China Travel Blog

The following is an excerpt from “Trail Tribulations” by Paul Mooney, South China Morning Post

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Ouyang Shangxian worked briefly on the trail. His classic Shaxi courtyard house is indicative of the wealth that people in the tea trade once enjoyed. At 70, Ouyang’s memory is fading and he struggles to remember details.

“Tibetans would sell Chinese herbs and yak hair on the square,” he says. “And they used the money to buy salt, which they took back to Tibet.”

Holding his father’s wooden horse saddle,Ouyang recalls muleteers staying at his home. “Most people who stayed here were friends and paid no money.”

Ouyang says his grandfather and father were also muleteers. It was a profession that took his father’s life, in 1947.

“My father went to Weishan, where he was killed by Bai and Han because he carried a lot of money,” he says.

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Paul went on AsiaTravel tour Ancient Tea & Horse Caravan Road
Photos by Paul Mooney

Beautiful and diverse, southwestern China’s Yunnan province is not only one of our most popular destinations, it is where AsiaTravel was born. In the initial stages of China’s dizzyingly fast modernization, Yunnan avoided much of the environmental degradation experienced by other provinces. But little is known about the current state of Yunnan’s environment in the face of accelerating development.

R. Edward Grumbine, Environmental Studies faculty at Prescott College, Arizona, is working as a senior scholar with the Chinese Academy of Sciences at the Kunming Institute of Botany.

Grumbine’s research focuses on the battle between development and conservation in Yunnan. His book on this subject, Where the Dragon Meets the Angry River, was published last year by Island Press.

Grumbine recently shared some of his experiences and views on Yunnan and more in this interview, reprinted here with permission:

How much time did you spend in Yunnan conducting your research for this book?

R. Edward Grumbine: From 2005, I spent around three to five weeks in Yunnan every year. I began to write upon my return to the US in 2008.

Where did you conduct your research in Yunnan?

Grumbine: Between 2005 and 2010 I’ve hiked from the Nu River to the Lancang as well as areas around Zhongdian [Shangri-la], Deqin, Yubeng and Xishuangbanna near the border with Myanmar. I’ve also spent time in Pudacuo National Park, Laojunshan, Nizu, and in ‘Banna near the China-Laos border. Additionally, I’ve made it out to Gonggashan and Kangding in Sichuan province.

I’ve lived in Kunming since last August and will be here on a fellowship until 2012. Throughout my time coming to Yunnan, there have been numerous short trips to Beijing as well.

What led to you deciding to write a book about Yunnan?

Grumbine: The book is about Chinese conservation, using Yunnan as the main focus of the story. Imminent development of all kinds, but especially hydropower projects in the Nu Valley, helped me decide to write a book. I decided to write after my second trip to Yunnan in 2006, but I did not begin to write until 2008. I needed more time here to gain perspective on very complex issues.

What were some of the biggest surprises that you encountered in the course of your research?

No real surprises, but lots of interesting experiences. I guess the biggest surprise was the role of the local government versus the role of the central government.

What was surprising about that?

Grumbine: Most foreigners believe that the central government in China has 100 percent authority and complete control. After all, China is a one party-state system.

But the reality is that local governments at all levels have real power in terms of implementing Beijing’s laws, rules and regulations, so things are very complex on the ground. This situation does not match the stereotypes that many Americans and other foreigners have about power in the PRC.

Why is Yunnan’s biodiversity important?

Grumbine: There are three ways to answer this question.

Yunnan’s biodiversity is globally important as it is a true hotspot with more species than most other places on Earth. Yunnan is therefore important to the world if you value the existence of wild species and habitats.

Yunnan is regionally important from the standpoint of providing ecosystem services like clean water, good air, carbon sinks from intact forests, reduced soil erosion, and much more. Provision of these services depends on ecosystems continuing to function.

Species make up ecosystems; losing species impairs to X degree ecosystem health and function, depending on the details. So far, however, people are used to getting healthy ecosystems for free, even if Yunnan sits upstream from Southeast Asia.

Yunnan’s diversity is important to local people since they depend to a greater or lesser degree on nature for food, shelter and clean water. These local values change from place to place in Yunnan.

What makes Yunnan different from other biodiversity hotspots around the world?

Grumbine: One big difference: Yunnan is close to the most diverse temperate area anywhere on the planet!

