Interested in exploring forgotten villages in Guizhou? Have a passion for the traditional art of rug weaving from Xinjiang? Itching to retrace a famous route? If so, you better act quickly! The WildChina Explorer Grant application deadline is fast approaching! Potential applicants have until November 15, 2011, to e-mail their applications to expedition@wildchina.com.

The WildChina staff is not the only group excited about viewing the incoming applications.  Our WildChina Explorer Grant Panel of Ed Wong of the The New York Times, Li Bo of Friends of Nature and Yu Hui of National Geographic Traveler China are also looking forward to seeing what creative ideas in China travel are pushed forward.

In this post, we have included a bit more on each of our expert panelists for our readership to learn more about their expertise:

Edward Wong is an American journalist and a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. Edward served as one of the Times’ main correspondents covering the Iraq War from November 2003 through June 2007. He moved to the paper’s Beijing bureau in April 2008. Wong reports on China’s politics, economy, military, foreign policy and culture. He has covered signature events of recent years in China, including the Sichuan earthquake, the Beijing Olympics and unrest in Tibet and Xinjiang. He has also reported from Afghanistan, Tajikistan, North Korea, Mongolia, India,Vietnam, Indonesia and Taiwan.

Since 2009, Li Bo has been the Executive Director of Friends of Nature , a domestic environment group based in Beijing focused on mitigating environment risks.  Over the past decade, as witness and participant in a drastically changing Chinese society, Li Bo has been involved in the work of diverse NGOs with different missions: rural livelihoods, indigenous knowledge, natural resource management and world heritage management in Yunnan, community-based tourism, biodiversity conservation, and NGO-led advocacy for transparent dam site decision making in southwest China.

Yu Hui is the founder and executive editor of National Geographic Traveler (Chinese edition). Within the magazine, Yu brings expert knowledge of travel editing, publishing, advertising and marketing. Under his direction, Yu Hui has overseen the Chinese edition of The National Geographic Traveler to become the highest grossing edition of the magazine (currently published in 15 countries). Over the years, Mr. Yu has also pioneered the concept of sustainable travel in China and his magazine promotes environmentally friendly practices in China and encourage travelers and travel companies to join in forward-thinking eco-travel.

We are looking forward to bringing our expert panel together to see what application wins for the 2012 WildChina Explorer Grant.  Stay tuned to our blog for the results!

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For more information, please see link to application here. Applications are accepted in both Chinese and English.

Questions regarding The WildChina Explorer Grant? E-mail us here at expedition@wildchina.com

Photo by Ed Wong, Li Bo and Yu Hui.

Late last month, WildChina sat down with nature photographer Mr. Xiang Dingqian, a native of Qinling, who recently exhibited his work at The National Art Museum in Beijing.  His powerful images of wildlife– both vivid and lively–showcase rare animals in their natural habitat.  At WildChina, we sat down with Dingqian to get to know the man behind the photographs.
 

A portrait of Xiang Dingqian

Dingqiang gets up close in Changqing Nature Reserve

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To learn Xiang Dingqian’s work, please see here to view a video.  For journeys to see pandas in Sichuan, check our sample itinerary, Tracking Wild Panda Footprints, or contact us at info@wildchina.com.

Photos by Xiang Dingqian

Since WildChina’s inception in 2000, we have watched and experienced China’s rapid growth firsthand. Intrigued to further explore urban development and the affects on Chinese culture - particularly on youth, WildChina is excited to announce the launch of High Speed China, an educational photography trip led by American photojournalist and WildChina expert Matthew Niederhauser.

Earlier this week, WildChina sat down with Niederhauser to learn more about this journey for university and MFA students and faculty.

WildChina Travel: How do you hope the experience on High Speed China will impact your future trip participants?

MN: Guangzhou is really important because it just built Zhujiang New City, which is one of the best examples of a planned urban environment in China. Wuhan is a great example of flat-out urban sprawl with massive industrial centers fringed by megablock housing. It shows where many second and third tier cities are heading.

Beijing, of course, is just one of the most unique places on the planet with its amazing amalgamation of hutong housing and new-fangled architectural styles. People look to Beijing as an archetype for urban development: what’s occurring in Beijing is probably going to serve as the model for cities across the interior.

 

South China Mall in Dongguan

WCT: The intersection with youth culture is a major component of your work. Where does that enter the picture?

