“The speed of the engine spinning”: WildChina Founder Zhang Mei on China’s Shifting Tourist Landscape

Voices is a Radii series providing on-the-ground insights into contemporary Chinese culture from people at its front lines. Today we present some thoughts from Zhang Mei, founder of luxury travel company WildChina and author of the recently published book Travels Through Dali: with a leg of ham.

Zhang, a Harvard Business School graduate who left a job at consulting company McKinsey to start WildChina in 2000, talks about how she’s seen China’s physical and cultural landscape change over the last 17 years, how her clientele’s preconceived ideas about China have shifted over that time, and the shocking speed at which the country is developing and innovating today.

(The monologue below has been edited together from an interview with Zhang Mei conducted by Josh Feola at WildChina’s Beijing office.)

Starting from a Lost Horizon

Now, authenticity is an overused word. Back when WildChina started, no one was talking about authenticity.

I really wanted to build a company that showed the beauty of the China that I’ve experienced — not what a tourist experiences. Whenever you have a bus of 40, 50 people, the beauty of travel is gone. There are the iconic sites you want to see, but it’s also about experiencing the serendipity of chancing upon moments of authenticity.

I started with areas that literally had no service. For our very first trip, I took guests to Binzhongluo (滨中落), at the very end of the Salween River, before it goes into Tibetan mountains, beyond anybody’s reach. We put our boots on, got on horses and hiked over to the other side, to a small village by the Mekong River. That area is, to me, what Lost Horizon was writing about — the true Shangri-La. The community there are Tibetans, but Catholic Tibetans, and there are Muslims living there. In one day you hear Catholic singing in the church, you hear Muslim calls to prayer, and you see Tibetans spinning their prayer wheels, walking around the mountain. It’s this magic fusion of all religions, incredibly beautiful. That was the wild China I wanted people to see.

Churches in Baihanluo and Cizhong

China’s changing image

Our clientele hasn’t changed much in the 17 years WildChina has been operating. The clientele mix has changed, but I think the work of bridging cultural gaps goes on forever, and keeps repeating. The generation that was coming to China back then, 20 years ago, was in their 50s. The new group of people who were in their 30s back then, and are now coming here in their 50s, have the same misunderstandings about China. They come with preconceptions of what China is supposed to be like.

That image has expanded a bit, beyond red lanterns and terraced rice fields. Recent travelers have added a few more images — of dark chimneys, smoke stacks, crowded factories. The additional images are not necessarily pleasant. Still, people’s understanding about China is fairly limited to Beijing, Xi’an, and Shanghai. That reach, that breadth hasn’t changed a whole lot, but the images have expanded.

I’m always amazed that visitors are still very surprised by how crowded the country is. Most of our clients tell us they’re surprised by how developed the China is. A lot of people tell me, “Wow, we thought the air would be worse.” People are surprised to find it not as bad — Western press is only writing on bad air days.

For WildChina, our job continues to be the same: to expand your perception of China, expand your imagination of China. Most people think that a travel supplier should deliver your imagination. For example, you imagine Paris to have the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe. I’m here to deliver people’s imaginations, but I’m also here to expand them. I want you to see the real China. That job hasn’t changed.

Zhang Mei on WildChina’s first trip

China’s changing landscape

The destinations we visit in China have changed a lot over the last 17 years. There are a few positive changes.

For one, transportation access is much, much easier. You can fly everywhere. You can take high-speed train everywhere. Incredible access.

Two, cell phone coverage is everywhere, which is good and bad. The good side is that it’s much safer, and social media sharing is much easier. The bad side: they scare away my birds! Sometimes we’ll organize birding trips for clients, in areas that had no electricity 20 years ago. All of a sudden the phones are ringing, and the birds are gone.

Three: hotels. The access is amazing. There are these beautiful, small homestays and small lodges available where there weren’t before. Hygiene standards, food, and the toilet situation have all improved by leaps and bounds. All these are positive.

There have also been negative developments — I guess it’s the negative side of positive development. There’s way too much money. There’s too much investment pouring into these areas, and way too many travelers. This is good for the local economy, but it creates a lot of threats, because the tide of investment and travelers is coming at a great speed, and we don’t quite have a proper development plan that balances conservation with development.