Another difference is — there are still many local people who depend directly on natures’ services— the majority of humans living here still are rural, not urban. Of course, even Kunmingers depend on getting water supplies from somewhere.

Another difference— no one knows how much biodiversity has already been lost in Yunnan, especially large mammals and primates. The last surveys were done 15 to 20-plus years ago and are way out of date.

I expect that today virtually every primate and many if not most large mammals are either extirpated from Yunnan or much more endangered or threatened than we think. This is the “dirty secret” of biodiversity here.

The impacts of losing or reducing the populations of these animals have never been studied in Yunnan – or anywhere in China – but research in the US shows that ecosystems function less well when large critters are lost from the system, and that there is a time lag from species loss to negative effects appearing.

Given recent news out of Beijing suggesting that China plans to dam the Nujiang, what do you think the impact on the Nujiang and Salween valleys will be?

Grumbine: So far, nothing yet is confirmed about the dams going forward in the Nu, but I expect that some will indeed be built. Impacts will depend on how many total dams and which ones of the 13 proposed originally will get built. Not all the dams would have the same impact – some are worse than others.

Then you get into defining what a specific impact is – relocating how many local people? With or without adequate compensation? Where do they get moved to? What about the loss of a free-flowing wild river? This last one is not a value high on the list to most Chinese, but important to global environmentalist viewpoints.

Impacts on Nu biodiversity? Most of this would result from turning a river into reservoirs with consequent impacts on aquatic species, but no one knows the details. Without access to government studies, no one can assess impacts, or evaluate the quality of the studies themselves.

And what about impacts downstream? On the river in Myanmar? The impacts of selling most of the power to Thailand? Vietnam? Or moving it east to southern China’s industrial zones? How about the impacts of transmission lines wherever power does go?

Then there are the impacts of hydropower reducing Chinas’ carbon footprint by helping China use less coal. The list goes on.

As the world’s ‘third pole’, Tibet supplies much of Asia with vital freshwater – what does the future hold for these rivers as things stand now?

Grumbine: As things stand now, no problem. But, the future looks pretty grim.

Despite regional differences across the Third Pole, many Chinese glaciers are losing mass – melting – and this trend is clear into the future. Much argument is about when, not if ice loss in China alone reaches critical thresholds. Projections vary: 2040, 2050, 2060, 2080?

We don’t know, but the loss continues and will continue even if the world begins to deal with carbon emissions— and so far the world has not done so much here.

So this means that there will be less water coming from Tibet’s rivers and that the loss will increase over time. There will be less for people to use and less for all other species to use as well.

What, if anything, can be done to protect the future of these rivers?

Grumbine: Improve sharing of information between countries on transboundary river flows and related issues, creating water sharing management agreements between countries in the region, listen to the experiences of local peoples with how they manage water under conditions of scarcity. Fund water-saving and conservation in urban areas and irrigation systems in rural areas.

Price water at its true delivery cost – done nowhere in China, as water is subsidized by the state.

These measures would begin to help.

Unfortunate travel news out of Tibet: foreign travelers are not being allowed into Tibet this month and no clear timetable for when they will be allowed back into the region has been given.

The most recent block on foreign travelers comes on the third anniversary of the pre-Olympic anti-government riots that took place in Lhasa and other Tibetan regions in March 2008. Foreign travelers were kept out of Tibet for a year after the riots.

Given the already substantial logistical challenges of planning a journey to Tibet, unclear government policies are enough to make some travelers give up on their dreams of traveling to the ‘roof of the world’ to experience its breathtaking landscapes and understand its people.

But there is more to “Tibet” than what is contained by the autonomous region called Tibet. Northwest Yunnan, western Sichuan and much of Qinghai are historically, physically and culturally part of what was once the kingdom of Tibet and is now occasionally referred to as ‘Greater Tibet’.

Traditional Tibetan lifestyles can still be viewed in destinations such as Shangri-la, Kangding and Yushu, and the sacred snow-capped peaks of Meili and Minya Gongga rival all but a handful of the mountains found within Tibet proper in terms of altitude or awe-inspiring size. Yunnan and Sichuan not only have beautiful and authentic Tibetan regions, they are also home to a mindblowing variety of topography, climate and cultures.

If you are planning a China trip and want to include a Tibetan experience, keep in mind that what is commonly thought of as “Tibet” extends well beyond the borders of the area that is currently off-limits. For more information about how to visit genuinely Tibetan destinations not covered by the ban, contact us today.

