over me. I met my husband hiking the sacred pilgrimage trail around Mt. Kawagebo in Yunnan, I took my wedding party to hike from Salween River to the Mekong.

Then travel helped to change other people’s lives.  Recently, two clients got married on a AsiaTravel trip. Two clients got engaged on a AsiaTravel trip. We’ve helped families retrace the Burma Road commemorating their father’s journey in WWII.

After all the years of traveling, I think I am starting to understand the magic of travels. Somehow, when one’s on the road, one’s attention is so outwardly focused, that all you notice are people and things around you. After the outward focus, the inward reflection of oneself is much gentler, and not so judgmental of whether my office is in an old house or a shishi building downtown, or whether my munching is embarrassing.

Travel elevates one above the daily routine, and allows one to see the beauty of other people’s daily routine. One of my favorite moment recently was jogging in front of Shangrila’s Songtsam Lodge, while watching the Tibetan farmers shepherding their cattle to the fields. I am sure they didn’t think of their life was poetic and charming, as it was just hard work. But as a traveler watching them, I was loving that moment. That’s the illusion of distance- distance of reality, distance of geography, and distance of time. That’s probably the art of travel.

Anyway, back to my sandwich. I didn’t think my munching a sandwich at desk was any bit poetic, but more embarrassing. But, I know, give it another 10 years, I will reflect back on this moment, as one of the defining moment of launching AsiaTravel in America.

A twitter post responding to a AsiaTravel tweet prompted this blog piece:

@Chinaandbeyond said: “I would trade Yunnan for Gansu or Sichuan, personally RT @AsiaTravel: First and only time to China?”

 

Let me decipher this for those who don’t tweet: AsiaTravel recommended a trip that goes to Beijing, Xi’an, Yunnan and Shanghai for those who are traveling to China for the first and only time. That link is a condensed link that goes to our website with the trip details.

Then @Chinaandbeyond account owner Ms. Jessica Marsden shared AsiaTravel’s recommendation to her followers. And she also added her own commentary that she would trade Gansu or Sichuan for Yunnan.

 

What can I say? I am biased! I am from Yunnan, with a virtual identity called @yunnangirl! Everytime when a client calls me, I talk about Yunnan. That’s home to me. I can smell Yunnan if farmers burn the remaining rice stocks in their fields; I can hear Yunnan, even when I overhear visitors at the Smithsonian speak the local dialet; I can taste Yunnan, when I cut up mustard greens to make a jar of Yunnan Suancai pickles. It is in my blood.

And, I happen to be a lucky Wendy Perrin China Specialist, so I get to advise people who are interested in seeing China. Naturally, carrying the tradition of Yunnan hospitality, I want people to visit my home town, visit those villages where I grew up, and taste the spicy and sour cuisine, hike the mountains that I still dream about. More importantly, I want them to meet people of Yunnan.

How would I describe people of Yunnan? 纯朴，勤劳，善良。I am struggling with English equivalents here.  Down to earth, hard working, and kind. The word has a 纯朴 connotation of being on the simple side in Chinese. But, I don’t take offense to that.

 

People in Yunnan grow up land locked. Generations of locals from various ethnicity carve out their living in small patches of land in between mountains and rivers.  So, either they farm, bent over their knees in the watery rice paddy fields, or they tilt the corn and potato fields on the steep mountains sides. Life in Yunnan has always been hard. The only wealth accumulated there is from trading, with Tibet, with Myanmar, Laos, and Viet Nam. This goes back hundreds of year, and the horse caravan trails bear witness to that.

For some reason though, in places so poor, the locals learned to cook these incrediblely tasty meals. Since the province is tucked between Sichuan to the North, and Laos/Thailand to the South, its cuisine is a lovely blend of those two. Spicy, but not numbing; sour, but without making your mouth pucker. Fresh vegetables and wild mushrooms are blessings.

Hospitality is another side of the Yunnanese that I love. Just recently, I traveled to a small town in Henan Province as a guest of the local government. Upon checking in, the hotel staff said that my ID wasn’t enough but insisted on me identifying the organization that invited me. I didn’t get the full name right, and she wouldn’t check me in. This was 2010? The concept of party/government affiliation trumping personal identity is still in practice in northern China.

