China Travel Blog

Find a new route on the Tibetan Plateau. Trace the origin of the Yangtze and Yellow River. Assess the newfound growth years after the Sichuan earthquake. The vision perseveres in whatever the journey may be.

Several people embody these qualities and take action: Li Bo, Director at Friends of Nature, China’s first environmental NGO; Edward Wong, one of the Beijing correspondents for The New York Times; Yu Hui, National Geographic China editor.

The AsiaTravel Explorer Grant is a grant of up to USD 3,000 that is awarded to adventurers seeking to push the boundaries of responsible, off-the-beaten-path travel in China. All submissions for the 2012 AsiaTravel Explorer Grant are due by November 15, 2011.

AsiaTravel selects our explorers winners based on the following criteria:

• Focus on bringing to light a long lost route, a culturally significant issue, promoting aid in a remote community or a trip dealing with discovery or rediscovery
• Passion and excitement for exploration
• Past/current involvement with exploration in China
• Risk management plan
• Incorporation of Leave No Trace (LNT) principles
• Low carbon travel
• Participant skill levels commensurate with proposed itinerary

For more information, please e-mail us at expedition@wildchina.com or visit http://www.wildchina.com/explorer-grant to download the application.

 

A couple months ago, you heard from AsiaTravel travelers Jan Heininger and Jamie Reuter saying that they were thrilled with [their] tour company, but not seduced by China.  Their journey in October of 2010 took them through Beijing, Tibet, Yunnan Province. Guangxi Province, and finally to Hong Kong. Here is the second part of a series of articles detailing their experience.  Stop 1 – Beijing…

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We flew to Beijing via Toronto on Air Canada.  Our plane was equipped with lie-flat, business class seats.  OK food.  Great lounge with free dinner in Toronto.  The tickets were half the price of other airlines.  Definitely recommend Air Canada for anyone travelling to China or other points in the Far East.  12 hour flight with 12 hour time change meant we didn’t have to reset our watches which was sort of weird.  It took both Jan and me several days to get past the time shift.  12 hours is tough (though Jan thinks it’s easier than 8 hours).

Oddly, we arrived a full day early.  We had figured: depart on Thursday (10/14), cross international dateline and arrive Saturday.  So our hotel and ground arrangements all were set up to begin on Saturday.  I’m still not quite sure how or why we went wrong, but we actually arrived on Friday.  So there we were in the Beijing airport: no Chinese money, no one to meet us, and few people with any English to help us sort out what to do.  After an hour-long comedy of errors (cell phone with locking key-pad and no instruction booklet, low volume on cell phone, receiving text message instructions in Chinese characters, etc.), we finally convinced our tour company that we were actually in town and received their instructions.  We were asked to take a mass-transit “airport express” train into town because it would take too long for our actual guide, Andy, to come pick us up.  We didn’t really understand this at the time but our subsequent experience with traffic jams demonstrated the wisdom of this suggestion.  Eventually, we managed to get our luggage, get money, find the train, buy tickets, get off at the right stop (the last one) and meet up with our guide who then took us to our hotel.  By this time, we had finally sorted out that the timing screw-up was actually our fault, and not an error by our tour company.

Our hotel in Beijing was the Opposite House (don’t ask about the meaning behind the name; I don’t know it), an ultramodern, minimalist-design hotel in the embassy district.  Very, very nice—the kind of lovely boutique we prefer.  In fact, tourists (both Chinese and western) routinely came in to photograph the interior spaces.  Good bed, wooden sinks and bath (a little odd), good shower, great service, and a very good breakfast.  The breakfasts were fairly uniform (and excellent) across all of our hotels.  By a large, they were based on large and diverse buffets with egg stations, bacon, cheeses, breads, rolls and muffins, cereal, yoghurt, etc.  In addition, they had a whole range of stuff for oriental breakfasts.  If you’ve never seen this, it includes broth, noodles, and a wide variety of meats, vegetables, fish, seaweed, sprouts, tofu, etc that are combined in a big bowl as a sort of breakfast soup to be eaten with chopsticks.  The broth itself is simply “slurped” down.  We looked at it.  We tried it and poked around a little.  But basically we stuck with the western fare for breakfast.  We excused ourselves by saying that two good Chinese meals a day was enough and who wants seaweed for breakfast?  There were no really good breads or hard rolls anywhere in China until we got to Hong Kong.  Maybe it has to do with the types of wheat they grow or something?