Tradition and modernity are colliding throughout villages in China

Last September we told you about Chinese questioning the value of World Heritage Site status. And in December, we noted that local officials around China were starting to grasp the importance of heritage to their cities and towns.

China has taken another step toward increasing protection of links to its own history and identity. Last Friday, China’s top lawmakers passed the first national law aimed at protecting the country’s intangible cultural heritage, according to Xinhua reports.

Specific areas covered by the new law include “traditional oral literature, performing arts, craftsmanship, medicine and folk customs. The law also recognizes material objects and the sites for performing practices.”

We applaud the gesture toward preserving surviving cultural heritage of all kinds in China. We also look forward to the new law being applied in a way that supports authentic local traditions, performers and artisans rather than idealized or commercialized versions of a China that no longer exists.

Mulberry paper drying in Xishuangbanna

Emphasis will reportedly be given to applying the new law to regions that are remote, impoverished and/or heavily populated by ethnic minorities.

Hopefully, this means that when our grandchildren travel in China, they will still have the chance  to eat tea with the Bulang people, watch the Dai make mulberry paper, sit in a Shaxi courtyard and listen to tales from the Ancient Tea and Horse Caravan Road or experience the nuanced depth and beauty of Tibetan thangka painting in Shangri-la.

Named one of the “up-and-coming” places to visit, it seems that the word “Shangri-La” is everywhere. The term, which is said to “evoke imagery of exoticism of the Orient,” has initiated a circular series of inspired events:

James Hilton coined the term in his 1933 novel Lost Horizon and described Shangri-La as an earthly utopia nestled high in the Tibetan Himalayas. His story and legend describe it as “a lost paradise where the ravages of time and history have been held back, where human beings live in harmony with nature, and where the wisdom of the planet is saved for future generations” (Michael Wood, BBC).

Inspired by this exotic legend, world-renowned architect I.M. Pei designed the Miho Museum with Shangri-La in mind:

Located southeast of Kyoto, Japan, the museum was commissioned by Mihoko Koyama who founded Shinji Shumeikai, a new religious movement whose followers believe that by “building modernist architectural masterpieces in remote places they’re restoring the planet’s balance” (Jeff Sharlet, author).

This past year, the Paul Winter Consort collaborated with several different artists, including Yangjin Lamu, a “spiritual musician” from Tibet, to produce the song entitled “Miho: Journey to the Mountain,” which was inspired by and recorded in the Miho Museum.  At the beginning of the week, the song was named Best New Age Album of the Year at the 53rd Grammy Awards. According to Hexun.com, Yangjin Lamu is not only the Founder and Chairman of the China Overseas Tibetan Association, but she is first Chinese person – one with a Chinese passport – to win the prestigious award.

Lost Horizons started the hunt for Shangri-La, the utopian destination that was purportedly found in the town previously known as Zhongdian. This destination has gone on to inspire everything from architecture to award-winning music to people’s perception of China. Perhaps the power of Shangri-La isn’t so mythical after all…

Photo Sources: AsiaTravel, The Sydney Morning Herald, Metro UK

The following is an excerpt from Jeff Fuchs’ Tea and Mountain Journals, a blog by explorer, photographer and writer Jeff Fuchs.  Jeff is the 2011 recipient of AsiaTravel’s Explorer Grant.  He and friend Michael Kleinwort are currently traveling through unknown portions of the Tsalam route in Qinghai.

Below is an update from their journey…

The following is an excerpt from an article in The Wall Street Journal by Mitch Moxley, a Canadian journalist with national and international reporting experience. He’s written on politics, travel, business and other topics from China, Mongolia, Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines. He is currently based in Beijing, China.

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The ride from Chengdu to Danba Valley is one to be endured, not enjoyed. The journey is by a smoke-filled bus with tiny seats that barrels deep into the mountains of western Sichuan province, shaking and rattling on a single-lane road that is often strewn with fallen rocks. A hair-raising view out the window is of the Dadu River below.

This is the route to one of China’s most enduring architectural mysteries. Ten hours and 400 kilometers into the journey, the valley opens to reveal green mountains topped with snowy peaks. On a ridge above stand a half-dozen rock towers, like ancient smokestacks.

