China Travel Blog

It’s been almost a year since we first spoke with Portrait of an LBX bikers and writers Andy Keller and Evan Villarrubia. We caught up with them this week to talk about their reflections on their trip, which ended on September 13, 2010.

 

AsiaTravel Travel (WCT) : Now that you’ve finished with the trip, how can you define laobaixing? How has your understanding of the term, and the people that define it, expanded, been flipped on its head, morphed, etc.?

Andy Keller (AK): I think laobaixing boils down to a political term, as politics controls so much in China, although it has an economic aspect as well, since politics is so tied to money in China (as with anywhere else). China’s laobaixing make up the vast majority of Chinese people. It’s not just a synonym for “peasant” or “farmer” because it’s not just the people out in the countryside who are laobaixing. Basically, they are the people who have less power in the face of the government.

Evan Villarrubia (EV): All the charm of China has come from individual people, the ones “doing their own thing” in accordance with traditions and their own values — the laobaixing. “New China” has come from outside of the laobaixing.

WCT: Do you still believe that the term laobaixing can define and encompass the people / socioeconomic group that you encountered and interacted with on your trip? Why or why not?

AK: Absolutely. With very few exceptions when we met relatives of friends working in the government or party or big business people, the people we interacted with on the trip were all laobaixing. The number of people without government connections in China is so large that really there’s no way the group of people we interacted with could not almost all be laobaixing.

WCT: What was your greatest surprise on the trip? Your biggest regret?

EV: For me, the biggest surprise was the Tibetan plateau. I had never seen skies like that before, and we never expected how different the people were from anything else we’d encountered. The biggest regret of the trip was not making it to either Hubei or Hunan, two quintessentially Chinese places right in the middle of the country, which our big loop didn’t permit time to visit. This will have to be rectified later.

AK: The biggest surprise for me was discovering just how development and modernity almost always trumped concern for culture, the environment, traditional society, etc. We went into the trip with the impression that with so much good stuff disappearing everyday, people would have to be up in arms about it once we sat down and had honest conversations. By and large though, the people we met were as single-mindedly focused on “development” as the government and were happy to leave tradition, culture and even the natural environment behind for the sake of their concept of modernity.

Despite what you see in the media, most laobaixing are not dowsing themselves in gasoline and lighting themselves on fire on the roofs of their homes as the demolition cranes move in. Most are content to take compensation and move out of their homes, away from the fields, away from their communities and into apartment complexes outside of the city, where the communities and social networks that made traditional China so unique no longer exist.

My biggest regret was definitely the places we didn’t get to see – Hubei, Hunan, Xinjiang, Tibet and pretty much all of Dongbei.

WCT: Which area(s) of China ended up being your favorite? Why?

EV: Yunnan, for natural beauty, colors, extreme cultural variations, food, and tea. You can spend days cruising chilly mountaintop villages above endless rice terraces with the Yi and Hani, and the next day drop into the Dai valleys full of pineapples, coconuts, and wooden stilt homes. As long as you stay off the tourist trail, there’s no end to the surprises.

AK: Ditto.

WCT: What is one piece of advice you would give to travelers who want to experience the ‘real’ side of China?

EV: Stick to the mountains, small roads, and small villages where real culture, real beauty and real people still exist.

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Photo credit: Portrait of an LBX

Read more of Andy and Evan’s reflections and trip accounts at Portrait of an LBX.

Finding unique clothing that satisfies the needs of AsiaTravel guides in China’s coldest areas, while allowing them to look the part when in remote boutique hotels, is not an easy task. When leading off-the-beaten-path tours to China’s most remote regions, how does a rugged, adventurous guide maintain a clean, professional look? Khunu to the rescue.

 

We at AsiaTravel are delighted to announce our partnership with Khunu, a premium clothing company focused on producing high-quality adventure wear from Tibetan and Mongolian yak wool. This season, Khunu will be clothing our Shangri-La region guides in Khunu Chimera tops – soft, lightweight and warm garments that are perfect for guiding bespoke trips with sophistication in colder weather. These guides are the perfect adventurers to sport the socially-conscious brand, as Shangri-La is known for its rich cultural diversity and notable population of yaks.

