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

———-

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

Part of our difficulties was due to the constant and sometimes overwhelming presence of Chinese tourists.  Chinese tourists are an odd group and not terribly accommodating or pleasant from a westerner’s perspective.  According to conversations with several people, Chinese tourists are less interested in seeing, learning and understanding, and much more interested in taking home pictures of themselves and cheap souvenir gifts to “prove” they had been to the big city and seen the elephant (so to speak).  In the context of China’s economic growth and the spread of wealth down into the middle classes and rural communities, millions of these tourists are on their initial trips out of their local communities.  They smoke a lot.  They spit.  They talk, stand up or even walk around during performances.  They push and shove to get to the front of a line – a survival skill, no doubt, in a country with 1.3 billion people.  In small numbers (anything less than several thousand), they are no worse than any other population of large groups discharging from parked ranks of tour buses.  You ignore their presence and carry on.  But for some reason, we were flooded with them.  Clearly, it was worst in Beijing, and our experience there may have made us hypersensitive to the issue throughout the remainder of the trip.  But our guides uniformly reflected on how they were seeing substantially many more national tourists than expected.  In prior years, the number of Chinese tourists had substantially diminished following their big national holiday (October 1).  This year, they just kept coming.  As an early example, I expected Tiananmen Square to be this huge, open square, just like the pictures I’ve seen.  Instead, all we could see were the heads of tens of thousands of tourists jamming an open space between a few monumental marble structures.  There was a 4-6 hour wait to get into Mao’s tomb (we skipped it).  Given the number of people present, the square itself didn’t even seem all that big.  For communities all across China, hanging out a “UNESCO Site” sign means you’re guaranteed millions of dollars of revenue from tens of thousands of Chinese tourists jamming little historic streets lined with shops selling plastic crap and cheap reproductions (mostly made in Viet Nam).  You can’t fault the Chinese for wanting to visit the hotspots within their own country.  But their numbers and manner definitely reduced our enjoyment and, in some cases our appreciation, for particular sights or experiences.

 
Second, China is clearly struggling with the size of its population, the extraordinary rate of growth in its economy and the rapid changes that are occurring in its distribution of wealth.  Improvements in their infrastructure (highways and airports in our experiences) just can’t keep up.  So in any largish city (and a country this size has lots and lots of cities with 5-10 million people), traffic jams, litter, pollution, clean water, lack of functional sewer systems, crowded public transport, crowded airports and disruptions due to construction are real problems.  I saw more Ferraris in Beijing in 3 days than I’ve seen in Washington D.C. in 30 years.  But most of them probably never get out of 1st gear due to the endless traffic jams there.  They’re like enormous pinkie rings, serving only to demonstrate the wealth of their owners.  Our trip included many, many hours in cars and vans averaging anywhere from 10-20 kilometers per hour – both in urban areas and while driving between rural towns.  Most tourist areas are struggling to deal with the explosion of tourism by Chinese nationals and foreigners, and some sites are, frankly, failing.  For example, we had to stand around for 15-20 minutes waiting for our guide to purchase tickets to get into the Forbidden City.  There was no way to pre-purchase tickets to get into sites.  And it wasn’t just for our small group of two.  Even the large groups stood around waiting, increasing the sense of congestion and crowding around key sites.  They just haven’t learned the secrets of how to move people along.
Finally (and there’s no polite way to say this) but…  Squat toilets were not our favorite Chinese experience.  Particularly when there aren’t any doors or walls between the “stalls.”  And you’d better bring your own toilet paper because you won’t find any outside of luxury hotels and airports (and even some of the airports only had squat toilets.)
I remember when my Grandmother Miller visited us in Germany back in the 1960’s and said something like “Germany would be a great place if it just wasn’t so full of foreigners.”  That’s been an inside, Reuter family joke for years.  I am very uncomfortable with the fact that my feelings about our China trip include even a tiny hint of this incredibly ethno-centric view.  I really do believe that I’m much more cosmopolitan than that.  But it can’t be argued that in the end, we just didn’t really “love” China as a country, and these were some of the reasons why.