Across the remote, earthquake-prone regions of western Sichuan and Tibet, there are hundreds of these structures. They are built of cut stone, brick and timber, date back as far as 1,700 years and stand up to 50 meters tall. No one is sure of their purpose, though theories abound: They were watchtowers, way stations, status symbols. Some say they have religious meaning.

Striving to save the towers from the forces of neglect, earthquake and a planned hydropower dam are a small number of preservationists, including Frédérique Darragon, a 61-year-old global adventurer—sailor, dancer, trekker, polo player— turned amateur archaeologist by her love for these mysterious structures.

The daughter of a wealthy Parisian inventor and machine maker who died when she was 4 years old, Ms. Darragon spent childhood summers riding horses in England and winter breaks skiing in the Alps. She worked on a kibbutz in Israel and in 1971 sailed across the Atlantic in the first race from Cape Town to Rio de Janeiro. She returned to Paris, graduated from university there and then did some work as a model—”Not high fashion,” she says, “just for extra money”—played polo in Paris and Buenos Aires and became a lauded samba dancer in Rio.

During the early ’90s, Ms. Darragon spent several months a year traveling alone through China, often by foot in areas that are still rarely visited by Westerners. It once came close to killing her: In 1993, while searching for endangered snow leopards in Tibet, she suffered a stroke when a fire she built in a cave consumed too much of its oxygen supply. She lay for three days before being rescued by Tibetan shepherds.

Three years later, Ms. Darragon saw her first towers, while traveling near Danba. A year after that she saw similar towers in Tibet—800 kilometers away—and was hooked. “When I learned that neither Westerners nor Chinese had researched them and that practically nothing was known about them, I could not resist trying to crack their mystery,” Ms. Darragon says of her long affair with the ancient towers.

The Danba Valley, home to ethnic Tibetan and Qiang villages, is one of the best—and most accessible—places to explore the towers. Five kilometers from Danba city (danba means “town of rocks”) a series of sprawling villages collectively called Suopo has about 80, some in ruins but many still standing, and some of them more than 30 meters high.

Until recently, nobody knew the towers’ age with any real degree of certainty. There are references in texts from the Han Dynasty, which lasted for about 400 years starting in 206 B.C., but the peoples who historically populated the tribal corridor of Sichuan and Tibet lacked a written language, so there was no documentary evidence of the towers’ origin. Chinese archeologists had taken scant interest in the riddle.

James Wasserman for The Wall Street JournalChiles hang outside a window in Danba County.

It was a linguist who wrote one of the first papers on the subject, in 1989. Sun Hongkai, now retired from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, had first seen the towers during a 1956 visit to Sichuan to investigate the Qiang language. “People in the area did not pay attention to the towers,” Mr. Sun says. “Many were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. People used the stones for building materials.”

In the 15 years since Ms. Darragon was drawn to the mystery, she has devoted much of her life to cataloging, dating and fighting to preserve hundreds of the enigmatic stone skyscrapers.

In 2001, with funding from U.S. media mogul Ted Turner, a fellow sailing enthusiast she’s known for decades, she created the nonprofit Unicorn Foundation, dedicated to education and humanitarian projects.

“I’m very proud of Frederique and the work she’s done in China,” Mr. Turner says. “Her amazing discoveries are astounding, and her commitment and dedication to the preservation of some of China’s great artifacts and structures will always be admired and respected.”

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To read the full article, click here. To inquire about journeys to see these towers in Sichuan, please e-mail info@wildchina.com.

The following is an excerpt from Jeff Fuchs’ Tea and Mountain Journals, a blog by explorer, photographer and writer Jeff Fuchs.  Jeff is the 2011 recipient of AsiaTravel’s Explorer Grant.  He and friend Michael Kleinwort are currently traveling through unknown portions of the Tsalam route in Qinghai.

Below is an update from their journey…

Amye Maqen (Amne Machin, Anye Machin) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amne_Machin>, the stout, the muscular, and for much of time, the utterly hidden from the outside world…our first glimpse of it is of a snow capped wonder that appears far closer than it is. There seem to be as many ways of spelling it as their are potential descriptives. Neither wind blown sand nor a haze can obscure its brilliant bulk. It seems to hang from the sky as we come in from the northwest towards the makeshift town at its base, Xiadawu (or in the more flavoured local Tibetan ‘Da’wurr’ – ‘Place that is difficult for horses’). In Joseph Rock’s accounts of the mountain and bandit ridden regions back in 1930 he estimated the broad peaks of Amne Machin to be 30,000 feet, a guess that was later proven to be 3,000 metres off.

