Beginning this March, I’m planning to take you on a journey through some of China’s most remote and ancient tea localities. With aid from a Fulbright Research Grant, I will travel across China, exploring a wide-range of tea growing regions in provinces such as Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Anhui, Fujian, and Yunnan.

Rice paddies along Guangxi's Yulong River (Photo courtesy www.projectreleaf.com)

My interest in China began during my freshman year at Kenyon College, where I began studying classical Chinese. Since then, I’ve studied Mandarin quite intensely, attending several Middlebury College immersion programs both in the US and in China. Throughout the summer of 2008, I was also fortunate enough to conduct environmental research in China’s Yunnan, Shanxi, and Sichuan provinces.

Fresh Longjing Tea (Photo courtesy www.projectreleaf.com)

At the crux of my research is a longing to better make sense of the the balance between China’s massive economic growth and its rapid environmental deterioration; I will analyze these effects of China’s swift modernization through the lens of China’s ancient-rooted tea industry. Fortunately, I will be guided by the advice of Mr. Xiaoning Wang, Secretary General of the World Tea Union. He will help me investigate how China’s market economy reforms have improved the Chinese tea industry and in what ways they have been detrimental. Extremely concerned by the environmental impact of China’s astonishing growth, I will pay particularly close attention to how pesticides, chemical fertilizers, severe pollution, and an emphasis on high-yield production are currently affecting the cultivation of camellia sinensis (the tea plant) in China today.

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As I was wrapping up my day before the snow hit DC, an email popped onto my screen:

“I have made a gift of $3000 to the Nature Conservancy’s Yunnan program in honor of Wild China. I am so happy to know about this area of China. A magical place that needs and deserves protection. Kristine”

This is the most significant Christmas present I have received from a WildChina client. Kristine just won my respect and heart for donating the refund I gave her for a less than perfect trip to China.

This was Kristine’s first email to me after her trip:

“We loved the route and the scenery of Yunnan and the support staff (cook and driver) were fantastic. However…. Xiao (one of the guide) was very good about talking with Nico in Mandarin. However the first two days on the trail he was talking on his cell phone constantly which interfered with the serenity of the hiking and hampered chances for me to see birds (which he knew was an important objective for me). At the second campsite we were joined by two other large groups. It turned out that one group was guided by Xiao’s brother, and the other group had trekked with Xiao before and had been outfitted by him for this trip. From that point on, we could not seem to escape from these two large and noisy groups. They began hiking at the same time, stopped for lunch in the same places, camped in the same areas and clearly wanted to chat with Xiao on the trail. The noise and the size of the group significantly detracted from our enjoyment of the trekking and any opportunities to see birds along the way. This did not meet my expectation of a private trek and Xiao was clearly splitting his attention between the groups.”

There was more…

The email simply broke my heart. How, could this ever be possible? Generally, when clients seek me out to send me an email, I am used to reading the ones piling praises on our guides and staff. They make me happy, and remind me again and again why I am in service industry and not in fund management as most of my HBS classmates are. I just love the human contact and love the smiles we bring to clients. Also, negative on this trial? I could never have imagined that. I took my whole wedding party on this hike from the Salween Valley to the Mekong valley and it was the last frontier of China. Xiao was the best local villager I could find. How did this all change? But, I was in no position to defend WildChina but to apologize:

I am terribly sorry that you had such a negative experience, and I am sorry that our guides were not as considerate or professional as you expected. Let me investigate on this further and I’ll get back to you on this specifically. If I may, let me tell you a story about Xiao.

I personally insisted for the team to bring Xiao onto your trip, because I remember the first day when I met him. I went to his village with my backpack (after days of travel on the road, not 10 hours), and simply asked around a group of villagers if any of them would be interested in a job of guiding me through the mountain ranges across to the other side. Nobody except Xiao raised his hand. I don’t think any other traveler went to the village with such a strange request before. At that time, the village didn’t have electricity, and xiao’s house was dark and small. He had a bright and sincere smile, so I hired him on the spot. He guided me through the mountains for 4 days, and was the most attentive helper I could ever find.

Following that journey, I decided that it was such a wonderful experience, I took my own wedding party there, and xiao couldn’t be more attentive, and so were our Tibetan guides and chef. Xiao was so entrepreneurial that he called me up afterwards to see if I would invest in him to build a lodge. He had to make the call from the village pay phone, since he didn’t have one in his house. I appreciated his entrepreneurial spirit, and gave him the money. For me, it was a simple way to give back to the community, and if he could succeed, great, if not, I tried.