Our tour company was WildChina.  We could never say enough wonderful things about how well they actually performed.  They provided everything promised, including cars and beds big enough for Jamie.  Their guides were terrific: very helpful, informed and flexible.  While dealing with our early arrival is the best example of their flexibility, we regularly had conversations with our guides about the various options we had for spending a day.  They quickly picked up on our desire to skip the obvious and crowded and go for things that were more unusual and interesting.  They knew where the shops with “quality” goods were, and took us there.  They were very open about their own lives and experiences.  They taught us a lot about what it was like to live in the “new China.”  We highly recommend WildChina to anyone planning a trip there.  They will work with you to create the type of trip you want, and then deliver it.  A very good friend of ours, who has travelled extensively, went on a 12 day trip to Yunnan, departing two days after we returned, and spent time in many of the same places we visited.  She used one of the “usual” tour companies.  The contrast between the two trips was remarkable.  If you’re going to China, use WildChina.

 
Weather wise, we sort of lucked out.  The rainy season was supposed to have ended.  But everyone kept talking about how weather patterns had been delayed this year and that we were still in the tail end of the rainy season.  Weather.com kept predicting rain – with daily precipitation probabilities ranging from 60-80% for weeks at a time.  In reality, we had serious rain for only two days: one in Beijing (when we visited the Summer Palace and Temple of Heaven in our rain gear and under umbrellas) and one in Kunming (when a break in a steady rain let us wander around the Stone Forest without get too wet).  On the other hand, it was generally cloudy, overcast and about 10 degrees (Fahrenheit) colder than we expected.  While Jamie never put on his wool cap and gloves, he only wore his shorts and polo shirts after we got to Hong Kong.  Jan packed too many shirts with three-quarter sleeves and was stuck wearing her 2 long sleeve shirts day after day after day.  Neither of us even got close to putting on our bathing suits.

———

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

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

Tibetan home in Zhonglu Village

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

Tower of Danba Valley

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

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

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

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

Water-powered cornmill

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

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

School in Pujiaoding

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

Beijing boasts a variety of boutique hotels, but many of these are tucked away in hutongs (Beijing’s ancient neighborhoods) and remain secret oases from the frenzy of Beijing’s busiest streets where most of the larger hotel chains are situated.

So for those looking for something a bit more unique than a 5-star standard, here are a few boutique hotels that have piqued WildChina’s attention:

1. Want to experience a Beijing hutong on a limited budget? Shadow Art

Shadow Art Hotel proudly embraces the traditional shadow art culture by providing free shadow puppet shows every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday nights on their traditional shadow art performance stage (made by craftsmen who restore the Forbidden City and Summer Palace). The English-speaking staff, lovely interior decorations, and modern facilities add comfort to the culture. Shadow Art is also located within a five-minute walk from the beautiful Houhai Lake.

2. Looking for a more relaxed living style in Beijing accompanied by a traditional hutong experience? The Orchid Beijing

Though less culturally traditional than Shadow Art, at The Orchid Beijing the friendly, English-speaking staff, great service, and incredibly comfortable beds more than make up for the Beijing tradition the hotel may lack. The hotel is well designed, with a unique and inviting flair.

The Orchid Hotel

3.  Not on a tight budget and interested in feeling the traditional Zen culture in a hutong? Graceland-yard

Modeled after ZhenJue Temple, a Beijing temple with over 500 years of history, the Graceland-yard hotel presents an exquisite courtyard themed after the temple’s zen characteristics. Stroll the courtyard of the Graceland-yard on the way to your romantic room, where warm touches add to the personalized service the hotel offers.

The Graceland-yard Hotel

4. Need a romantic, environmentally-friendly hideaway in a hutong? Courtyard 7

Courtyard 7 has historically been home to imperial families, social celebrities, and high-ranking officials. Reopened in 2008 after intensive restoration and renovation, Courtyard 7 is the first courtyard hotel in Beijing to adopt a geothermal heating pump system, which allows for guests to appreciate the traditional culture while maintaining a comfortable and environmentally conscious atmosphere.