Amne Machin from the northwest

The Amne Machin range itself is an eastern extension of the greater Kunlun Mountain range, one of Asia’s longest most legend laden mountain chains. Located in the Golog Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture it is here that the Yellow River (so named because of wind-blown loess that is carried in from Central Asia) rises before winding eastward. At its rounded and almost friendly white peaks it achieves just over 6,200 metres.

Mountains cannot be compared to other of their kind in my eyes. Mountains are landscapes, heaps of stone and snow unto themselves and each has their own thin-aired identity. Sacred to the Golog (Golok) nomads, Amne Machin is almost directly due east of our pristine salt lake near Mado (Mardo) that we’ve most recently left. It also lies on the route that nomads from southwest took to access their precious salt. Few nomadic caravans would pass up the chance to visit and circumambulate the sacred Amne Machin range while undertaking a perilous journey to source salt. Ever practical, the Tibetan traders saw the value of doing both trade for a revered commodity and a little cleansing of past ills.

This mountain that has long played a role in local nomad’s worship of the divine, has withstood weathering seasons and has become more iconic in the eyes of men over time. The fact that it lies as a northwest-southeast diagonal throughway for traders only increases the curiosity for Michael and I. How much is left in memory and physicality of the salt route legacy? How much of any trade route – seldom acknowledged, documented or discussed – will survive? It is in this way that these journeys and explorations are truly ‘exploratory’ with nothing being guaranteed.

The town of Xiadawu, sits in a small cupped valley and is a dusty mess of pool tables, remarkably shabby huts and a main square of errant apathetic dogs that have forgotten their roles. Xiadawu’s decrepit appearance serves as an entry to something far greater than itself, Amne Machin, which erupts to the east. Flowing west out of the mountains past the town, the swerving breadth of the Nam Chu (Nam River) wanders through, over and around valleys in a never-ending search.

Namchu (Nam River)

Our host, Tsering, is to be found out of town – it is he who will arrange our kora/ circumambulation around the great mountain. The ‘kora’ or counterclockwise circumambulation literally refers to a pilgrimage. For many eastern religions this act is believed to be a physical way to cleanse or clear away one’s past sins.

If in fact this is the case it may well take a few more than one rotation for Michael and I to wipe our collective slates clean.

Around us the landscape ripples with Spring’s pending arrival – ridges verging on going from ochre to green. Still though, the high peaks remind in a glance that up here at over 4,000 metres winter isn’t really ever truly ‘over’.

Our host Tsering tells us that, yes, the salt traders came through here as part of their annual travels – more specifically nomadic traders, who, coming from further east, would add the kora of the mountain to their travels to the salt lakes. A kind of double-pronged travel plan: salt for need and profit, kora for life-cleansing benefits.

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The following is an excerpt from Jeff Fuchs’ Tea and Mountain Journals, a blog by explorer, photographer and writer Jeff Fuchs.  Jeff is the 2011 recipient of AsiaTravel’s Explorer Grant.  He and friend Michael Kleinwort are currently traveling through unknown portions of the Tsalam route in Qinghai.

Below is an update from their journey…

The Nyi Chu river provided a valley ‘trail’ by which salt caravans, single yak, and nomads accessed the salt sources of Qinghai

Honkor – Mado

Some would call these wastelands, vast spaces of emptiness that can host only the most rugged life forms…from my heavy eyes; I see that this is as a place of great and silent power that cannot be bent by human hands. These bleak and stunning landscapes measure risk and beauty differently and the ‘reward’ for mistakes or failure here is harsh and often fatal.

Vast and empty – valleys at 4,000 metres near Mado

We are heading west to Mado and the famed salt lake awaits us (we think). Mado County rests at 4,300 metres and it is known for being one of the coldest counties of all of the Tibetan regions. It is called Marduk to the Tibetans meaning, “high place” and it is that, though the ‘town’ itself was more of a nomadic seasonal dwelling place wedged into a long lake shaped valley.

The following piece is an excerpt from an article written by Alison Beard for the May 2011 edition of Harvard Business Review.

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FORCED TO SHUT DOWN: What a Chinese travel entrepreneur learned from the SARS crisis and its aftermath

The first defining moment of Zhang Mei’s career came in late 1999, when she quit her lucrative consulting job to launch a small travel company in her native China. In December, the Harvard MBA was wearing business suits to New York boardroom meetings; by July, she was in jeans, on the floor of her tiny Beijing office, untangling telephone wires.

The second—and more important—turning point came nearly four years later, when the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak hit Asia, battering a travel industry still recovering from the 9/11 terrorist attacks and all but killing Zhang’s fledgling business. Nothing in her training had taught her how to handle the crisis. But she managed to keep the company going, and today AsiaTravel is a leader in its field.

Looking back, Zhang sees that her first big move turned her into an entrepreneur. But it was the SARS experience that taught her how to be a CEO.

“I had high hopes for the business,” she recalls, “and early on I wondered: Am I a good manager? Am I a smart leader?”

After 2003, however, she was battle tested:  “These extraordinary events happen once in a decade, and I’m lucky I got mine early.”

A New Direction

Zhang grew up in Dali in China’s Yunnan province, studying English at the insistence of her father, an electrician who’d never attended high school  She went to Yunnan University and then worked as a translator, until a Thai banker she had met at a business event encouraged her to apply to Harvard’s MBA program – and promised to pay her tuition if she would join his company after graduation.  Once enrolled, she set her sights on a corporate career – “doing the job while other people took care of the details” – and was thrilled to land at McKinsey, a position that required extensive travel and allowed her to repay the banker rather than work for him.

But consulting left her unfulfilled.  She wanted more freedom and even more travel.  She also wanted to do something good for China.  McKinsey gave her a pro bono assignment:  strategizing on economic development and conservation in Yunnan province on behalf of the Nature Conservancy, a U.S.-based NGO.  Zhang liked nonprofit work but didn’t want to make a career of it.  Instead, she came up with a business idea: Launch a travel company to offer sustainable, socially responsible tours of Chinese destinations and communities.

She did a test run, guiding two Nature Conservancy executives and two Washington Post journalists into Tibet – impressing one of them so much that he soon married her.  And then Zhang made her move, relocating to Shanghai and taking a job at travel website Ctrip to learn the industry while honing her business plan.  A few months later, armed with her own savings and small investments from friends and family, she joined her new husband in Beijing and launched AsiaTravel.

“I had no idea what I was doing, and I never perceived myself as a salesperson, but I became really good at selling my idea – to investors, staff, clients,” she says.  “I didn’t even mind all the mundane details of entrepreneurship at the beginning – moving the table and buying the trash can. I just had a conviction.”

With a small, young, enthusiastic staff, a growing list of mainly American clients, and tours focused on everything from city hopping to bird-watching, the company turned a profit in its first year.  Then came the travel standstill following 9/11.  “She was definitely thinking the business might be finished:  good idea, bad timing,” recalls Zhang’s husband, John Pomfret.  But the slowdown ultimately served as an impetus to improve her strategy.  “Our business had been focused on U.S. travelers, and that was the first time we started thinking about selling in other markets as well,” says Guido Meyerhans, a McKinsey colleague who had invested in AsiaTravel.  By early 2002, bookings were back on track.  Still, the experience didn’t fully prepare Zhang for the next, more painful crisis.

Second Shock

The first reports of a deadly SARS outbreak in China’s Guangdong province, about 1,400 miles south of Beijing, emerged in February 2003. In March, the World Health Organization issued a global alert, and foreign countries started to release travel warnings for China. But in part because Chinese officials were claiming to have the situation under control, Zhang and her employees carried on as usual.  “It was peak season, clients were still coming, and the news was all about how limited the SARS cases were,” she recalls.  “So we didn’t make any contingency plans.”

By April, however, cancellations were pouring in, and, late that month, Beijing was declared a danger zone. Zhang thought she could finish up the tours in progress and then redirect her staff to planning and training until bookings resumed. “Then one day,” she recalls, “the contractors renovating our office said, ‘We can’t come in.’” They didn’t want to risk infection by riding the bus. “That’s when it dawned on me: This is serious.”

Belatedly, Zhang and her COO, Jim Stent, started to consider the threat to their own employees, to cancel all trips already under way, and to develop models of what a pandemic might do to their balance sheet. Staff salaries were low by Western standards but could still have eaten up the company’s reserves within six months in the absence of new revenue. Zhang wanted to buy herself at least a year, so she opted for drastic measures: AsiaTravel would cease operations immediately. Both she and the COO would suspend their incomes indefinitely. The dozen or so other employees were asked to forgo 75% of their income until the fall, essentially taking vacation at 25% pay. Once the company reopened, if it did, everyone would be fully reimbursed. They all agreed.

Jia Liming, Zhang’s first hire at AsiaTravel, remembers ending the long- planned bird-watching trip she’d been guiding a week early and then attending an employee farewell party—held at a Beijing park since the SARS threat was considered to be less severe outside. “We thought it was over,” she says.

For her part, Zhang remained calm. But “it was hard to stomach,” she says. “The city was in lockdown, and it seemed like the whole world was coming to an end. Still, I’d been through 9/11, so I was confident we could come back.”

Indeed, by midsummer, following more than 8,000 cases of infection and nearly 800 deaths, SARS seemed to have been contained, and bookings began to pick up again. Zhang and Stent decided to reopen much earlier than they’d expected, on August 1, and called back all the staff.

But it wasn’t as easy as that. Zhang’s top performer in terms of sales and customer service—a young woman she’d hired in 2001 and come to view as a protégé—refused. “She said she wanted more time to hike around another moun- tain,” Zhang says. “I said no. I’d promised a client a proposal by August 5. Two weeks later, she didn’t show. Eventually she came back, all smiles, and I had to tell her I’d given her position away.”

The woman soon launched a regional competitor to AsiaTravel, and over the next few months several other employees left because they missed traveling independently. “It was disappointing because she’d paid these people well and given them opportunities,” Pomfret says.

The next few months at AsiaTravel were nose to the grindstone—reaching out to new clients in the corporate and education sectors; selling, planning, and executing trips; recruiting and training new employees; and replenishing the reserves to pay employees’ back salaries and fund growth. “We had to hustle,” Zhang says. But it paid off. “2004 was one of the best years we’ve had, in terms of profits and new projects.”

Seasoned Traveler

Today, “a little bit older, a little bit wiser”—and having stepped down as CEO in late 2004 to follow Pomfret to the United States, where he had a new job—Zhang points to a few ways in which the SARS crisis helped her become a better leader.

First, it taught her the importance of scenario planning and proactive communication with staff and customers in crisis situations. “I was responsive to client questions during SARS,” she says, “but I didn’t take action until May, by which point I was a little bit cornered.” Since then, AsiaTravel has established crisis response guidelines. “Number one is to make a judgment call as early as possible,” says Zhang, who remains chairwoman and part owner and oversees market- ing from her suburban Maryland office.

When riots broke out in Tibet during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, for example, the company issued a press release and sent instructions to staff and guides the next day.  Meyerhans notes that employees are also in closer contact with provincial government officials to ensure access to the most accurate information. “Once you start preempting clients’ questions, they feel you’re in control,” Zhang explains.

The employee fallout from SARS was also educational. When people Zhang had trusted left her, she realized she needed to think harder about whom she was recruiting and why. In the first years of AsiaTravel, she explains, “I was looking for the passionate, free-spirited traveler I should have been looking for the customer service, travel industry professional—someone who really gets satisfaction out of serving other people.” She was also giving promotions and pay raises too quickly, on an ad hoc basis, without establishing benchmarks for advancement, including long-term commitment to the company.

After SARS, Zhang built a different kind of team, including more-seasoned managers who could handle day-to-day operations when she left in 2004. “One of her biggest achievements,” Meyerhans says, “was making that transition so smoothly, based on the trust she had in the employees she’d hired.”

More broadly, he thinks the two early hits of 9/11 and SARS forced Zhang to be a more creative, confident executive, diversifying and expanding the company each time. “We had high-net-worth individuals and small groups, but that’s a difficult business to control and grow, so we started to build up the corporate and the educational business,” in addition to targeting different geographic regions, he explains. And Zhang has insisted in the years since that AsiaTravel stick to that forward-thinking strategy.  During the recent financial crisis, for example, even as competitors retrenched, “I doubled down,” she says. “I plowed more than 50% of our profits into marketing and IT. I knew that China’s rise, and its tourism and our business, would outlast the recession.”

One last benefit of enduring the SARS period, with no income, was that it reinforced Zhang’s passion for her venture. “You go through self-doubt moments,” she recalls. “When the profits aren’t great, you say, ‘Wow, how did I labor another year with no payback?’ But I’m in this be- cause I enjoy it. As long as I have a comfort level that reaches the minimum threshold, I can seek satisfaction.