AsiaTravel founder Mei Zhang is impressed by both quality and cultural significance of Khunu garments. “When I first heard about what Khunu was doing,” she says, “I was intrigued by the concept but unsure about what the products would be like. It was something of a surprise to feel how warm and soft their garments are.”  (Yak wool has a luxurious feel that can often be mistaken for cashmere, though it is warmer and notably more durable.) In addition to Khunu’s high level of quality, Mei notes, “the unique link [the garments] have to the regions to which we travel gives them additional relevance” to AsiaTravel’s mission of enabling travelers to experience China differently.

To celebrate the AsiaTravel-Khunu alliance, as well as a new womens line for the Autumn/Winter Collection, Khunu is offering AsiaTravel supporters a limited time 15% discount on all new Khunu sweaters through November 11, 2010. Customers can use the code “wildchina” during checkout at the Khunu online store.

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Visit the Khunu website for more information on their story, products, and adventurous ambassadors.

On AsiaTravel journeys in Tibet and Tibetan areas of Qinghai, Yunnan and Sichuan provinces, many of our clients experience foods and beverages made from yak meat and yak milk for the first time in their lives.

Reactions vary to such fare as sour yak milk cheese, salty yak butter tea and fried yak jerky, but are generally positive. Regardless of  your palate’s reaction to yak products, it is not difficult to see why such hearty foods are suited to the region’s high-altitude conditions, where few other animals can thrive.

The yak plays a vital role for many Tibetan communities living high in the Himalayas because growing seasons are too short for most crops and the weather too harsh for many other domestic animals. Shaggy yaks graze on alpine grasses throughout the warmer times of the year to prepare for the region’s long, cold winters.

Though we enjoy classic yak dishes we were also pleasantly surprised last year when we learned about an ethnic Tibetan family in northern Yunnan that is putting yak milk to innovative use and boosting local herders’ incomes in the process by making Western-style artisan cheeses and butter with yak milk.

Qizhu Qilin and Wang Zhenying founded the Meixiang Cheese Company in 2003 in Langdu Village, Yunnan, which lies tucked amid remote 4,000-meter peaks near the Sichuan border, a three-hour drive north of the Shangri-La old town.

The village’s economy has historically been mostly subsistence-based, and centered around yak herding. Villagers did venture out of the mountains to sell local styles of butter and cheese at market, but they weren’t able to fetch very good prices.

“The herders lived a life of great hardship,” says Zhuoma Yangzong, the founding couples’ daughter and director of marketing for Meixiang, which brought on a technical advisor from Wisconsin to train employees in the science of cheesemaking.

“The Geza rural area, in which Langdu is located, has more yaks than anywhere else in Yunnan—about 14,000 in total,” she said. “The idea of our company was to use yak milk—which has better nutritional value than cow milk and comes from yaks that are grazed the traditional way on pristine 4,000 meter plateaus—to bring greater economic benefits to the local herders and raise their standard of living.”

Today the company produces yak butter and a line of cheeses and sells them in specialty stores in Shangri-la, Dali, Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Meixiang buys the milk directly from local herders and make the cheese at a production facility in Langdu Village. The cheese is free of preservatives, artificial flavoring, hormones and antibiotics. It is processed with salt and aged in local red tree bark for two months.

We tried the company’s Geza Gold brand of cheese and were very impressed. The hard and salty cheese is very aromatic, with a flavor reminiscent of Italian Asiago—and a slight but not unwelcome hint of, um, yakiness. The cheese’s complex flavor is good  by itself but also goes well with apples, pears or grapes… or your favorite red wine.

As environmental sustainability and social responsibility are two of AsiaTravel’s core principles, we admire Meixiang’s vision to create environmentally sustainable business practices aimed at raising income for local people.

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Photo credit: Tibet and Beijing

We were saddened to hear of the passing at age 78 last week of Liang Congjie, a pioneering Chinese conservationist to whose legacy we owe a great deal.

Though unheralded and relatively unknown outside of China, Liang played a central role in the development of the contemporary Chinese environmental movement and protection of some of our favorite pristine wilderness areas in China.

