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Arrival in the City of Eternal Spring

Click image to enlarge
© Ron Geatz/The Nature Conservancy
Hong Kong
© Noelle Wagner/The Nature Conservancy
Kunming
© Ron Geatz/The Nature Conservancy
Kunming

DAY 1
Seventeen-hour flight from Washington, DC via Chicago to Hong Kong. Overnight to adjust to time change. Our YMCA hotel is comfortable, affordable and overlooks the Botanical Gardens. Dinner with Sandy Chen, who's opening a TNC office here to better tap Asian resources for conservation. She began with TNC as a donor and volunteer; her ad agency background will come in handy.

DAY 2
Fly to Kunming, Yunnan's provincial capital of 4 million people, known as the "city of eternal spring." New high-rise buildings are going up everywhere. There is a great push for tourism, and most of our fellow passengers are here for an international tourism convention. The new boulevard from the new airport is lined with flowers and two-story-tall mannequins dressed in the colorful ethnic costumes of the region. Bicycles comprise much of the rush-hour traffic. Everything is hauled on bikes—from full-size washing machines to slaughtered pigs and dozens of live chickens—and not in cages! Our taxi nearly crashes into a careless biker. Dinner with TNC staff in vintage Qing Dynasty house—now home to Pizza da Rocco.

DAY 3
Each morning in the city square, hundreds of older citizens practice everything from Tai Chi to ballroom dancing. One of the new high-rises houses a dozen or so Conservancy and government staff of the Yunnan Great Rivers Project. Throughout the day, staff scientists and program managers brief us on the progress of the project—an area the size of West Virginia. We meet Xiao Duan (pronounced shau dwahn), our guide for the next 10 days.


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