MN: I interact with a new generation of kids who are willing to improvise and break the mold. That is what’s most important for China right now – kids who think outside the government-controlled education system and come up with creative solutions to problems facing the country.

 

Crowd at the 2010 Zhenjiang MIDI Festival

WCT: What are you currently working on?

MN: I’m going to be publishing a new book called Visions of Modernity, which is an accumulation of my work in Beijing. It takes the city as an archetype of urban development and shows how it might not be sustainable to have twenty more such places across the interior of China. I’m also working on a project about Chinese hip-hop and freestyle rapping.

WCT: What made you interested in collaborating with WildChina?

MN: I am looking to dig deeper into my projects on urban development and youth culture in China while establishing an educational context for my travels. WildChina offers a perfect opportunity for such a venture. I enjoy teaching in the first place, so it would be amazing to give people a firsthand look into these crazy parts of the country that are often overlooked by a normal tourist in China. Overall it’s a better chance to relate my experiences to others interested in the unique socioeconomic situation of this country.

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All photos taken by Matthew Niederhauser.

Please click here for specific details about the journey. For more information about educational journeys, contact us at education@wildchina.com.

WildChina explorer Jeff Fuchs will speak at the Beijing Bookworm this Friday, September 9th at 7:30pm about his travels with the WildChina Explorer Grant 2011!

Please Note: Tickets are CNY 50 and can be purchased at the door.

WildChina’s guides and local partners across China are an experienced group of travel professionals. Their wealth of experience, humor, and knowledge can be easily discerned from dealing with them in person, and WildChina feels that we could bring some of this to the blog.

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Gerard Shi is a Xi’an native handling tours in and around the city. Speaking with him recently, WildChina was amused and heartened by his stories. He has seen the development in Chinese tourism, and by proxy the economy over the course of his life. He began with a story from his youth: “When I was small, anyone could visit things inside the city wall.” Specifically a garden filled with 1000 year-old stone tablets was accessible to everyone, and kids would play hide and seek there. “We would play and there and nobody came and said ‘ok, you need to buy a ticket,’ but now we don’t have that freedom.” Now, he remarked, both tickets and good behavior are required.

Gerard Shi, a WildChina Local Partner

Increasing Chinese prosperity has been both allowed and shaped by these changes. Gerard remembers being sent to market by his mother for meat and instructed “一定要肥的” (I want the fatty kind) because fatty meat also cheaply provided the cooking oil his family needed. Now he posits that the Chinese are more prosperous in general, and are “no longer starving.” On occasion, he likes to emphasize this with his tours, responding to any comments on slow service at restaurants with “I arranged this especially for you, I wanted you to have the special experience of being a starving child in China,” implying slow service is tantamount to starvation in earlier times.

Gerard leading an exclusive tour of the Terracotta Warriors in Xi'an

He also narrated an excerpt from one of his trips that gave an interesting perspective on the travel industry and its growth in China. One summer, he led a New York dentist and his family through the city. He took them to see a few sights around town and after a few days, said goodbye to them as they embarked on the next part of their tour. As he took on another group, he noticed a similar pattern: another New York family, and the father was also a dentist. Asking out of curiosity whether they knew his last guest, he found that they were friends and arranged for them to meet when their itineraries came next to each other in Guilin.

Quoting the Chinese maxim “to meet an old friend in a distant land is like the delight of rain after a drought,” Gerard asserted that people may only come to China once, and he will do all he can to show them the best sides of the old and new China. “Seeing is believing”, he says, and his job is only done when they have seen China in the most enjoyable way possible, with an opportunity to Experience China Differently.

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To learn more about our journeys to Xi’an, please visit our website or e-mail us at info@wildchina.com.

Photos by Gerard Shi

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 WildChina’s Explorer Grant.  He and friend Michael Kleinwort are currently traveling through unknown portions of the Tsalam route in Qinghai. Below is the last piece from their journey…

Early morning wind upon an Amne Machin ridge

An avalanche’s disintegrating power has rearranged the land in front of us. A brutal black surge of turned earth, stones and newly formed shaped forms that stretch kilometres across the valley. It has only served to enhance in many ways an already formidable scene. Five years earlier Amne Machin released a colossal chunk of itself upon the land below and we are now grinding our way over this ‘reconstructed’ surface. We, for the first time on this portion of our journey, are steadily descending and with this knowledge comes an exhausted nostalgia and a twinge of sadness – we are exiting the main protective body of the Amne Machin range which fades to our right. ‘Civilization’ is coming closer step by step, though admittedly we still have much distance to cover…Michael is feeling this glumness as well. I am doing everything in my limited mental powers to stay in each progressive moment and not to let the mind jump ahead out of the now. I keep wondering at how we came to this point, where we are about to end….