The Courtyard 7

———-

To learn more about these properties or to plan a journey to Beijing, please contact us at info@wildchina.com

Photos by The Orchid Hotel, Tripadvisor

On April 18 of this past spring the Waldorf Astoria in Shanghai opened its doors to receive its first clients.

The elegant neoclassical architecture, bright white stone and stately columns of Shanghai’s new Waldorf Astoria, provide a traditional departure from some of the city’s trendier hotels. Step into the foyer and feel transported back to Shanghai’s spectacular, glamorous past. The lobby’s soaring white columns and cozy yet elegant chairs embody the feel of the Waldorf; the hotel is a perfect combination of comfort and tradition.

The Waldorf Astoria Shanghai: An elegant blend of tradition & modern sophistication

The river-view heritage suites overlook the Huangpu river, while rooms on the tenth floor and higher have clear views of the River, Pudong’s skyline as well as peripheral views of scenery along the bund. Rooms are large and luxurious, and equipped with internet, large flat screened TVs with international cable, as well as an espresso machine. The hotel has many dining options, including Pelham’s, a NY style restaurant with an extensive wine list, the Long Bar, a traditional old-fashioned bar with a cozy atmosphere, decorated with deep wood and dark leather, and offers a variety of drinks for you to sip while you listen to live jazz and R&B, and the Grand Brasserie, a chic Sino-French restaurant where a gourmet, semi-buffet breakfast is served. In addition, the Salon offers a traditional afternoon teatime in an intimate setting with views of the Bund and Pudong.

Long Bar

State-of-the-art facilities include a fully-outfitted gym and heated indoor pool, the luxury Waldorf Spa, a hair salon, business center, library, and even a Waldorf Astoria florist for any last minute needs.

The hotel’s location makes it an ideal accommodation for everyone, no matter your reason for visiting Shanghai: only 14.5 km from the Shanghai Hongqiao Airport,  5 km from the railway station, 2 km from Downtown People’s Square, and 0 km from The Bund. Nanjing Road is a short walk away, and museums and the famous Yu Garden are only a few blocks from The Bund.

The Waldorf Astoria promises timeless luxury service and comfort in this unforgettable, stately Shanghai landmark.

———-

WildChina is happy to arrange rooms for you at this luxurious property during the Shanghai portions of your journey.  Please consult your WildChina travel consultant for bookings or email us at info@wildchina.com.

Photos by Waldorf Astoria Shanghai

A few posts ago, we announced the opening of the commercial high-speed rail that connects passengers between Beijing and Shanghai in less than 5 hours: a remarkable feat. Before the high-speed rail opened on July 1, 2011, the fastest journey via train took 9 hours and 49 minutes. Now, due to trains which travel at an average speed close to 200 mph, the time it takes to travel to Shanghai has been cut in half.

This past weekend I had the pleasure of exploring Shanghai for the first time. Of course, I packed a long to-do list from WildChina’s China Classics Shanghai itineraries, but I had to try to condense everything I wanted to do into a single weekend adventure. I took the high-speed rail from Beijing to Shanghai on a Friday morning, then hopped on the train and rode it back to Beijing on Sunday afternoon. I knew I wouldn’t want to deal with the hassle of flying, which made the rail an attractive alternative.

My experience was fantastic. The seats are comfortable and there’s much more legroom than a plane offers. The attendants were helpful, and everything was very clean. All in all, this train makes travel to Shanghai a piece of cake.

At the Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station after disembarking the high-speed train

If you’re looking to take a weekend journey to Shanghai, but not sure what to do once you arrive, here are some suggestions.