For the past ten years, I would say, development has overruled conservation, and that has caused certain damages that we might regret later on. There is a battle over how much “old” to keep. What is conservation? Does it mean I should rebuild something to look old? Or should I keep what is old and just fix what’s rotten, and make it safe and make it last?

This dialogue has been started in the town of Shaxi in Yunnan province. In my book I wrote about restoration work done there by [Swiss architect] Jacques Feiner, who started this dialogue. But not every area has benefitted from this approach. And others may not look on Shaxi as a successful example, because they want to boost the number of visitors.

Shaxi (photo by Elizabeth Phung)

China’s gaining speed

When a non-Chinese person comes here, they probably don’t quite feel the speed difference. China is on a different gear. These days, I spend part of my time in Berkeley, and part of my time in Beijing. In Beijing, I’m spinning ten times faster than I do in Berkeley.

The amount of people you see, the amount of things that are going on — everyone’s doing something. My time is divided into half-hour slots, moving in a gazillion different directions, and whatever ideas you come up with, three days later you can see it turning into action. In Berkeley, I wanted to have my kitchen countertop done. It took me a month to schedule someone to come and measure it. After measuring, it took them another month to manufacture it, and another to come in and install it. That’d be three days max in China.

People move much, much faster here. I was having dinner last night with a friend who spent three years in Washington D.C., who just came back — he’s from Beijing — to work here full time. I asked, “Why did you leave the US after three years? Are you tired of it? Are you feeling bored?” And he said, “No, it’s not that I felt bored. I felt forgotten by the entire world. I felt left behind.”

So that’s probably the biggest surprise for people. The buzz. The speed of the engine spinning.

All photos courtesy WildChina; cover photo by Elizabeth Phung

Photo of the day: Plastic Body Parts in Yiwu

Continuing this week’s photo theme — Things in Yiwu.

Developing in parallel with the e-commerce explosion in nearby Hangzhou, Yiwu has, over the last 20 years, become ground zero for “Made-In-China Opportunities”:

With just a few decades, Yiwu has grown from a nameless Eastern China county to a rich e-commerce city that is dubbed as the world capital of small commodities. With solid infrastructure investment and advanced business operation, Yiwu is becoming a warehouse for world small commodities consumers.

Radii founder Brian Wong recently took a group of students to Yiwu and discovered that among the small commodities mass produced in the city are plastic replicas of dismembered human limbs:

And maybe fake butts at the bottom there? Can’t tell, the photo kinda crops them out. Anyway… Happy Halloween!

The World’s Top Electric Cellist is on a Zen-like Mission of Healing

Dana Leong is standing in front of a crowd at a sleek, modern community space in Shanghai. Between his loose white clothes, wooden beaded necklace and shaved head, he looks more like a monk than a two-time Grammy award-winning musician. To his right are a guided meditation expert, and a woman laying out a one-of-a-kind set of crystal sound bowls. Dana calmly introduces himself to the hushed audience — there’s no fanfare, no space for applause in this simple, contemplative room. It’s immediately clear that this is a place where sound has meaning. Dana picks up his instrument, and the next hour is filled with both sound and silence.

Dana has worn a lot of hats over the course of his career. The son of a Japanese pop star mother and a Chinese father, Dana was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he started playing piano at the age of one. His mother’s diverse background as a singer-songwriter, pianist, and guitarist rubbed off on him, with Dana going on to study trombone, cello, and a host of electronic music mediums. His work has taken him from his home of California to New York City and Asia, having seen collaborations with artists from Paquito D’Rivera to Kanye West.

Official music video for Tektonik’s “Isobel”

“My approach to music is not so dissimilar to my approach with a lot of things in life. I’m very experimental and curious, even in my hobbies of photography, cooking, things like that. I’m always looking to deepen my understanding – and that comes through questioning, through learning from those who know more than I do, and it certainly comes from trying things out.”

Nowadays, though, Dana’s work has expanded in scope. Dana directs the Tektonik Music project, a global initiative for cross-border healing through music.