Our caravan making its way out of the main Nom'sho valley

The yaks seem impatient to get home pushing ahead, as strong and steady as ever. Peaks become rounded hills, and the snowline dissipates as we continue. We are descending through a valley that splits the highlands and even the air around us is somehow diminishing in power.

Our stout mates for the entire trip - no better transport method, anywhere

Michael sitting for the first time in a week something other than frozen ground

We are both silent, and I feel in me a longing to bolt back into the mountains’ sanctity. A last night spent in the village with locals and a huge meal….tomorrow begins for us the slow and inevitable return to the provincial capital of Xining and a number of thermoses of tea to throw back, just to stay sane.

Jeffers trying very hard to remain seated indoors...the urge to bolt was only kept down by the mug of tea in hand

 

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 WildChina’s Explorer Grant.  He and friend Michael Kleinwort are currently traveling through unknown portions of the Tsalam route in Qinghai.

Below is a piece from their journey…

ne of the practical necessities of a journey in Mother Nature’s realm – a solar charger

Fire upon the frozen earth is the first priority of our day – followed by tea, footwear-warming and then a thawing out of the bones

Frost covers the back of one of our yak with nighttime temperatures plunging

We once again pass the 4,500 metre barrier. Our days have at times been an unending series of ascents and dips – climbing up only to descend around the next desolate bend. It is in this way the land dictates the pace entirely.

A laser-like sun is bouncing off of the ice, ratcheting up the heat. We haven’t seen the colour green in a week – all that we have seen is coming out of its dry winter shell.

The grinding of our past days has taken relatively minor tolls on us. Michael’s feet are in dire condition, though, with his nails falling off in his socks and an entire layer of his sole slowly peeling off, but he has been powering through the constant discomfiture with stoic tenacity. It is only one night when I see the extent of surface damage that I marvel.

Michael’s feet show the physical price of intense days on the road

 

My single ailment was ‘received’ this morning while loading the yak. My four-legged friend twice cracked the identical spot of my left ankle within four minutes with a solid blow from a hoof. They were shuddering blows that resonated down into the frozen earth below me. There is a strange twinge in the left foot just below where the hoof hit, though nothing that affects motion (yet). It has given me cause to be wary of the massive hooves of our black and white friends.

We haven’t yet glimpsed the Amne Machin range on this day as there is layer after layer of mountains that obscure or long view but at one juncture Gamzon shouts something that gets taken by the wind. She repeats, “Nom’sho” pointing further northwest.

Moments later, while trudging through melting snow, she looks over to Michael and I nodding…and there it is.

The hallucinatory space of Nom’sho valley

 

A numbing view of a valley (Nom’sho) that is so vast that it seems to continue to expand as we take it in. I need to swivel my head back and forth to take it in, to fit it in to my mind’s eye. To the left a powdering of snow rests on stone peaks, between which are shimmering rivulets that wink with the sun’s blaze upon them. Another valley to the left – massive and flat careens off west. What holds us is the great funneling valley and passageway ahead with Amne off to our right. There is that ever-present urge in me to flit across to its base and begin the long ascent up its cloaked flanks…it is an urge that has been fulfilled many times, but will never cease. A friend once termed this “the eternal hunger”, this often tunnel-vision desire to climb.

Michael quietly pads up beside me and speaks of this space. “There is nothing at all here to muddle this space, besides us”. While he contemplates this stunning vastness I’m dreaming about ascending a not so distant crest on the mountain, but knowing that to do so will be to offend the deities that the locals hold dear – akin to a kind of sacrilege. The two tongues duel it out in my head, one a desire that courses through every vein, another of enormous respect for the locals and their precious animistic mecca’s.

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For the full post, please visit http://www.tea-and-mountain-journals.com/

Images: Jeff Fuchs

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 WildChina’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…

So often it is the elders who remember tales through their time spent recounting orally the comings and goings of the past

Breakfast often brings realizations – some stimulated by the first thoughts of the day and others brought to life from without. Tucking into bowl after bowl of milk tea this morning comes with a nugget of information imparted almost casually, which reminds me very clearly of what is key to this journey. It has to do with salt.

