Experience China Differently…
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In honor of Labor Day, WildChina’s US office will be closed on Monday, September 6. We wish our friends, family and travelers a happy holiday.
Source: www.stanford.edu
WildChina’s Beijing office will be open at this time. For inquiries, please send an email to info[at]wildchina[dot]com or visit our website.
Perrin not only describes each selected travel agent, but also provides guidance on how to use the interactive listing on the CNT website, and features sport-and-adventure-themed agent recommendations.
Our favorite feature is her 6 Travel Agent Tips – found exclusively in print – which empower travelers to craft the perfect trip with their specialist. Smart and useful, these hints can be applied anywhere in the world. So, we’re showing you how to use them to create a memorable journey in China.
Perrin says: Define trip goals: “The better you are at articulating your needs, the better the travel specialist can meet them.”
We say: Perrin is right on the mark with this first tip. There are many angles from which to experience China, so it is important to know where your preferences and priorities lie. Ask yourself what kind of trip you want to create. To jumpstart your thinking process, here are a few key words to consider: luxury, adventure, local, modern, traditional, cuisine, monument, history, hands-on, expert.
Perrin says: Get personal: “The more information you share, the more potentially spectacular the results.”
We say: Information = customization, and customization = the trip of a lifetime tailored specifically to you. Do you love birds? Try our Winter Birding trip. Are you a self-professed gourmet? We’ll expose you to China’s many local cuisines and flavors. Can’t live without your morning cup of joe? Maybe a trip to get a taste of Yunnan‘s locally-produced coffee is in order. Travel specialists can use your personal interests and preferences to make the trip all the more special.
Perrin says: Be a collaborator: “The best trips spring from a team effort between you and the specialist.”
We say: The relationship between traveler and specialist is incredibly important, to develop mutual understanding and ultimately, an unforgettable journey. We like frequent email communication and phone conversations to build the rapport. These interactions not only give us facts for trip-planning, but help us to understand how the client thinks and interacts. We adapt to their style so that they can trust us – and from trust springs successful collaboration.
Perrin says: Establish a budget: “State up front how much you want to spend.”
We say: This is particularly important with customized travel. China can be explored at all levels, so it’s important to gauge how specialized and unique you want your trip to be. You might want to visit a remote village in Yunnan, but skip on the private visit with the local shaman. Alternately, maybe it’s important to you to try the very best roast duck in Beijing. Whatever your spending preferences, make them known early.
Perrin says: Expect to pay a fee: “A travel specialist’s fee is either a deposit applied to the cost of the trip… or a markup built into the total cost.”
We say: At WildChina, creating customized trips that are perfectly suited to our clients’ interests and needs is of utmost importance. As such, we do not require a fee for your initial consultation. When a client is ready to confirm the trip, we ask for a deposit.
Perrin says: Guide the guide: “It’s your job to communicate your interest directly to the guide.”
We say: We take guide training very seriously, making sure that our guides’ English level, local knowledge, problem-solving skills and flexibility are all up to snuff. They know to observe and adapt to clients’ needs and wants, but you should also never hesitate to let them know what you want. If you prefer your guide to discuss architecture instead of history, describe personal anecdotes on life in China, or just let you roam in peace, let them know.
The torrential rains that have plagued southwestern China this summer have caused even further damage, this time in Yunnan province.
Xinhua reports that in Pudali Township of Yunnan’s Gongshan Drung-Nu Autonomous Region, “at least 67 people are missing and seven others injured after mudslides slammed [the] remote town” earlier today.
Gongshan in Yunnan province. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)
In addition to affecting roads, power sources and telecommunications, the mudslides also “destroyed a bridge and made the Nujiang River swollen with the water level increasing by up to six meters.”
Rescuers have been dispatched to the area through local government.
At this time, none of WildChina’s journeys to Yunnan have been affected. We will update the blog with any updates on the situation.
UPDATE: The mudslides occurred very close to where we begin our From the Salween to the Mekong: Hiking the 19th Century French Explorers’ Route journey. Please enquire with your travel associate at WildChina for further details on this itinerary.
It’s been another adventure-filled year at WildChina – venturing to new destinations, revisiting preferred haunts for a second (or third, fourth) time, engaging in rugged hands-on activities, and relaxing in China’s finest luxury spots.
To pay homage to our favorite hotels, sites, and activities in China for the past year, we bring you our 2010 installment of WildChina’s Best of China Awards – a small sampling of the finest that China has to offer, with many new additions (and a few return favorites).
