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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

———-

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

Photo credit: tampabay.com

<From Philip on May 17th>

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

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

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

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

I have never seen him this emotional.

His email reads,

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

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

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

 

From Sunshine

 

 

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

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

———-

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

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

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

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

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

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

——–

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One of the perks (and perils) of traveling through Beijing and Shanghai is the excellent shopping that can be found, and often for great prices. With the holidays fast approaching, your resident AsiaTravel shoppers thought we’d share a few of our favorite city haunts. Some are very well-known, and some are tiny gems that we were reluctant to part with. Happy holiday hunting!

Beijing:

• For serious bargain hunters,  the stalls at Hongqiao Market will whip up strands of pearls, coral, beads, and semi-precious stones to your heart’s content, while you watch. Buyer beware: quality (and price) varies greatly, so be sure to inspect your wares before you hand over your hard-earned RMB.
• Looking for something new for the home?  Lost and Found is the place for eclectic home-wares.
• If you have a fan of contemporary art on your shopping list, than the 798 District is a must even if the gallery paintings fall just a little out of your budget. For those less willing to fork over the big bucks for avant garde art, this is also a great place to source art, photography and design books.
• Grifted is home to an off-beat collection of unique, one of a kind gifts with a quirky sense of humor.
• Find almost anything at Panjiayuan, a massive open air market, perfect for souvenirs and “antiques”. Be sure to go early though, as that’s when you’ll find the best bargains. Only open on the weekends.

Shanghai:

• Worth a visit even if you’ve already seen the museum’s collection of bronzes, calligraphy, and pottery, the Shanghai Museum Gift Shop has a sophisticated assortment of real and replica treasures for the sophisticated giftee.
• Madame Mao’s Dowry stocks high-quality knickknacks and furniture with a China twist. Look out for their ceramic Christmas tree ornaments with propaganda art and slogans.
• While not one particular store, the warehouses and shops on Taikang Lu are known for their one-of-a-kind, interesting wares.

Locations in Both Cities:

• For modern, Asian-influenced pottery, SPIN should be number one on your list.
• Torana specializes in beautiful handcrafted Tibetan area rugs.
• Whether shopping for your mom or yourself, Woo is a must for scarf and shawl lovers.

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

Jiuzhaigou National Park sits in the rugged West of Sichuan at 2000 meters elevation on the edge of Tibet. This cluster of virgin mixed forests is home to several endangered animals; giant pandas and golden snub-nosed monkeys traverse amongst the limestone cliffs and the effervescent blue lakes. Despite its natural beauty, Jiuzhaigou has had a tenuous history. It was discovered in the early 1970s, and hurt by large-scale logging efforts. Jiuzhaigou was declared a national park in 1978, and the park’s ecological restoration began.

 

Jiuzhaigou established a formal relationship with Yosemite National Park in 2006 to promote international cooperation that benefits both parks.

AsiaTravel accompanied the Yosemite team on their first official sister park visit to Jiuzhaigou in 2009. On this trip, Yosemite preservationists completed a four day survey trek through Jiuzhaigou valley. Through these trips and related efforts, the sister parks aim to share resource management techniques and cooperate to preserve natural biodiversity.

Jiuzhaigou and Yosemite share a similar history. Jiuzhaigou valley has been home to Tibetan natives for thousands of years. When Jiuzhaigou was declared a national park, these natives were no longer allowed to farm in their local villages. Yosemite park has experienced similar cultural issues; Native Americans were no longer allowed to plant crops in the parks area of Northern California when Yosemite was declared a national park in 1890. The parks have already benefited from communication on several topics, including the construction of wooden walkways to limit the impact of foot traffic on the surrounding environment.

 

Hopefully, interpark cooperation will lead to preservation of the endangered animals that reside in Jiuzhaigou and the mythical environment that supports them.