In 1994 Liang founded Friends of Nature, China’s first environment-focused non-governmental organization (NGO). Over the next 16 years he and the staff of Friends of Nature worked tirelessly to educate the Chinese public about environmental issues and encourage the government to strengthen conservation laws and enforcement.

It is hard for us to imagine losing the mile-high cliffs of majestic Tiger Leaping Gorge, one of the great natural wonders of not only China, but also the world. But that might have happened if Liang’s organization had not campaigned against a hydropower project in the gorge and won a last minute reprieve from China’s top leadership.

Friends of Nature won other practical victories in areas such as a dam project on the upper Salween River, the poaching of Tibetan antelope and illegal harvesting of virgin forests. But it also left a less tangible impact by inspiring and paving the way for the thousands of environmental groups that operate in China today.

We offer our condolences to Liang’s family and friends and our deepest thanks to all those who have followed his call and are working to keep China wild.

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Photo credit: Rangichangi Roots

Today at AsiaTravel, we received one of the greatest gifts that one can in the travel industry: a beautifully-written, heart-felt, and interesting account by a client of their recent Chinese Treasures journey with AsiaTravel to Beijing, Xi’an, Yunnan province, and Shanghai. Below is Chuck and Kathie’s story:

“You have to understand, Chuck, economically we are capitalists.  Socially we remain communists.  And, that’s not easy to reconcile.” We look at our guide as we approach the front gate of our Tibetan hosts for the evening.  It is not the first time we’ve heard sentiments such as this.  During our nearly 10 days in China, multiple AsiaTravel guides have done their best to show us life through indigenous eyes and provide us context to Chinese thinking.  We learned of generational divides – where Mom cannot understand why a 30-something guide prefers to be an entrepreneur rather than wish for the days when Chairman Mao “provided for us and we did not have to worry about anything.”  We heard of collateral fallout from 4-2-1 (4 grandparents, 2 parents and only one child), a result of the one child policy.  We silently chuckled as we listened to concerns about the “younger generation”, this from a 35 year-old, no less.  Being 60+  years ourselves, we wisely kept our mouths shut.

 

As we arrive for tonight’s dinner, our focus shifts to the family who will open their home and their hearts to us.  We stand at nearly 11,000 feet in Zhongdian in the Yunnan Provence, surveying the courtyard where in the winter animals are brought from the hills.

There is a small tractor and a barn on the ground floor that in the coldest months helps heat the rooms above.  Our host for the evening, a 14 year-old girl with timid eyes, escorts us to the second floor, where we enter a large room with beautiful lacquered wood corbels and intricate painted details.  A wood-burning cooking area with smoke escaping through the ceiling captures our attention while two bare light bulbs bracket low couches and a table where we will eat.

Standing in the corner is 84 year-old great-grandma.  Her eyes are anything but timid. After our young host finished showing us additional rooms and a storage area for mounds of yak butter, great-grandma catches Chuck’s eye and she pats a space beside her on a low bench by the fire.  When we sit down she motions with gnarled hands as she speaks to us.

Our guide is in another part of the room.  But it is okay as we smile and great-grandma goes right on talking. Dinner is accompanied by yak-butter tea and Baijiu [a Chinese rice-based alcohol].  We refuse nothing and enjoy it all.  Chuck shows our young hostess his camera, which immediately breaks down what’s left of her reserve, and she laughs when seeing pictures of friends taken today in the city.   The room has filled with mom, dad, sister and cousins.  Our guide tells them Kathie dances ballet, so a trade is arranged.  They will dance for us if Kathie hoofs her way through a few steps. And then they dress us.  With rough-skinned hands the women wrap and cinch us while everyone laughs at how we look.

Following more pictures, the women, generations four, three and one (two is not there), perform a line dance that shines with tradition.  Kathie joins them and, along with the youngest, soon matches the footsteps while soft Tibetan words are sung by the elders.  Dad stands to the side with a warm smile as he watches his family with seeming amusement.  Chuck catches the 8 year-old sister, with huge wide-open eyes and lips set in a firm line, as she stares hard at him through the barrel of his camera lens. On the way back to the hotel, our guide is moved to comment that something unusual happened here tonight.  We are not the first to be brought to this home, but before, our hosts did not dress the guests and great-grandma remained strictly in the background.

There is a message here: what you give can determine what you will receive. AsiaTravel presents opportunities.  They put you in position to experience something special but if you want it, you have to put a bit of yourself out there; you must be the one to build a platform that supports everybody to open themselves. Consider this from the host’s perspective.  By sharing a bit of yourself, you become something more than a tourist there to be fed and watch the Native Show.  You interact with them “as people” and that raises the level of how meaningful this is for everyone.

Whether it is a Tibetan night of extending hands of friendship – or listening to a proud father in a Beijing hutong home tell you about his successful martial arts instructor son living in Houston – or two weeks’ worth of cultural immersion with warm and eager guides – if you want to maximize the value of what you paid just to get here, you must go beyond simply seeing what is around you.  You must jump in.  And, as you say goodbye you too can hear, “I’m very western.  We can hug.”

Chuck & Kathie Neuenschwander

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Photo credit: Kristen Kuan, a AsiaTravel traveler

Local governments of Tibet, Yunnan, Sichuan and Qinghai have recently signed a strategic cooperation agreement to create what is being called the Shangri-La Ecotourism Region.

Officials from Tibet’s third-largest city, Changdu, reached the agreement with Yunnan’s Diqing, Ganzi in Sichuan and Yushu in Qinghai. All participating areas will remove barriers in areas including policy, transportation and services.

Although details are still not very clear, we are hopeful that the agreement will bring ecotourism that is both sustainable and beneficial to local residents to this beautiful part of China.

We especially hope it assists Yushu, which was struck by a deadly earthquake in April of this year, with its rebuilding efforts. To get a feel for Yushu, check out this video of its annual horse festival, which takes place in July.

AsiaTravel prides itself in taking its clients to unspoiled, unseen corners of the country, but we also recognize that we wouldn’t know about these places had it not been for the efforts of the old-school explorers that came before us.

One of those explorers is Joseph F. Rock, an Austrian-born American botanist who worked at different times for the US Department of Agriculture, Harvard University and National Geographic magazine from the 1920s through the 1940s while based in western China, primarily Lijiang.

We were reminded of Rock today when we stumbled upon a review of the book Joseph F. Rock and His Shangri-La by Jim Goodman. We read the book a couple years ago and found it fascinating, despite already having been familiar with Rock’s story.

Rock’s story is the stuff of movies. He traveled in a large caravan of men and mules across rugged inhospitable terrain and was often the first white man who had set foot in many of the places he visited. Rock hobnobbed with the local elite wherever he went, but preferred to dine alone, eating European food prepared especially for him by his private chef.

Rock wrote extensively in his diary about his adventures in Yunnan, Sichuan, Gansu and Tibet, and Goodman adds good background to his story with his thorough knowledge of the people and places of western China. Rock’s photos of these regions are an invaluable archive of this area as it once was.

One of our favorite parts of the book is when Rock first comes across Minya Konka the spectacular mountain in western Sichuan known in Chinese as Mount Gongga. Astounded by its massive size, Rock miscalculates the mountain’s height and reports to his editors at National Geographic that it is higher than Everest.

His doubtful editors prove him wrong, and the proud explorer and scientist is humbled, never again to let his emotions get the best of him in his work.

It may not be taller than Everest, but Minya Konka – and nearby places such as Kangding, Yading and Shangri-La – are awe-inspiring nonetheless. Our Western Sichuan to Yunnan journey takes in all of these unforgettable destinations. As the seasons prepare to change, this part of China is at its most spellbinding.

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Photo credit (for first photo): Arnold Arboretum

To find out how to find your own Shangri-La in Western Sichuan and Yunnan, contact us today.

In eastern China, it’s easy to think that the country’s provinces to the West – namely Tibet, Xinjiang, and Qinghai – are a world away.

 

But, recent developments at the Shanghai Expo are bringing these two regions of China closer than ever. During Tibet Week at the Expo, a new tourism agreement signed between Shanghai and Lhasa, Tibet’s capital city, confirmed that visitors will soon be able to enjoy “luxury train travel and short-stay trips” between the two cities.

To accommodate increasing visits to the plateau province, government officials, local tourism bureaux and travel agencies will collaborate on increased Tibet-bound tourism. Officials are discussing more efficient train stops and connections, airlines are developing more routes from Shanghai, Xi’an and Xining, and travel agencies are in talks to promote more 3-5 day trips to the area.

Shanghai, a perennial tourist favorite, will also share its tourism knowledge and expertise. As Tibet is one of our favorite fall destinations, we are excited to see what this agreement will mean for western-bound tourism here.

China travelers, stay tuned for developments pending the outcome of this cross-country travel agreement.

On the ‘Roof of the World,’ the sky is the limit when it comes to exploration. Given Tibet’s diverse cultural, historical and religious marvels, it is no wonder that travelers from all over the world flock to this intriguing plateau.

 

High-altitude autumn landscapes in Lhasa, the region’s capital, provide the perfect backdrop for all-age discovery. After a decade of visiting the area, we have a few favorite sites in the area.

Of particular note are Ganden Monastery and Sera Monastery, two of Tibet’s ‘great three’ university monasteries. After touring the different academic centers within these ancient centers of study, don’t forget to visit Sera’s printing center to create your own prayer flag.

 

If you’re looking to get out of Lhasa to witness religious life, head to Pabonka Hermitage – now part of Sera Monastery and located northwest of the city.

Feeling a bit lightheaded from the altitude, or simply curious about local remedies? We suggest that you visit a Tibetan Traditional Medicine hospital to hear healing secrets directly from a local Tibetan doctor.

Finally, on your way out of town en route to Shigatse, carve out time to learn how to make incense with a local family.

The following post is an excerpt from Catherine Bodry, a writer for AOL’s Gadling Travel Blog.

Gadling’s last stop on Yunnan’s ancient tea horse road was Shangri-la, China, a high-altitude Tibetan city named after the mythical town in John Hilton’s “Lost Horizon.” Full of snapping prayer flags in high-altitude sunlight, the town has only been called Shangri-la since 2001, when a successful marketing venture changed its name from Zhongdian to appeal to adventure-seekers. Most Chinese still refer to it as Zhongdian, though it’s worth noting that its Tibetan name is Gyalthang.

Shangri-la’s residents are mostly Han and Tibetan, and it’s common to see red-cheeked Tibetan-Chinese dressed in traditional clothing. The architecture, especially in the countryside, is uniquely Tibetan: large, square, three story homes house animals on the ground level, with human living quarters above. New homes are still being built in this style. Wood stoves (frustratingly drafty) occupy space in every restaurant, home, and guesthouse, often with the staff huddled around them.

Things to see and do

Like Dali and Lijiang, Shangri-la has an “old city,” with the usual cobblestones and new-old architecture, as well as a very Chinese “new city,” full of traffic and electronics shops. The Thangka Academy is a center in the old town for Tibetan culture and learning. Students, usually orphans, are taught the ancient art of Thangka, an intricate style of Buddhist painting of deities. Foreigners can study Tibetan or meditate here.

Though Shangri-la’s narrow, old-city streets are pleasant for a wander, it’s the town’s surrounds that make the trip worthy.

The Songstam Monastery houses monks of the yellow hat sect of Tibetan Buddhism. It’s the biggest Tibetan monstery in China, and certainly worth a visit. Besides monks and temples, you’ll see juniper burning in the mornings, pigs snuffing around the dusty grounds, tourists snapping photos, and a hodge-podge of colorful buildings built on several levels.

The monastery was built during the Qing Dynasty in 1679, and now houses 700 monks as well as 11 temples. In the tea-horse road days, the monastery stored tea, waited for the price to rise, and then sold it for a profit. The complex was destroyed by the Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution and has since been rebuilt, though remnants of ancient mud walls still linger.

Beyond the monastery is Napa Hai, a lake and wetland with misty mountains backing them. More than a dozen Tibetan villages surround the lake, which is also home to black-necked cranes. We rented mountain bikes from one of the many bike rental shops in town, and road the often-muddy, sometimes treacherous roads out to the lake. A new highway being built ought to smooth the ride out significantly.

To read full posts from Gadling’s trip to Yunnan, click here.

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Contact Catherine Bodry at catherine.bodry@weblogsinc.com. Photos by Gadling.