To help him develop a sense of customer service quality, I sent two American interns there over the next two years to work with him, helping him develop menus, helping him purchase sheets and mattresses and set up the first computer. Then, he emailed me one day, and said, “hey, I am online! And I have a new cell phone”
A year later, he sent me a message, “hey, check out my blog!”

Earlier this year, when I logged onto Flickr, I found his pictures there!

I haven’t been back for a while, and was simply delighted that someone would take the opportunity and develop a successful business out of it.

Then your feedback came. I could just picture him talking on the cell phone and busy talking to all the other guests. I just never imagined that would ever happen on that trail, and I don’t think our operations team could foresee that either. Imaging hiking crowds on that trail came as such a complete shock. The only reason I could see if October 1st holiday when travelers from Kunming also decided to discover the beautiful wilderness of Yunnan.

The fact this area is now covered with cell phone signal and popular with travelers, I don’t know if I am supposed to be happy about or not. The fact that your experience was negatively impacted upsets me tremendously. Xiao and our Tibetan guides may have become victims of their own success. How to deal with that, how to take it forward from here? I’ll have to pursue the answer.

After confirming the facts with our local guides, I sent Kristine a heartfelt note and a refund check of $3000 (needless to say, WildChina lost money, but that’s not the point):

“Our brand is about excellence, and our mission is to deliver excellence. On your recent trip, we did not deliver. There were forces at play, some we could control, some we could not. But the fact remains we are committed to excellence.”

She donated the check to TNC in honor of WildChina. What a beautiful thing!

For those of us who’ve spent years studying China, Orville Schell is a very familiar name. His books, like The China Reader: The Reform Era, are widely read by students and policymakers alike, and his talks on behalf of the Asia Society’s China Green project are attended by many with an interest in China’s environmental issues.

So we were all thrilled when Orville, who has been to China countless times, not only chose to travel with WildChina to study the effect of climate change on glaciers, but also provided us with rave reviews about his trip to Lijiang and Shangri-La.

Here, in his own words, Orville explains what he sees as the WildChina difference:

“Why choose WildChina? Well, I think WildChina is quite skilled at sculpting trips for people who have specific interests. So, if in fact you’re a bird watcher, a glacier watcher, a river watcher, a minorities watcher – whatever your poison is, they seem to have the ability to highlight that.

I haven’t done many trips like this – but to go to a place like Yunnan and in a week to see a lot, you really do need someone to organize it. You need drivers who know what they’re doing, and cars and land rovers that can go on very rough roads and over landslides.

You want to be with people who you trust, not some crazy cab driver you’ve never met. So it was reassuring to have good drivers, good guides, and to be able to stop in at local people’s houses that these guides knew…and we had a Tibetan guide and a Chinese guide – both very familiar with the area and extremely fun to be around and very much a part of our group – not bored people who couldn’t wait to get off the bus and get everybody back on the plane…and that, I think, made the trip incomparably more meaningful and interesting for us.

I’m not a big tour joiner, frankly, and that would probably be a good reason to have WildChina organize your trips so that it wouldn’t be like a tour. It would be more things you wanted to do, not you fitting into their tour—but them making the tour fit your needs.”

Many thanks to Orville for these kind words! Be sure to view the video on our home page for stunning footage captured during Orville’s trip to Yunnan.

China has 38 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, a designation that can sometimes be both a blessing and a curse to these cultural and natural areas due to the influx of tourists. So how can we ensure responsible travel in these sites? WildChina Founder Mei Zhang and The Nature Conservancy (TNC)’s Lulu Zhou tackled this issue on air today during Let’s Travel!, a weekly, global radio talk show hosted by New York-based Susan Raphael.  

First Bend of Yangtze River, Yunnan

Lulu, who oversees sustainable tourism and environmental education projects in Yunnan‘s Three Parallel Rivers World Heritage Site, pointed out a major difference between protected areas  in the U.S. and China: whereas in the U.S., no communities reside inside national parks, in China, it’s a different story. In the Three Parallel Rivers area (named after a mountainous region in southwest China where three of Asia’s mightiest rivers, the Yangtze, Mekong and Salween, run parallel), almost 300,000 people reside in the site, with 36,000 people within the core zone. Since relocation of these communities isn’t an option, it’s key to engage the communities themselves in conservation work to help preserve the site. 