Once settled in Beijing, we did all the usual things.  We went to Tiananmen Square (covered with tourists).  We toured the Forbidden City.  We had Peking Duck (greasy).  In the rain (on our third day) we visited the Temple of Heaven and the Summer Palace.  We drove past a couple of Olympic sites (the Water Cube and the Bird’s Nest Stadium).  We took a pedi-cab tour of a hutong, a traditional Beijing neighborhood jammed in between all of the various high rise apartment buildings.  The hutongs are sort of like old, single story, traditional ghettos that are slowly being consumed by new high-rise construction.  But the Chinese who live in them love their traditional way of life, though they have no private baths or toilets.  The pre-Olympic destruction of several hutongs caused such a fury that it seems that the local “Central Committee” is trying them out as tourist attractions to see if showing them off can provide a positive financial return.

 

Our favorite things were the Ceramics Museum within the Forbidden City, and the Great Wall.  The museum was a quiet, deserted haven away from all the crowds with very good signage in both Chinese and English.  The Great Wall looked exactly like all the pictures you’ve seen of it.  But actually experiencing it was special.  We visited the Mutianyu section, which is a partially restored but far less touristy section of the Wall.  Jan and I took a long (2.5 hour) hike along its top.  The Wall actually just follows the crest of a mountain ridge.  The path along the top of the Wall can be extremely steep in places.  We both ended up with sore thighs and calves from climbing up and down some really steep and long stretches of steps, but loved the experience.

The food in Beijing was very so-so.  They seem to use a lot of oil so the food was very greasy and not all that flavorful.  Even when we went to a restaurant that specialized in Peking Duck, we were pretty underwhelmed.  We were not terribly adventuresome in our choices, so we probably missed a lot of what a real “foodie” would find interesting and good about Beijing food.
One of the oddities of being in China was the Chinese tourists’ fascination with us.  It started in the Tiananmen Square where this nice couple asked if they could have their picture taken with us with the Forbidden City in the background.  According to our guide, this was due to the inherent weirdness of westerners in general, and a tall, bearded westerner like Jamie in particular.  While this first incident was unique in that it included Jan, 10 or 12 times during the trip some couple or group of giggling girls or whomever wanted Jamie to pose with them for a photo – more or less to prove to their friends back home that they had seen, and even touched, a foreigner—but mostly because Jamie was so tall and looked even taller with his Australian Tilley hat.  Another tall American that we met on the trip had similar experiences.  After a while, the whole thing became a bother and bit irritating.  It was, in some small way, like having paparazzi chase after you.  It eventually made me feel like a creature in a zoo that people gawked at.  Weird.  And yet, despite such experiences and our reaction to the hordes and hordes of Chinese tourists, we found the Chinese, as individuals, to be friendly and welcoming.

We spent hours in traffic going to and from the Great Wall, and trying to get around inside the city.  Drivers are crazy there.  They push and shove in traffic using cars, trucks and buses pretty much the same way they push and shove in queues.  As one guide told us, there is no concept of personal distance in China (unlike in Japan where they create their own).  It’s not rudeness; it’s simply cultural norms. However, they always beep their horn when passing (they are taught to do this).  And when passing, they pull back into the right lane when the front seats have barely passed the front of the car being overtaken.  Several times, I was sure that we would clip the front of a car being passed but we never did.  Crossing a street on foot was also a challenge.  Initially I thought that cars were aiming at us on purpose.  Later, I realized that there just wasn’t any concept of pedestrians having the right of way.  A car making right hand turns just keeps going.  It was up to the pedestrians to get out of their way.  Given that the city was laid out in huge squares, Beijing was not a walkable city anyway.

Beijing was clearly an example of the “new China.”  Designer stores were everywhere.  Many young people clearly had lots of money and were stylishly dressed.  There was a long line outside an Apple Store near our hotel, as people waited to buy iPhones at five times the US price.  High rise condominiums and office buildings were everywhere.  Some brand new, some older and clearly showing their age.  Construction cranes were everywhere.  Our guides quipped that China’s national bird was the crane (i.e., steel crane, not feathered; get it??).  But the old neighborhood (hutong) near our hotel didn’t have a sewer or clean, public water.  Beijing was clearly a city of contrasts, with rapid change being driven by the “new” China economy.