1) Yu Garden

Visit this site in the morning to avoid crowds. After a little searching for its entrance in the bustling bazaar outside the garden walls, you will find paradise on Earth in this classical Chinese garden. Commissioned in 1559 by Pan Yunduan of the Ming Dynasty (1368AD-1644AD), the gardens were meant to be a gift to his father for him to spend his old age in peace. Yu Gardens showcase the Southern Chinese garden style: carp-filled ponds, dragon statues, lucky stone mosaics, and bridges are tucked away in the luscious greenery of this famous garden.

Afterwards, stop and grab some snacks and milk tea from the vendors in the bazaar and visit the local artisans hard at work in their stalls.

2) Xintiandi

The site of the first Communist Party meeting, Xintiandi’s historical significance blends gracefully with its modern development into upscale shopping and dining. This modernized area is composed of renovated shikumen, or “stone gate” houses located in narrow alleys. The numerous cafés and the wide range of dining options make Xintiandi an ideal spot for lunch, dinner, or drinks. Most restaurants have outdoor and indoor seating which makes people-watching easy while you relax. Stop by the Museum of the First National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party to learn more about the first Communist Party meeting.

3) Pudong: Jin Mao Tower or the World Financial Center

Head across the Huangpu River to Pudong, China’s emerging financial center. Though most tourists head to the Oriental Pearl Tower for a view of The Bund and Shanghai, Jin Mao Tower and the World Financial Center offer incredible observation decks and a dramatically thinner crowd. Jaws drop as soon as the elevator doors opened on the observation deck on the 88th floor of Jin Mao Tower (also home of the Grand Hyatt Shanghai, one of the highest hotels in the world which occupies the tower from the 53rd-87th floor).

Jin Mao Tower

4) Fuxing Park

Hidden among the charming, tree-lined streets in the French Concession district, Fuxing Park exudes a lively aura thanks to the locals who sing, play board games, dance, practice tai-chi, and relax in the park. Immediately upon entering the park, Fuxing’s I passed an older Mao-suited gentleman carrying his lucky cricket in its cage as he ambled on his way through the fragrant rose garden.

5) Urban Planning Exhibition Center

The six-story Shanghai Urban Planning exhibition Centre includes archived photos, information on proposed forms of future transportations, and a computer-generated flyover of the city projected onto a 360-degree movie screen. The most incredible part of the museum, though, is the centerpiece of the entire exhibition center: an expansive scale model of what urban Shanghai is predicted to resemble in 2020.

6) Nanjing Road

If you’re looking for shopping, Nanjing Road, one of the world’s busiest shopping streets, has it all. Renovated in 2000 by the Chinese government in an effort to pedestrianize the street, Nanjing is very easy and accessible to navigate.

7) Din Tai Fung Restaurant

Though this chain is actually of Taiwanese origin, Din Tai Fung in Shanghai promises incredible xiaolongbao, or soup dumplings, a local favorite. Din Tai Fung’s excellent service, fantastic prices, and, of course, delicious cuisine have all contributed to its immense popularity. There are numerous locations throughout the city.

8) Walk Along The Bund at night (before 11pm!)

The Bund, with its European-style Neoclassical and Art Deco buildings, portray the beginning of Shanghai’s financial prowess that began during the British concession in 1842. Commercial houses and banks line the Western edge of the Huangpu River, giving Shanghai the nickname “Paris of the East.” After the sun sets, the lights from the buildings drench the walkway on the bank of the river in a warm glow.

The lights from Pudong across the Huangpu River are dazzling and bright, and represent Shanghai’s constant development and urban renewal. Arrive before 11 pm to make sure you catch a glimpse of the city lights before they’re shut off for the night.

Pudong at night from across the Huangpu River

To prepare for the ride back to Beijing, Purchase some food from the Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station before you head back; you can pay for a meal or snacks on the train, but the cuisine isn’t always very appetizing and prices are high. Relax! After a busy weekend, you can lean back your chair and sleep comfortably in the well-cushioned chairs.

———

To see more activities in Shanghai, check out the itinerary for our four-day journey to the city, here.