 

While in Yunnan, they hear my dialect, they’ll watch my luggage for me while I go out to pay the taxi; they’ll fish out my luggage from the behind the conveyer belt so that I can put my tea needle in checked luggage (I talked about this in my earlier blog).

The local villagers in Yunnan still greet you with this, “ 吃了吗？来家里坐！“ “Have you eaten yet? Come visit my house!”

I know — sadly, Lijiang is changing (see our AsiaTravel blog piece on this). That’s all the more reason to visit the hidden treasures of China before they disappear.

AsiaTravel wishes to send our deepest condolences to the victims of Wednesday morning’s 7.1-magnitude earthquake in Yushu, Qinghai province (northwestern China, bordering Tibet). Our thoughts are with our local Qinghai partner and his staff as they and their families deal with the aftermaths of this tragedy.

China’s official news service, Xinhua, is currently reporting a death toll of 617, with 313 people missing and 9,110 injured.  A  search and rescue operation is currently underway, with the central government allocating $29.3 million for disaster relief.

AsiaTravel is also taking action: our eco-friendly camping tents used for our signature Tibetan Yushu Horse Festival journey are now being used in Yushu to house earthquake victims. Our team in China will continue to monitor the situation on the ground and provide updates.

It’s been another adventure-filled year at AsiaTravel – venturing to new destinations, revisiting preferred haunts for a second (or third, fourth) time, engaging in rugged hands-on activities, and relaxing in China’s finest luxury spots.

To pay homage to our favorite hotels, sites, and activities in China for the past year, we bring you our 2010 installment of AsiaTravel’s Best of China Awards – a small sampling of the finest that China has to offer, with many new additions (and a few return favorites).

 

Top 5 Hotels

Our top hotels for 2010 showcase China’s finest urban simplicity and rural grandeur. Chosen through an in-depth survey and client feedback process, these prime accommodations represent the best in service standards, environmental commitment, and unique design.

The Langham Hotel, Shanghai * – beautiful art deco style & a superb location

The Linden Centre, Dali – cultural heritage preservation through elegance and innovation

The Opposite House, Beijing * – sustainable modern luxury & unparalleled amenities

The Schoolhouse at Mutianyu, Mutianyu * – an incredibly eco-friendly home-away-from-home nestled near the Great Wall

Songtsam Retreat, Shangri-La – exceptional boutique accommodation in a distinctly Tibetan style

*These properties also won our Best of China Awards for 2009.

 

Top 5 Sites

We want our clients to experience China’s most incredible, unique, and unspoiled destinations. Below are our top picks for 2010 that allow for tucked-away adventures and peaceful exploration.

Longquanyu Wild Wall, Beijing – a remote section of the Wall that affords travelers a unique look at China’s most iconic monument

Xi’an Mosque and Snack Street, Xi’an – religious observation and bustling daily life intertwine in the city’s Muslim Quarter

Friday Market, Shaxi – Yunnan’s Yi and Bai minority peoples don their traditional best to trade hard-to-find goods in their mountainous village areas

Tea Plantation, Hangzhou [excursion upon request] – the home of Longjing (Dragon Well) tea in lush Zhejiang province

Wang’s Residence, Pingyao – A Qing Dynasty-era testament to ancient luxury and wealth in Shanxi Province’s ancient walled city

 

Top 5 Activities

Personal, once-in-a-lifetime, and hands-on: we love these activities because they bring our travelers closer to the people of China. These make for fun excursions that go far beyond the tour bus.

Pabongka hike to Chupsang Nunnery and Sera Monastery, Lhasa – a sun-filled, energizing hike is only the prelude to lively monk debates outside of the city

Update: The Pabongka hike has since been discontinued

Overnight in Miao villager’s home, Paika Village – enjoy a spicy home-cooked Guizhou meal and learn about daily minority life and culture in the village known for Lusheng, a traditional Guizhou instrument

Early morning kungfu lesson at the Temple of Heaven, Beijing – the traditional Temple sets the scene for travelers’ lesson from a master of the widely-practiced martial art

Sister’s Meal Festival, Kaili – young Miao women, dressed in colorful homemade embroidery and silver jewelry, sing and dance in this coming-of-age ritual and matchmaking ceremony

Visit with an Yi minority shaman, Lijiang/Wenhai Valley – learn from this well-respected traditional medicine man about the Yi minority’s animist tradition

 

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Miss our top picks from last year? Take a look at our Best of China Awards 2009.