Mei agreed, noting that a change in mindset and an education process are required. At WildChina, we hire and train local guides for our journeys, who benefit directly by providing high-end, sustainable travel services. This training allows us to practice green travel, particularly in hiking trips – for instance, we emphasize responsible outdoor practices, such as Leave No Trace, where travelers “pack it in, pack it out.”

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You’ve read our blog – now hear us on the radio! On Thursday, Oct. 22, from 12:00 – 1:00 pm EST in the U.S., tune into Let’s Travel!, a weekly, global radio talk show hosted by New York-based Susan Raphael (visit NY Talk Radio.net for live streaming). This week’s show features WildChina Founder Mei Zhang and The Nature Conservancy‘s Lulu Zhou on the topic of responsible travel in China, with discussion on some of our favorite areas: Yunnan and Sichuan.

Let’s Travel! focuses on the world of travel and culture. Through a partnership with the United Nations Foundation’s World Heritage Alliance, which supports World Heritage conservation and sustainable tourism, Let’s Travel! broadcasts a monthly segment on World Heritage.

There will be an encore broadcast of the show on Saturday, Oct. 24 at 6:00 pm EST. Check back here for the podcast!

On my way to the office this morning, an article in The Atlantic caught my eye. Written by China expert James Fallows, the piece is about one of WildChina’s favorite places, The Linden Centre.  Tucked away in a small town in Yunnan called Xizhou, the Linden Centre is a model for sustainable tourism that protects the cultural heritage of a place.

With more plans for Xizhou’s development underway, it’s unclear whether the Linden’s gold standard will win out over the mass-tourism model. I certainly hope it does, as it would truly be a model tourism town for China.

The slideshow below illustrates much of the article. Note how Fallows talks about the tour bus vs. off-the-beaten-path traveler – something we’re always talking about at WildChina.

“At a moment when your time and money matter more than ever, a trusted expert can take all the hassle out of travel planning.”

With that in mind, Travel + Leisure magazine evaluated thousands of agents to make its selections for the eighth annual A-List: The 129 Top Travel Agents. WildChina is proud to announce that our founder, Mei Zhang, is named in this highly selective list!

Mei, the entrepreneur and China travel industry expert behind WildChina, sat down to talk about her inclusion in the A-List, why her home province of Yunnan is so special and the future of sustainable travel in China.

WildChina (WC): What does your inclusion in Travel + Leisure’s A-List mean to you?

Mei Zhang (MZ): “I’m really honored to be included in this year’s A-List, as it gives me the chance to showcase China’s great diversity and beauty. When I started WildChina in 2000, the goal was to help people discover the unique and hidden sides of China — the sides you rarely heard about in the news. Almost 10 years later, that continues to be the driving force. It’s a true joy to take our guests into local villagers’ homes to share a meal or on hikes through pristine nature reserves, as I know we’re providing them with a personal connection to China.”

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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 WildChina’s heart: Yunnan province in the southwest.

WildChina 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.

I recommend a classic China itinerary:
Beijing -3 days, for imperial Chinese history
Xi’an – 1 days, for ancient Chinese history
Yunnan Province – 7 days, for colorful ethnic cultures and stunning scenery
Shanghai – 2 days, to experience the head-spinning modern China

Skip Hong Kong if you have limited time. You can always swing by on your next business trip.

Don’t do the Yangtze River Cruise unless it’s absolutely your thing. Too much time spent on board with hundreds of other western tourists, eating hotel food. Why come to China to do that?

Come back to my post to read about what to do if you have 3 days in Beijing and more.

Saw this email exchange between a client and my colleague, thought it’s really useful for anyone planning a trip to China in the fall.

Clients email: My husband and I are planning a trip to Asia in late September and are very interested in visiting Tibet and Lijiang.  We will arrive September 26th to Shanghai and will depart October 11th so we will have 14 days for touring.  We are very active and are open to cultural trekking, biking, etc.

My colleague’s answer covered a series of recommended activities and sites, but this is the most important message: Late September to early October is one of the best time to visit China as the weather then is mostly pleasant. However, during the week-long National Holiday ( Oct 1^st – 8^th ) or few days before/after, all places in China will see a lot of domestic tourists.  If your schedule is flexible, we would like to suggest we make the tour plan after Oct 15^th , when the weather is cooler and you will be able to enjoy the local culture as well as the beautiful scenery.

Avoid China during Chinese New Year and Oct 1-7th golden week at all costs. Too many domestic travelers.