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Stay tuned for more tales from Ms. Heininger & Mr. Reuter’s journey.  For more information about adventures in Beijing, see a sample itinerary here or contact us at info@wildchina.com.

All photos by Ms. Heninger & Mr. Reuter. To see all of their photos, visit AsiaTravel’s flickr page here.

AsiaTravel recently took students from an international school on a multi-day trek in a remote region outside of Zhongdian (popularly known as Shangri-La). It was challenging hiking at altitudes upward of 4000 meters, but the students were resilient and enjoyed the rewards, including a high alpine lake that’s sacred to the Tibetans and Yi people.

AsiaTravel expert Jeff Fuchs helped lead the journey. Fuchs shared valuable insights on the local culture and surroundings. Tibetan guide Sonam kept the group comfortable, especially when he broke into song. The horse team did well – even a two-week-old colt kept up!

 

 

 

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For more information about educational journeys to Yunnan, contact us at education@wildchina.com.

Students at THINK Global School really got to experience Yunnan with a different perspective.  AsiaTravel exposed the students to Dongba culture, Tibetan language, and Tiger Leaping Gorge, among others.  Photographer / videographer Lindsay Clark put together some footage from the morning market in Shaping.  The class thrived off of the interactions with locals: “Snapping photos, speaking in Mandarin, trying new foods – everyone takes their own approach to this outdoor classroom.” (Clark, TGS)

 

At the Zhonghe Temple in Dali, AsiaTravel Guide Zhang Jiong shared his knowledge on luck.  Check out the students aiming for good fortune.

 

Still, Brad Ovenell-Carter the Head of School felt, “The visit to the Zhonghe Temple was too short.  It would have been nice to stay at the hilltop for a while, perhaps to hold a drawing class and share a cup of tea.”

Thanks for the feedback, Brad!  AsiaTravel will definitely note this on our future journeys there.

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For more information about educational journeys to Yunnan, contact us at education@wildchina.com.

Photo by Brad Ovenell-Cartner, Videos by Lindsay Clark of Think Global School

 

The following post was written by Jan Heininger and Jamie Reuter, AsiaTravel clients who traveled with us for two and half weeks in October of 2010.  Their journey took them through Beijing, Tibet, Yunnan Province. Guangxi Province, and finally to Hong Kong. This is the first of a series of articles he wrote detailing their experience.  We begin with their overall impression of China…

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Some people come away saying they “loved” China.  We didn’t.  Don’t get me wrong.  This was a great trip.  China was fascinating.  It had beautiful scenery.  It had lots of history and culture.  We had many very unique experiences.  Tibet was wonderful.  We saw the Forbidden City and the Great Wall.  We saw amazing scenery including the karst mountains in the Li River valley.  We saw and experienced (in our own way) the spirituality of Tibet and China.  We visited towns and areas still dominated by minority populations and tribes.  We had, alas, only a few great meals but we stayed in a number of really outstanding hotels.  We had excellent guides and drivers who gave us meaningful insights into China, its history, its culture and its peoples.  We came away with a much greater appreciation for how some of the more recent aspects of Chinese history (end of the empire, Mao, the Cultural Revolution and the change to the “new economy”) have molded how people live their lives today.  We walked through “old towns” and markets established a thousand years ago.  We got a better understanding of how life works under central control.  But we didn’t “love it.”  We were fascinated.  We will go back to visit other areas of the country.  We were thrilled with our tour company and will use them again.  But we weren’t seduced by the country’s charms.

 

 