Muscle pain is thrown aside as this new tad of information settles in. We are nine people tucked into a square room no more than three metres square. Two beds, a wood stove, a makeshift altar and Michael and I trying unsuccessfully to shove our legs and filthy boots somewhere where we aren’t tripping people up.

Our breakfast room where information is imparted over countless cups of tea

My question comes amidst a full mouth of tea and tsampa (barley powder) and there are subsequent sprays of powdered barley as I bark out my query about salt.

“Was salt transported here by caravan”?
A middle-aged man with tawny eyes and large hands issues the answer and it is straightforward.
“Of course. Salt was always being moved around and there used to be a tsaka (place of salt) close to here”, he continues, “Traders often used these pilgrimage routes as trade routes”.

Mornings started with tea followed by collecting our various animals

Like many good-byes within the Himalayas, our own from this little home is disjointed, sudden and without any pomp. Gamzon, our guide is perky from her time with family and clearly energized. Terrier is his usual self, though slightly impatient to get on with it. I share his neurotic need to press on and get out of this warm valley, which is slowly strangling me. In the village we have picked up yet more noodles and some strange lumps of glutinous rice candy for the road.

We cut south down a valley that will take us to a divide with one route heading directly south and another cutting back west and then north. We will take the later cut-back, which will take us around the bulk of Amne Machin and hopefully to my old friend the wind.

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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 WildChina’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 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 WildChina’s Explorer Grant.  He and friend Michael Kleinwort are currently traveling through unknown portions of the Tsalam route in Qinghai.

Below is a tale from this journey…

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May 4, 2011

Sun (neema in Tibetan) blasts into the day as we wake to a reckless blue sky and a wind that hums. Snow capped peaks shimmer on the horizon and wind whips smoke and sand into mini-tornadoes.

All of Mother Nature’s elements are on display today in a show of force, and Michael and I both feel this bodes well for the journey. The city of Maqen (3700 metres) scatters for cover from winds that rip down the main street daring any to test it. Eyes burn from the suns rays and all of the goodies that the wind picks up and throws.

Much of expeditions or indeed any travel, involves waiting. Waiting for weather, for the right guides, for the correct directions…in this case we are waiting for word of our team, one member in particular, who can add a rare perspective on our journey.

One of my great desires is finally confirmed beyond a doubt today as we are greeted with the welcome news that one of the last of the Salt Road traders will in fact travel with us as our unofficial guide. Up until now this has been a slight question mark because of his health and age, but his desire has and is strong to accompany us. In his seventies, he and he alone, it seems, knows the ancient Salt Road portion that passes through the nomadic lands and that which we seek to travel. There is only one condition to him joining us and that is that he has a horse to ride during the journey. In his almost apologetic words, “my body, though once strong, is no longer capable of walking the route”. We are delighted as much of the younger generation has no idea of the Tsalam (Salt Road), and sadly seem to care less, and with him we are sure to get tidbits, tales and that crucial must, an innate knowledge gained from actually travelling the route.

Today I am also issued another warning about wolves. “They are out in great numbers in recent years, and they are far smarter than you”, a local tells me directly. I’ve no doubt about his information, as years back in this region I was to witness a site that remains in my memory bank still. Trekking through a remote portion near Golok, a friend and I watched a pack numbering almost two-dozen strong, rip into a flock of sheep with an efficient ferocity that was riveting. The act that unfolded was both brutal and impressive in both strategy and execution.

Michael and I are urged in the bright rays of the sun this morning to visit the local monastery, which sits as a tribute to another traveler: a monk who traipsed all over the Tibetan Plateau by foot with little more than a bag of tsampa (ground barley), some butter and a bit of tea (which of course set him high in my books).

We are told that to begin our journey through these stoic and staggering landscapes we should visit and appease the local deities and pay a gentle homage to the lands and beliefs that we now find ourselves. I’ve long felt that these little gestures set something in the mind at peace, a kind of genuflection of respect to local forces, however secular or otherworldly they might be.

The monastery is more a series of small monasteries sitting at the north end of town, stupas, and flat-topped homes. All of this surrounds a huge mound of dirt hectares in size, which still now, is only now rediscovering life after a brutal winter. Prayer flags (loong da) cover the entire northwest face, flapping and billowing in winds that gain strength the higher we ascend.

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For the full post, please visit http://www.tea-and-mountain-journals.com/