Top 5 Hotels
Our top hotels for 2010 showcase China’s finest urban simplicity and rural grandeur. Chosen through an in-depth survey and client feedback process, these prime accommodations represent the best in service standards, environmental commitment, and unique design.
*These properties also won our Best of China Awards for 2009.
Top 5 Sites
We want our clients to experience China’s most incredible, unique, and unspoiled destinations. Below are our top picks for 2010 that allow for tucked-away adventures and peaceful exploration.
Top 5 Activities
Personal, once-in-a-lifetime, and hands-on: we love these activities because they bring our travelers closer to the people of China. These make for fun excursions that go far beyond the tour bus.
Miss our top picks from last year? Take a look at our Best of China Awards 2009.
Did we leave out your favorite hotel, site, or activity? Let us know! Send us an email or a tweet.
You know what I am talking about – that brick or disc of tea in the velvet box! What do you do with it?
A few years ago, we were living in LA. My dear father came from Yunnan to stay with us in America for the first time. He brought a few bricks of Yunnan Pu’er tea (普洱沱茶) as gifts for people. Literally, they look like a solid disc or brick that if you get wacked on the head, you’d bleed.
I held him back, telling him that Laowai (Chinese endearment for “foreigners”) really didn’t know how to appreciate tea, and they wouldn’t know what to do with the brick. Finally, we were going to dinner at this famous screen playwright’s house for dinner, my dad insisted in bringing one brick and presented it to the writer. The writer was very polite and thanked my father. I never went back to ask what he did with it.
Let’s face it, the brick of tea is packed so dense, that I wouldn’t know what to do with it. It’s too big to boil as one serving of tea; it’s so hard that you need a hammer to break it; it makes a huge mess if you do that! So, all the bricks I have collected still mostly sit on my bookshelf, until yesterday.
A big background on Pu’er tea, this is one type of tea that Yunnan Province in Southwest China is known for. They brew into a strong dark brown colored tea. But, historically, this tea was always packed on horse backs and carried by caravan trademen over dare-devil terrain onto the Tibetan Plateau. There, they transfer into the famed Tibetan Yak Butter Tea. Honestly, I prefer drinking Pu’er tea by itself without the yak butter part. Nevermind my personal taste, Yak butter tea is an essential form of calorie for Tibetans. The transportation route became known as the ancient Tea and Horse Caravan Road. National Geographic magazine ran a beautiful article on this road, but I was hugely offended by the article left out Yunnan.
People from Yunnan still prefer to store tea in the same condensed brick form. In fact, it is said that the older the tea, the more valuable it is. So, many collectors are in search for decade old tea. There are tea connoisseurs in China, as there are wine connoisseurs in the west.
Back in May, I walked into a tiny tea store in Heshun Old town in Tengchong, Yunnan. A young tea salesman told me that I needed a 解茶针，(needle for separating the tea). I had no idea that special equipment was available to do this job. He also explained that the tea brick was pressed together one layer at a time. So, adjust natural tendency to break off a chunk, one should carefully peel layers of tea horizontally.
I took the needle as a treasure and tucked into my purse. Hello?? How stupid is that!! I was caught at the airport security in Tengchong. To my amazement, the airport staff saw it on the imaging screen, and said, “Take the TEA NEEDLE out! It has to go in checked luggage. “Oh, no!” I groaned, knowing very well that I’d loose the needle, as no one had ever bothered to retrieve my check luggage for something like this.
Well, I was in for a surprise. People there knew that I couldn’t do anything with the tea if I didn’t have the proper instrument. So, they found my luggage, and now I have the tea needle in DC!
With tool in hand, I gave it a try yesterday, and was delighted with the result- now in a glass jar for future use. My son was busy playing with my iphone next to me. I tried to explain to him what I was doing, telling him about tea from mom’s hometown. He simply ignored me. Never mind.
If anyone’s listening, WildChina’s tea journey with Jeff Fuchs is worth the experience.
“Absolutely NOT,” is my immediate answer. But, we just did.
A travel agent called WildChina’s US office at 3:30 pm EDT, which makes it exactly 3:30 am in the middle of the night in Beijing, to tell us that her client just notified her that her flight from Guilin to Beijing was delayed from midnight, and now she’d be arriving at 5 am in Beijing.
Could WildChina make sure that someone would pick her up at that early hour?
My colleague and I looked at each other, and answered her firmly, “YES.” That traveler is a WildChina client, and there is no way that we are leaving our travelers stranded at the airport after a full night’s delays to wait another 3 hours before their car ride comes.
Sunshine Shang, Director of Travel Partners and one of the dedicated members of the WildChina team.
But, to make it happen, there was no option but to call our Beijing office colleague. To our happy relief, the staff picked up the phone, and said that she had been monitoring the flights and had already adjusted the pick-up. The clients, she said, were to be picked up at 5 am!
When I heard this, I couldn’t help but feel myself getting emotional from this. How often in the corporate world do you find a staff more dedicated to clients than the staff of WildChina?
If anyone called me at 3:30 am, I’d be really mad! (By the way, this includes my father and my husband.) They know to avoid calling after 10pm my time. But this? A phone call from an overseas office in the middle of the night about a car pick up for somebody you’ve never met? Our Beijing colleague, Maya Ren, took it with such grace and professionalism!
I guess I got emotional particularly because the day before, another WildChina staff found out that there was misunderstanding about the deadline of a VIP travel proposal. It was due on Wednesday US time. She found out at 10 pm Beijing time Wednesday evening – which meant, unless she pulled an all-nighter, that there was no way she’d be able to deliver. I was almost ready to call the client and tell them to wait another day, but she and her teammate told me to wait. They would work on it then, and sleep the next day.
At 2 am Beijing time, 2 pm on Wednesday afternoon in New York, the beautiful proposal arrived in client’s email box! Amy Sun and Sunshine Shang did an incredible job putting it together.
I was rendered speechless by the amazing commitment from the WildChina team in Beijing. Thank you!
Follow Mei (@yunnangirl) and WildChina (@WildChina) on Twitter.
A very happy client of WildChina sent in a quick note to thank us the other day. It read, “I just wanted to let you both know we are having a great trip here in China. It is a beautiful country with incredible sights and history. All of the people we have met have been wonderful! And your guides have all been terrific. Thanks for setting everything up!” Some background these clients: this is one couple traveling with more than a dozen kids – a feat that I can only admire!
Then came my staff’s response. “Guess not easy for you to manage all the kids, but heard from our guides, the kids are quite obedient and sensible…” I am not sure how our clients reacted to this, as I knew my colleague only meant it as a compliment, without realizing there is a different connotation in English.
The word on my colleague’s mind was “乖” (pronounced “guai”). “乖” is translated as “obedient,” according to Google. But the truth is, there is no word in English that expresses what “guai” truly means. This is one of the few cultural incidences that makes translation impossible.
In Chinese families, kids are praised if they behave well, i.e. listen to parents and elders, do what they are told to do, do not challenge authority or create mischief. Adults would say, “孩子真乖，听话” (“You are guai and listen well.”) So, this is praise simply on the child’s behavior, and meant as a compliment. There is a general social acceptance that adults’ words are to be heeded and respected.
But in an English-speaking environment, we still want the kids to listen, but there isn’t such a praise word for obedient behavior. Usually, if my son does his homework by himself without me prodding, I’ll say “Good job.” When he doesn’t listen to me, I count “1, 2, 3” and then say “time out”. The “guai” concept simply doesn’t exist here, as sometimes, kids being naughty and breaking rules is viewed as “entrepreneurial” potential. I am sure Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, wasn’t a “guai” child.
At the same time, the word “obedient” often has a negative connotation for both the parents and the kids. It comes across as the children being overly pressured to follow rules, and the parents overly managing their children.
Hope our clients didn’t take this as an offense.
The movie critics don’t seem to think that highly of the new Karate Kid film, but I had a great time watching it with my 7-year-old son. It’s one of the few kid movies that I sat through without falling asleep in the middle, which unfortunately was the case with the fantastic Toy Story 3!
Here are my reasons for liking it:
Most importantly, I just LOVED the scenery shots. The kid practices his kicks at the Great Wall, visits the Forbidden City, and travels by train to Guilin to climb to the top of Wudang Mountain. All of these shots are simply beautiful!
Wudangshan is the Daoist Mountain where Mr. Han (the Kungfu Shifu) takes him to reach the sacred water source. The scenes of Daoists practicing meditation or Kungfu are Hollywood stage setups, but they are beautiful and at times, when traveling in China, you can find truly spiritual moments as such when visiting these sacred mountains.
One of my favorite Daoist Mountains to visit is called Weishan in Dali, Yunnan. It’s much smaller in scale, and is very little visited as Daoism isn’t gaining many followers these days. But, the Daoist temples scattered on the mountain offer a peaceful respite from the noise of Chinese towns. One of my favorite things to do is to hike to the highest temple and drink tea with the only resident Daoist, who grows all his own fresh produce at the temple. The tea costs RMB 1 (equivalent of 15 cents), and tastes pure and sweet after hiking there.
Now when it comes to logistics, however, I would NEVER recommend anyone to travel from Beijing by train to Guilin, to climb Wudang Mountain. So, please don’t follow Mr. Han on this route. Wudang Mountain is 800 miles south of Beijing, and Guilin (where the lovely Karst hills rise out of Li River) is another 800 miles further to the south. It would be a ridiculous detour – but it works in a movie.
So, walk in knowing it’s Hollywood, and enjoy the stunning scenery.
Another reason for liking it is the reality of China that’s portrayed in the film. Mei Ying (the Karate Kid’s love interest) and her family provide a small window into the life of an upper middle class family in China. Usually, it’s a small family of 3 people, mom, dad and the only child. The well-off Chinese families are buying up luxury cars like Audi or BMW, the successful mom and dad are very well dressed. The pressure on the only child is intense, with piano lessons and violin practice sessions everyday. The movie hasn’t quite shown the intense pressure for testing into colleges, but that would have distracted from the spotlight on the Karate Kid.
All in all, I find it entertaining, and absolutely worth watching for those considering visiting China. WildChina offers a classic family trip to China that incorporates Kungfu and some of the classic sites that viewers will find in the Karate Kid, like the Great Wall and Forbidden City.
I was very impressed by the beginning of the Lonely Planet China Guide book. “The Best of China” page offered a quick summary of the classic highlights of the country that one should never miss – The Forbidden City and the Great Wall of Beijing, the Terracotta Warriors of Xi’an, etc. The photos are beautiful. I also liked the section that introduced the writers, bringing a human face to advice they are dispensing. Then the Rural China, Eat China, Hike China and Red China pages all offered some interesting sites, and are very helpful for those who want to venture off the Yangtze Cruise to experience the real China.
But, to me, it also demonstrated the lack of access due to language constraint. For example, the Hike China section is a bit limited. Having hiked most of the trails listed in that section, I beg to differ. For example, the Yubeng hike, or Pilgrimage Trail to Mt. Kawagebo, is among the most breathtaking and spiritual hike. WildChina team members first hiked in this area in the late ’90s, and only now that trail is gaining some awareness among Chinese speakers. Not sure if the guide book is outdated or the writer didn’t know about it. Either way, I think there could be a better guide on hiking opportunities in China.
Then I went straight for the section on lodging (called “Sleeping” in the guidebook) in Beijing. It is unfortunately written by a backpacker who is too well-versed in adjectives such as “top notch”, “elegant,” “gorgeous,” “stunning,” “impressive,” “outstanding,” “splendid,” “enticing,” etc. I’ll save you the rest, but seriously, these words all appeared in 3 paragraph describing the St. Regis, Grand Hyatt, and China World Hotel. You can basically randomly re-allocate these words, and the information you are getting won’t change a bit.
Obviously, the writer hasn’t stayed in any of these places. I wish there were a few more details, such as the Made In China restaurant in the Grand Hyatt serves the best “Begger’s Chicken” and is one of the most interesting Chinese restaurants to dine in because of the open kitchen layout. You get to see the chefs tossing the greens in a wok alight with fire! Also, for families traveling with children, the China World Hotel Service Apartments offer the best option- with large rooms, ensuite kitchen, etc. (By the way, I think the Frommers Guide does a much better job with restaurant recommendations.)
Also, among the top notch is The Opposite House for its zen-like design and personal service – not to mention the beautiful Aman at the Summer Palace. These are the more boutique hotels that really make Beijng an interesting place in which to stay.
What got me most is the section on “Beijing for Children.” I have a feeling that the authors didn’t really travel to Beijing with kids. The hardest thing I found upon arriving in Beijing is how to kill the early morning hours due to jet lag.
Two very important things for me: breakfast at 金湖茶餐厅 / GL Cafe Restaurant，and morning walks in Ritan Park. The Café is a 24-hour Hong Kong style restaurant – very helpful at 4am when there is no other place to eat and the kids are crying! They have branch locations next to the St. Regis and the China World Hotel, and they have high chairs. Ritan Park is a major source of entertainment, as it opens at 6 am for the morning exercises. It’s an entertaining place for the kids to watch others play badminton, or do taiqi. Maybe it’s me, but I need to have the jetlag bunch taken care off before I can think of ice skating in Beijing.
For a good source of ideas and tips on what to do with kids in China’s capital, follow @BeijingWithKids on Twitter.