Part of our difficulties was due to the constant and sometimes overwhelming presence of Chinese tourists.  Chinese tourists are an odd group and not terribly accommodating or pleasant from a westerner’s perspective.  According to conversations with several people, Chinese tourists are less interested in seeing, learning and understanding, and much more interested in taking home pictures of themselves and cheap souvenir gifts to “prove” they had been to the big city and seen the elephant (so to speak).  In the context of China’s economic growth and the spread of wealth down into the middle classes and rural communities, millions of these tourists are on their initial trips out of their local communities.  They smoke a lot.  They spit.  They talk, stand up or even walk around during performances.  They push and shove to get to the front of a line – a survival skill, no doubt, in a country with 1.3 billion people.  In small numbers (anything less than several thousand), they are no worse than any other population of large groups discharging from parked ranks of tour buses.  You ignore their presence and carry on.  But for some reason, we were flooded with them.  Clearly, it was worst in Beijing, and our experience there may have made us hypersensitive to the issue throughout the remainder of the trip.  But our guides uniformly reflected on how they were seeing substantially many more national tourists than expected.  In prior years, the number of Chinese tourists had substantially diminished following their big national holiday (October 1).  This year, they just kept coming.  As an early example, I expected Tiananmen Square to be this huge, open square, just like the pictures I’ve seen.  Instead, all we could see were the heads of tens of thousands of tourists jamming an open space between a few monumental marble structures.  There was a 4-6 hour wait to get into Mao’s tomb (we skipped it).  Given the number of people present, the square itself didn’t even seem all that big.  For communities all across China, hanging out a “UNESCO Site” sign means you’re guaranteed millions of dollars of revenue from tens of thousands of Chinese tourists jamming little historic streets lined with shops selling plastic crap and cheap reproductions (mostly made in Viet Nam).  You can’t fault the Chinese for wanting to visit the hotspots within their own country.  But their numbers and manner definitely reduced our enjoyment and, in some cases our appreciation, for particular sights or experiences.
Second, China is clearly struggling with the size of its population, the extraordinary rate of growth in its economy and the rapid changes that are occurring in its distribution of wealth.  Improvements in their infrastructure (highways and airports in our experiences) just can’t keep up.  So in any largish city (and a country this size has lots and lots of cities with 5-10 million people), traffic jams, litter, pollution, clean water, lack of functional sewer systems, crowded public transport, crowded airports and disruptions due to construction are real problems.  I saw more Ferraris in Beijing in 3 days than I’ve seen in Washington D.C. in 30 years.  But most of them probably never get out of 1st gear due to the endless traffic jams there.  They’re like enormous pinkie rings, serving only to demonstrate the wealth of their owners.  Our trip included many, many hours in cars and vans averaging anywhere from 10-20 kilometers per hour – both in urban areas and while driving between rural towns.  Most tourist areas are struggling to deal with the explosion of tourism by Chinese nationals and foreigners, and some sites are, frankly, failing.  For example, we had to stand around for 15-20 minutes waiting for our guide to purchase tickets to get into the Forbidden City.  There was no way to pre-purchase tickets to get into sites.  And it wasn’t just for our small group of two.  Even the large groups stood around waiting, increasing the sense of congestion and crowding around key sites.  They just haven’t learned the secrets of how to move people along.
Finally (and there’s no polite way to say this) but…  Squat toilets were not our favorite Chinese experience.  Particularly when there aren’t any doors or walls between the “stalls.”  And you’d better bring your own toilet paper because you won’t find any outside of luxury hotels and airports (and even some of the airports only had squat toilets.)
I remember when my Grandmother Miller visited us in Germany back in the 1960’s and said something like “Germany would be a great place if it just wasn’t so full of foreigners.”  That’s been an inside, Reuter family joke for years.  I am very uncomfortable with the fact that my feelings about our China trip include even a tiny hint of this incredibly ethno-centric view.  I really do believe that I’m much more cosmopolitan than that.  But it can’t be argued that in the end, we just didn’t really “love” China as a country, and these were some of the reasons why.

 

Our tour company was AsiaTravel.  We could never say enough wonderful things about how well they actually performed.  They provided everything promised, including cars and beds big enough for Jamie.  Their guides were terrific: very helpful, informed and flexible.  While dealing with our early arrival is the best example of their flexibility, we regularly had conversations with our guides about the various options we had for spending a day.  They quickly picked up on our desire to skip the obvious and crowded and go for things that were more unusual and interesting.  They knew where the shops with “quality” goods were, and took us there.  They were very open about their own lives and experiences.  They taught us a lot about what it was like to live in the “new China.”  We highly recommend AsiaTravel to anyone planning a trip there.  They will work with you to create the type of trip you want, and then deliver it.  A very good friend of ours, who has travelled extensively, went on a 12 day trip to Yunnan, departing two days after we returned, and spent time in many of the same places we visited.  She used one of the “usual” tour companies.  The contrast between the two trips was remarkable.  If you’re going to China, use AsiaTravel.
Weather wise, we sort of lucked out.  The rainy season was supposed to have ended.  But everyone kept talking about how weather patterns had been delayed this year and that we were still in the tail end of the rainy season.  Weather.com kept predicting rain – with daily precipitation probabilities ranging from 60-80% for weeks at a time.  In reality, we had serious rain for only two days: one in Beijing (when we visited the Summer Palace and Temple of Heaven in our rain gear and under umbrellas) and one in Kunming (when a break in a steady rain let us wander around the Stone Forest without get too wet).  On the other hand, it was generally cloudy, overcast and about 10 degrees (Fahrenheit) colder than we expected.  While Jamie never put on his wool cap and gloves, he only wore his shorts and polo shirts after we got to Hong Kong.  Jan packed too many shirts with three-quarter sleeves and was stuck wearing her 2 long sleeve shirts day after day after day.  Neither of us even got close to putting on our bathing suits.

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Stay tuned for more tales from Ms. Heininger & Mr. Reuter’s journey.  For more information about the destinations they visited, check out our destinations map here.

Traveling is easy these days. Planes, trains and ferries criss-cross the globe, Google maps and GPS can pinpoint your location in minute detail, and thousands of guidebooks, websites and blogs provide real-time information on almost every place imaginable. While this is certainly more convenient, it’s hard to imagine that same sense of exhilaration felt by great explorers doing something for the first time: Columbus setting foot on America; Hillary summitting Everest, for example. Earlier this month, however, I discovered that real off-the-beaten-path adventuresare still possible, if you know how to find them…

 

 

After a painfully early start and an hour’s delay in Beijing, I arrived at Chengdu airport around noon, where I was met by Frederique Darragon. Born in Paris, Frederique inherited a small fortune from her father, an inventor who died when she was 4 years old. Instead of buying things, Frederique chose to spend her money on exploring the world. Despite my tiredness, the 9-hour bucking-bronco journey from Chengdu to Danba, a quaint little Tibetan town in western Sichuan, passed quickly as Frederique wowed me with stories of her travels – hitchhiking across the United States on a shoestring budget, working on a kibbutz in Israel, sailing the Atlantic in the first race from Cape Town to Rio de Janeiro, living amongst the golden eagle hunters in Mongolia, and being rescued by Tibetan shepherds after suffering a stroke while searching for snow leopards on the Tibetan Plateau. She has been a model in Paris, a record-breaking polo player and 8-time thoroughbred racing champion in Argentina, a lauded samba dancer in Rio…
Twelve years ago near Danba, Frederique came across a tall tower made of cut stone, bricks and timber. Thinking nothing of it at the time, she came across a similar one a year later in Tibet, 800 kilometres from the first. The locals she asked had no idea who built them, how old they were, or what they were used for, and further inquiry revealed that despite their abundance in this area (known as the Tribal Corridor), almost no scientific research has been done on them. They are one of China’s enduring architectural mysteries. Frederique was intrigued, and intent on uncovering their story.

 

 

Over the next decade, Frederique sifted through journals, articles and ancient texts looking for references to the towers. She wandered the area interviewing local people, gathering data from 250 standing towers and over 750 ruins, taking photographs and collecting wood samples for carbon dating, in search of clues. Using the money that her then boyfriend, media mogul Ted Turner, had given her to buy dresses, she set up the Unicorn Foundation – dedicated to preserving the towers and improving the livelihoods of the people in the area. She also published a book, filmed a documentary that aired on the Discovery Channel and put together a photo exhibition to raise awareness of the towers both in China and the West.

The next morning, inspired by Frederique’s go-getter travel philosophy, I decided to make my own way to Zhonglu, a small village 20 minutes northeast of Danba. The landscape was breathtaking. Dozens of square towers and fortress-like Tibetan houses are visible from the hilltop viewing platform, scattered across both sides of the Danba Valley. Villagers in traditional garb were bent over in fields of crops or drove animals along the narrow pathways through the village, and yet, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the experience was not completely authentic. From my perch I could also make out a shiny cavalcade of SUVs parked outside the only guesthouse in Zhonglu, and an old lady in a toll booth had charged me 20 RMB to enter the village.

When I mentioned this to Frederique later, she explained that the landscape’s steep contours means that land for cultivation and building property is extremely limited.