Shaanxi is a region packed with history and culture. In fact, in Xi’an and the surrounding region sometimes even the ground seems to be overflowing with it. Tombs, most notably of the Qin and Ming, dot the countryside while the sheer amount of artifacts under Xi’an has raised concerns about building a subway system.

Outside the world of ancient relics lies another underground treasure: the Yaodong (窰洞). A type of dwelling little known outside of China, they are particularly common in Shaanxi due to the number of loess hills in the region and a natural lack of other building materials.

Yaodongs also hold a special place in Chinese history: when the Long March concluded in Yan’an, in northern Shaanxi. Here, Mao and his other compatriots built and lived in Yaodongs due to their simplicity during the well-known Yan’an period.

However the Yaodong, much like the hutong, seems to be on its way out in today’s China. Younger people are trending towards more technologically-based life in cities and apartments, and the Yaodong is used less and less.

The front door, where we will be greeted by the inhabitants

WildChina offers an opportunity on our Xi’an tours to experience a piece of this history by visiting a Yaodong. While the Yan’an complex has much been converted into hotels, there is still an opportunity to experience the authentic Yaodong about 30km outside of Xi’an.

In a small 4-cave complex, largely forgotten by time, live an octogenarian couple. Their four children have all moved to growing towns, and the eldest lives 700km away. Man and wife are both veterans of the revolutionary era, one fighting in the Korean War while the other struggled to maintain their rural existence. When visitors come to their cave, they welcome them as substitutes for absent family, excitedly providing generous hospitality and laying open their fascinating lives for all to hear.

On a tour of the Yaodong, we are shown to the storage area.

WildChina is pleased ask you to join us at this home soon, a unique experience to add to any trip to Xi’an and just one more way to Experience China Differently.

WildChina is pleased to announce that guests visiting the Great Wall will soon have one more incredible way to view the ancient fortification.

Soon visitors will have a chance to take aerial shots like this

Starting after July 1, visitors to the Badaling wall will have the opportunity to view the wall from the air, taking flight in as350b3 model helicopters based out of Beijing Badaling airport. Generally used for search and rescue, medical aid, and police air support, these helicopters can fit up to four passengers. The initial pricing, for a time of 15 minutes in the air, is CNY 1,500 per person. If the initial offerings are successful, Those willing to throw down more cash will soon be able to pay CNY 30,000-CNY 50,000 for an hour of charter time.

Sometimes when on the road, the past and present can collide in the most unexpected of places. We were reminded of this recently when on the road in the lush upper reaches of the Salween River in Yunnan, where the river is known as the Nu River.

It was a Sunday morning and we’d been enjoying the Tibetan-style Buddhist architecture in hills near the remote town of Bingzhongluo. The fresh, invigorating air filled our lungs as we headed down into the valley, where we came upon a rebuilt Catholic church that had originally been constructed more than a century ago.

It was half past ten and mass was going to start at eleven. A small crowd of worshippers from the Lisu ethnic group was waiting to enter the building. We walked around to one side of the church where we came upon a small graveyard with only one headstone.

Upon closer inspection, we made out the name of the deceased: “Annet Genestier”. The name rang a bell instantly, as just one night earlier we had  re-read some of famed botanist/explorer Joseph Rock’s impressions of traveling through the Nu Valley, which were published in an article in National Geographic from August, 1926 entitled “Through The Great River Trenches of Asia”.

In the article, Rock described the animosity between local Tibetan lamas and a French church and mission, led by a stubborn priest surnamed Genestier.

Relating what back then was recent history of the mission, Rock wrote:

“Twice it has been burned by the Tibetan lamas of Champutong, and twice intrepid Father Genestier, who still lives in the Salwin Valley… had to flee for his life and find shelter among the Lissu further south.”

In 1937, Pêre Genestier died and was buried in this remote spot far from his native France. Standing deep in the mist-filled Nu Valley, we scanned our surroundings. It was hard not to feel that Genestier had stood in the same place nearly a century ago and seen almost the exact same scene that laid before us.

