Picking a Partner
Nigel Sizer continues to describe his adventures in this second post from China.
A quiet day. We left Beijing with a three-hour flight to Kunming aboard a totally full 300-seat Hainan Airways plane. Lunch was “fun.” We thought we’d found a Western restaurant, but upon opening up the menu were greeted with full color pictures of goat penis stew, dog hotpot, baked pig claw and so on … and on … and on… I am not making this up! I had broccoli.
Paul is losing weight. He finally found pizza at 9 pm in the deserted restaurant of the 
hotel in Kunming. I have rarely seen a man so ravenous.
TNC’s China program has doubled in size since the last time I checked in a couple of years ago. They are impressively consolidating efforts in Yunnan with the Great Rivers Project, and going national in a big way. We got some great input from their senior managers in Kunming.
But once again we saw how hard it will be to choose our partner university. TNC’s experts stressed the value of setting up the program in Beijing, with proximity to the central government and very prestigious national universities. They are also inundated with foreign organizations seeking partnerships. Beijing Normal University has over 100 such agreements. A provincial university, such as those we will visit next week, might see the partnership with Rare as one of its highest profile activities.
The Yunnan TNC team are pleased with the results of the Rare Pride campaign run by 
Angela Cun. Angela was trained through Rare’s Kent program in English (her undergraduate degree is in English). Her successful Pride campaign was built around the charismatic Yunnan golden monkey. Angela will now train colleagues and replicate the approach at four other sites in Yunnan as TNC’s lead environmental educator for China.
An evening flight will take us to the exquisitely preserved old town and UNESCO Cultural World Heritage Site, Lijiang.