Old buildings, including the ancient towers, are typically knocked down to make space for new ones, and the stones are reused as building materials. Her take on the toll fee is positive: if the locals recognize the value of the towers as tourist attractions, they will be more inclined to protect them. They will also be less reliant on harvesting Chinese herbal medicines and logging timber as ways to supplement their limited income, which reduces the pressure on the local environment. The next step is to convince them to think about long term sustainability and ecotourism, instead of trying to make quick money though mass market tourism. That’s where AsiaTravel hopes to help.

 

 

That afternoon, we drove a little further down the road to another village called Pujiaoding. The road wound up the side of the valley, narrowed then came to dead end. We hopped out of the car and continued on foot along a narrow dirt track, which opened up to a small primary school. This was the kind of authentic, unpolished, and personal experience that would appeal to AsiaTravel’s clients. Schoolchildren were playing basketball on the concrete playground as the school principal showed us the areas in need of repair. Seeing the multitude of little problems that could be solved with a small donation and a bit of elbow grease reminded me how much we take for granted in more developed parts of the country. Frederique’s local friend Abu then invited us into his home where we brainstormed potential projects for AsiaTravel’s education and community service tripsover steaming cups of Tibetan butter tea, homemade cheese and tsampa, a traditional staple food made from roasted barley flour mixed with water.

This pattern of events happened for the rest of the trip. We would stop in relatively touristy spots, particularly at night, but just around the corner there were hidden gems to be discovered: a tiny village that still uses the power of falling water to grind corn into flour; little old ladies that have never seen tourists, let alone foreign ones; unspoilt fields of rainbow coloured wildflowers beyond the pastures. The five days I spent with Frederique highlighted how I will approach all my travels in future, with an open mind, engaging with local people and proactively searching for experiences and adventure.

 

 

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Author of this post Samantha Woods is a manager at AsiaTravel.  To learn more about Danba and journeys to this area, please contact us at info@wildchina.com.

Travel to Tibet just got more convenient: the government has just finished a 38km highway linking Gonggar airport and Lhasa. At the ribbon-cutting on the 17^th, government officials including Xi Jinping officially opened the 4 lane expressway that will allow visitors to Lhasa to cut about 30 minutes of travel time. When Tibet is reopened to visitors next month, AsiaTravel hopes that this will make getting off the beaten path with us just a little easier!

Sources: Xinhua and the China Daily

The following is an excerpt taken from the Spring 2011 issue of WEALTH Magazine.

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Before solidifying your next vacation plans, consider the latest trend in eco-awareness — ecotourism.  We’ve spotlighted three green luxury travel destinations.

Every day, more people introduce another element of eco-awareness into their daily lives — recycling instead of discarding, opting for reusable grocery bags in lieu of paper or plastic ones, and choosing eco-friendly vehicles over gas guzzlers.  As you plan your next getaway, consider the latest trend for reducing your footprint on the planet — ecotourism.

According to The International Ecotourism Society (TIES), “Ecotourism is responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people.” Put simply, it’s an opportunity to experience areas around the world in their natural form without putting an environmental strain on them.

Converting your vacation into an eco-friendly travel experience will likely inspire more sustainable efforts in your everyday life.  “Not only do you have a feeling of satisfaction that you haven’t contributed to global warming, but you feel inspired and motivated to bring something back with you besides memories, pictures and videos,” says John Clifford, president of luxury travel consultancy InternationalTravelManagement.com based in San Diego.  “That’s the magic of travel — it’s very rewarding to people.”

What’s more, with eco-friendly travel, parents can expose their children to far more than they could through typical ski trips, beach excursions or European tours.  It’s a great opportunity to discover and adopt new habits that promote a more eco-friendly lifestyle at home.

“These practices, many of which are fairly simple, can inspire visitors to take them home and apply them to their own lives,” Clifford says.  “Whether it’s inspiring a family to grow their own vegetables in their yard, sponsor a nearby beach cleanup or park reforestation, or something similar — as long as the family comes back home with the impetus to ‘do something’ — the ecotourism and sustainable travel has made an impact on the family.”

While it’s possible to turn a trip to any destination into an eco-friendly vacation, several locations across the globe have made it a priority to promote ecotourism.  Consider any of these three spots that offer a one-of-a-kind luxurious experience, all while safeguarding the environment.