Did we leave out your favorite hotel, site, or activity? Let us know! Send us an email or a tweet.

In recent days, AsiaTravel has been working with our local partners to get on-the-ground knowledge of the Yushu tragedy, and to provide needed supplies and aid.

Since our last post on Yushu, we have been notified of the following:
– AsiaTravel’s Europe Team Director, Veronique, hopes that the truck she helped coordinate to bring supplies to Yushu has arrived to the area. Since the road from Nansheng to Yushu was damaged by the earthquake, traffic has been slower.
– At this point, villages and other local areas outside of Yushu proper need the most aid.
– Volunteers are having some difficulty with relief efforts due to the language barrier and altitude sickness.
– One of our local Yushu partners, who was previously deemed unharmed but was unreachable, has been located and we are cooperating with him to distribute tents.

AsiaTravel has decided to take a three-fold approach to our aid for those suffering in Yushu, which includes two NGOs and aid for our local partners and friends affected by the earthquake.

1) Local partners: we are donating money to purchase medicine for our local partners’ families, in order to better facilitate their and their loved ones’ recovery from this tragedy.

2) Orphans: we are donating money to The Orphanage School, which is run by international NGO Rokpa, to help those children orphaned in the region.

3) Monks: we will also be donating to the Yushu chapter of Himalayan Consensus, an NGO dedicated to ethnic diversity and cultural sustainable development. The coordinator, Laurence Brahm, has sent goods to Damkar monastery where AsiaTravel visits during journeys for the Tibetan Yushu Horse Festival.

How can you get involved in these aid efforts?
– For The Orphanage School/Rokpa, please visit their website and scroll to the bottom of the page on how to give Single and Regular donations online and via mail.
– To donate to Himalayan Consensus or AsiaTravel’s local partners’ families, please email Alex at alex.grieves@wildchina.com with the subject line “Yushu donation.” Alex can provide you with contacts and donation information.

UPDATE: Follow Rokpa’s Yushu Relief blog for up-to-date information on developments in the area.

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Photo credit: Land of Snows

Have more questions about the situation in Yushu? Have other news from Qinghai, and ways to help? Please email Alex at alex.grieves@wildchina.com.

Michael Zhao, of New York-based Asia Society’s CHINA GREEN, has produced another incredible video on environmental change in China and its societal and cultural implications for the Chinese people. AsiaTravel was happy to contribute photos for such a meaningful video.

 

“Fading Shangri-La 失色中的香格里拉” highlights the rapid change of Mt. Khawa Karpo, or Meili Snow Mountain in Chinese, which is hailed as the most sacred mountain for Tibetans in Yunnan. The video is an important follow-up to Orville Schell’s (also of Asia Society) February 2010 article, “China’s Magic Melting Mountain,” about which we previously blogged.

Visually stunning and more relevant than ever, this video highlights the impending threat of a lost Tibetan religious figure, holy land, and spiritual community in Yunnan as Mt. Khawa Karpo’s glacial peaks continue to melt.

From the CHINA GREEN website:

Mt Khawa Karpo, known by Chinese as Meili Snow Mountain, is among the most sacred mountains in the Tibetan world. It is here in the steep valleys that novelist James Hilton set his Lost Horizon, describing the utopian wonderland of Shangri-La where time stands still. Tibetans have long worshiped this holy mountain, regarded as one of the highest spiritual gods in this mountainous region of China.

Yet as the earth warms, glacier retreat and ice loss here over the last decade have reached alarming levels and the melting is only accelerating. As a result, locals worry that the soul of this holy land – their Shangri-La – is slipping away. With it, a supernatural source of blessing for their people and communities is feared to be disappearing.

Watch a trailer of the video here (and for the full version, go to CHINA GREEN’s website): Fading Shangri-la trailer on YouTube