“Tektonik Music is an organization I started in 2011, geared towards remediating the negative impact of natural disasters using music,” he tells us. “I started it because my mother’s family was affected by the earthquake and the tsunami in Sendai, Japan, and I wanted to find a way to use music to help support people who were experiencing stress and trauma.”

Today, the Tektonik Music project — through concerts, music therapy, digital downloads, and fundraising — has reached more than a hundred million people.

Today, the Tektonik Music project — through concerts, music therapy, digital downloads, and fundraising — has reached more than a hundred million people. They’ve partnered with countless NGO’s and other platforms to spread their message, and to raise money and awareness for the people who need it most. Dana even completed a business certificate last year through Harvard and the World Economic Forum’s transformative leadership program — a step for the artist closer towards the role of a CEO.

That’s because Tektonik’s role is expanding as well. What started as a project geared towards disaster relief has grown into a wider force, one that aims to help people everywhere. That’s what Dana means by “healing music” — tapping into the universally affective energy of music and using it for something uniquely positive:

We’re in one of the most incredible times, in terms of innovation, technology, and connectivity. But we’re also in one of the most challenging times in terms of violence, digital security, stress, overexertion and exhaustion. So I think that it is absolutely imperative to think about what music brings to the global conversation on major issues around the world, such as cultural diplomacy and human resilience.

How do we take care of ourselves? How do we make sure that we’re not being consumed by our own technology? Music has always been one of the most powerful conduits to connect people and allow them to break down cultural divisions. That’s why it’s most important to put a conscious message in the music, and a deliberate positive energy into it.

For Dana, getting to Shanghai was a crucial step in that mission. Moving to Asia was a longtime goal, he tells us, and after visiting China several times for performances and speaking events, he packed his bags and set off for Shanghai.

“I was just seeing that there was so much exciting energy, so many creative, innovative people. China is becoming very international in its first-tier cities. So really, the opportunity to collaborate with some very open-minded and very cool people is what drew me to start spending more time here, and to look as far as setting up an office here, as well as creating my next album here.”

What’s next for Tektonik? They’ve launched a series of music and mindfulness gatherings in and outside Shanghai, which we were lucky enough to attend. You can’t really understand the message of Dana’s music until you’ve experienced it firsthand; rows and rows of people making time in their busy days, just to assemble and soothe their addled minds. The music is layered and beautiful, unlike any performance we’d seen before. It’s equal parts concert experience and meditation assembly.

It’s all leading up to Tektonik’s next project: a full-size Tektonik electronic orchestral album, with sounds and artists from across the entire spectrum of music. Events like this are Dana’s way of bringing together a likeminded community around the project, and he’s excited to move forward.

“All in all, I’m continuing to be curious. Continuing to search for how I can bring music to more people in an authentic way. I myself have had many challenges along the way, many points of defeat — but many fantastic, uplifting experiences with music as well. I’d like to continue to share the secrets of how I’m able to overcome moments of stress, how I’m able to let go of traumatizing thoughts and negative experiences, using music. As I find those amazing feelings and transformative experiences, I’m looking to encapsulate them and create new music that helps other people to do that too.”

Follow Dana and Tektonik:

www.instagram.com/danaleongmusic
www.twitter.com/danaleongmusic
www.twitter.com/TEKTONIK.music
www.instagram.com/TEKTONIK.music
www.facebook.com/TEKTONIKmusic.org
www.facebook.com/DanaLeong

Twitter Bits: Chinese Ghosts and Emoji Translations

Here at Radii one of our core functions is to waste a bunch of time on China Twitter so you don’t have to. Lately most of the China chatter on English-language social media has centered around North Korea and elite PRC politics ahead of that big meeting in October, but there are a few bits in between that noise that are less dour in tone.

Such as these handy renderings of Chinese onomatopoeia into universal emojis by translator and writer Liz Carter:

Fun and useful!

We’ve also been enjoying a daily series by London-based writer and speaker Xueting Christine Ni, who is working on a book about Chinese deities. A few days ago she started posting one Chinese ghost a day in commemoration of Ghost Month:

Follow Liz here for more bite-sized Chinese lessons, and follow Christine here for your daily demon fix for the remainder of Ghost Month.