Whenever we travel, we do our best to read, or re-read, books or other materials about the places we plan on visiting. This not only gets us even more excited about our upcoming destinations, but small, almost negligible information such as the last name of a priest can suddenly make a connection that spans decades or even centuries.

These kinds of connections are at the heart of the importance of travel to our understanding of who we are and where we’ve come from.

———

For more information about this remote and still unknown region, also check out the film Deep in the Clouds by Liu Jie, winner of the Sydney Chinese Film Festival for Best Director. Also, travel to this destination on our WildChina journey From the Salween to the Mekong: Hiking the 19th Century French Explorers’ Route.

The following is a post from The Perrin Post by Wendy Perrin of Conde Nast Traveler Magazine. WildChina founder Zhang Mei shares tips on traveling with children…

WildChina founder Zhang Mei with 5 and 2-year old daughters in Cambodia

Today’s tips come from Mei Zhang, mom of three (ages 8, 5, and 2), founder of travel company WildChina, and one of the China experts on my list (updated and published annually in Condé Nast Traveler) of the world’s best travel specialists. Mei’s hard-earned wisdom:

1. Slow down the pace and allow kids (and yourself) down time.
We tend to feel pressured to pack too many things into one day’s travel plan. The pressure is well justified, as we are often talking about thousands of dollars of plane rides for the family. But, in the end, kids get grumpy, parents get exhausted–a lose/lose situation. So I often plan just one major outing for each day and leave the rest of the time for hanging out. Take Cambodia as an example. The temples can get repetitive really quickly, so I made a deal with the kids: one temple a day! That, plus the time they spent watching monkeys on the temple grounds, would usually take us till noon, then we’d grab a nice lunch in one of the roadside restaurants, then back to the hotel for the baby to nap while the older kids watch an afternoon movie and I get a massage. Then it’s pool time, followed by excursions for dinner and ice cream in local markets.

2. Stay put in a place at least 2 to 3 nights before moving.
City hopping is driven by the same pressure–that feeling that you’ve got to see everything! Wrong. It burns out the kids and you. Stay in a place a little longer so they develop a sense of routine, which calms them down.

3. Try to take 1 or 2 kids on a special “date” trip with mommy or daddy.
We often travel as a whole family entourage for Christmas and spring break, but at other times I try to take the kids on separate trips to match their time and interests. The younger ones could afford missing preschool for long stretches at a time, so I took them to China with me for 6 weeks; we covered Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, then Cambodia. I didn’t want the older child to feel left out, so I took him on a cruise to Patagonia, since observing animals and hiking in nature is his love; if we’d had the little ones with us, we wouldn’t have been able to do as much.

4. Whenever it’s affordable, hire a guide; sometimes he or she can double as a sitter.
I’ve often found this possible on my travels. Most guides in China and Cambodia are so eager to help that they are willing to spend time with the kids. When I had 3 kids with me at the Great Wall, the oldest one ran fast, while the baby was still in my arms, so the guide willingly took the hand of the middle child and helped her up and down those steep stairs. Same thing in Cambodia: I hired a guide for the day (our guide, Jet, is pictured at right), but we were done with touring by lunch time, so he happily played games with the children back at the hotel. It’s fun to see the kids learning different games from different cultures.

5. Create games for the kids.
Angkor Wat and the Forbidden City are really boring for kids after five minutes. So I’ve taken what we do at WildChina into my personal trips, playing I Spy games and doing treasure hunts with the kids. At Angkor Thom, for instance, there is a huge fresco/wall carving depicting Buddhist historical stories, so we had the kids look for the Fish, the Monkey, etc. That was their favorite thing!

———-

Wendy Perrin is Condé Nast Traveler‘s Director of Consumer News and Digital Community. To contact her, please e-mail wperrin@cntraveler.com or follow her on Twitter @wendyperrin. Share and submit your own tips for traveling with kids into the A-to-Z Family Travel Contest for a chance to win a $16,000 family vacation in the Caribbean. See website for details.