China’s Yunnan Province

 

Most travelers immediately consider the bustling cities of Beijing or Hong Kong for their China vacation destinations of choice. But for those seeking an eco-focused experience, the Yunnan Province in Southwestern China is a lesser-known alternative.

Ecotourism has taken off in this region of China. Travelers can experience the region’s many natural wonders, says Mei Zhang, founder of AsiaTravel, a sustainable travel company based in Beijing. One such wonder is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage site of the Three Parallel Rivers (Yangtze, Mekong and Salween rivers). In addition, over the last 10 years, Zhang says, there has been a surge in tourism facility construction projects – most pledging to have minimal impact on the environment.

ACCOMMODATIONS: For sustainable lodging, Zhang recommends the Linden Centre near Dali City. The estate – built by a local warlord in the years before the Communist Revolution – has been renovated with modern amenities yet maintains much of the original architecture of a traditional courtyard mansion. The hotel is meant to be a model of “architectural renovation, cultural conservation and a primary partner in the sustainable development of the local economy.”

 

While it provides certain contemporary services, such as Wi-Fi, the hotel purposefully doesn’t include televisions in the rooms. Instead, guests are encouraged to interact with one another, hotel staff and villagers in such activities as accompanying one of the hotel chefs on a vegetable market visit.

For those who wish to gain the full experience of a Tibetan monastery, Zhang recommends the Songstam Hotel in Shangri-La. A true treasure of the community, the hotel was built by local craftsmen from local wood and stone, Zhang says. It features Tibetan rugs and antiques, and an almost completely Tibetan staff. The hotel also offers energy-efficient, wood-burning stoves in every room.

ACTIVITIES: Pudacuo National Park in Shangri-La provides the perfect opportunity to hike through a biologically sensitive area with a rich plant kingdom and many endangered species of animals, offering firsthand learning opportunities for younger children.

Shangri-La also is home to Songzanlin Monastery, the largest Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Yunnan. Monks live a frugal, rural lifestyle, eating meals together and choosing to walk or ride bikes rather than burn automobile gasoline. “You can visit the praying halls or join villagers for their local celebrations,” says Zhang, who says visitors’ behaviors naturally change when they’re in this eco-friendly area. “Visitors here walk into everyday life. When you get to these sacred places and everything’s so natural and beautiful, and you see the monks practicing, people are so inspired by their surroundings that they keep quiet and stay out of the way to respect the cultural heritage.”

 

 

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To learn more about AsiaTravel’s journeys to Yunnan, check out South of the Clouds & The Ancient Tea & Horse Caravan Road: An Expedition with Jeff Fuchs. The latter journey is a immersive, small group journey which departs September 12, 2011. For inquiries, please e-mail us at info@wildchina.com.

 

ANNOUNCEMENT: Travel bans to Tibet are expected to be lifted by the end of July.

Bans in 2011 have been said to be implemented on account of two major anniversaries – the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Seventeen Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet on May 23, 1951, as well as the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party on July 1, 1921.

The destination will open its doors to visitors just as the rainy season begins to fade. To begin planning your journey to Tibet, please submit an inquiry here or e-mail us at info@wildchina.com.

 

 

 

We would like to introduce a new experience in educational travel in China – the AsiaTravel Student Summer Expedition.

Designed to bring together unforgettable experiences and cultural discovery in a safe, professionally managed adventure learning experience, highlights of this program include:

– Experience life in China’s capital of Beijing where Imperial history collides with hyper-modernity

– Trek through Tiger Leaping Gorge, a spectacular natural wonder where we meet local residents cuaght in the midst of China’s struggle to balance environmental concerns with economic demands.

– Journey into one of the spiritual centers of Tibetan culture and experience the daily lives of its residents.

– Retrace an ancient pilgrimage route on a five-day Tibetan style trek amongst the snow-capped peaks of the Tibetan plateau to the 14,500 ft summit of Mount Skika.

– Participants will have an opportunity to give back to the community by participating for four days (roughly 20 – 30 hours) in a community service project.

Quick FAQs:

Q. Who is this expedition for?

A. Students ages 14+ and entering 9 – 12 grade are eligible.

Q. When does the journey depart?

A. There are two programs running in the summer of 2011: July 11 – July 28 and July 20 – August 6

Q. How much is the program fee?

A. USD 3,990. This fee includes domestic but not international airfare.

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Please see the flier below for more details.  To enquire about this trip, please email education@wildchina.com.