As Supply Meets Global Demand, Tea Quality Drops

“Tieguanyin will never be as good as it was 30 years ago.” Saying this sentence around seasoned drinkers of tieguanyin — a premium variety of oolong tea grown in Fujian province on the southeast tip of China — will get you a solemn nod in unanimous agreement. The general consensus is that the flavor of tieguanyin today cannot compare to the flavor produced 30 years ago. What happened?

The culprit is one you may not expect: tieguanyin’s downfall was its own popularity

In the 1980s, tieguanyin became wildly popular, and with its popularity came its ruin.

A while ago, I was walking along a small mountain path, past rows and rows of tea trees. I paused for a minute and took a look around. I was standing in the mountains of Anxi, the home of tieguanyin, and as I looked at the mountains surrounding me I only saw one thing: tea trees. Mountains and mountains covered by nothing but tea trees. While your first reaction might be positive, when I saw those rows upon rows of tea trees, with little else among them, the only thing I could think about was over-cultivation.

Over-cultivation is when there is too much of a single plant in one area

In a healthy ecosystem, different plants live and die in one area, and each life and death helps the other plants around it, moderating things like nitrogen levels in the soil. Nitrogen is a key nutrient for plant life, but it is often found as a gas, which is almost inaccessible to plants. For nitrogen to enter the soil it needs what are called nitrogen fixers, or N- Fixers — these are plants that can absorb nitrogen from the air and then, when they die, release the nitrogen into the soil for other plants to absorb.

Tea field lacking biodiversity

A more diverse terroir

Now, imagine you were to rip up every plant except tea trees. Since Camelia Sinensis is not an N-Fixer, the nitrogen levels in the soil would drop drastically, leading to sick and dying plants. The existence of a variety of plants in one area provides a strong ecosystem for the plants, and good soil. So why rip out all plants except for tea?

The reason is basic economics, supply and demand

Demand for tieguanyin exploded in the 1980s, which caused farmers to clear as much land as they could to increase supply. Even other types of tea plants were ripped out. While this strategy night have given tieguanyin farmers a higher yield and more money in the short run, eventually, the ruined soils caused the tea to lose the superior flavor that made it so popular in the first place. And Anxi, the only place tieguanyin is grown, is only so big — what happens when there is a huge demand for a tea that has a very limited yield

The answer: fakes

When I tell people my favorite tea is tieguanyin, they often laugh, because to them it has no flavor. The reason they think this is because the name tieguanyin has been applied to any oolong that has a green rolled leaf. When a tea becomes popular, the market becomes flooded with fakes, to the point where few people even know what the real thing tastes like.

What makes tieguanyin’s flavor special is what is referred to as Guan Yin Chyme: a sour sensation in the finish, paired with an extremely long-lasting flavor. To those who know tieguanyin, if a tea doesn’t have these characteristics, it isn’t authentic. As the market gets more and more flooded with teas that don’t have this signature characteristic, people begin to think it’s all hype, and will write it off as a basic and worthless tea.

Raw pu’er

It’s important to understand the recent history of tieguanyin, because this kind of cycle repeats itself. There is always a tea that is trendy and popular, and with its popularity comes the risk of ruin.

The latest tea to fall victim to this trend is the earthy pu’er, cultivated in southwestern Yunnan province. In the early ’90s, most people didn’t drink pu’er. Then came its own explosion in popularity, and with that, the same problems tieguanyin has faced: over-cultivation and generic reproductions. And the popularity of pu’er tea is still on the rise globally. Will it suffer the same fate as tieguanyin?

Cover photo: Quelcrime/Wikipedia

Column archive

Photo of the day: Fidget Spinners in Yiwu

Continuing this week’s photo theme — Things in Yiwu.

Yiwu, an inland Zhejiang city about 200 miles from Shanghai, is Where Your ‘Made In China’ Trinkets Are Actually Made:

Yiwu is a small town by Chinese standards (pop. 1.2 million). But it’s globally significant to anyone who has ever bought socks, zippers, or a cheap last-minute Halloween costume.

Radii founder Brian Wong recently took a group of students around Yiwu and discovered that it’s also quite likely where your fidget spinner was made. Any time there’s a surging global demand for a small, mass-producible thing, Yiwu’s bound to get on the case.

Seriously, look at all these fidget spinners: