Nigel Sizer’s fourth report on scouting university partners in China for Rare’s Pride training program.

Lijiang

Some down time! Turns out Paul is a serious shopaholic. The old town has hundreds of shops selling local crafts. Paul did all his Christmas buying, overwhelmed by the low prices. If you think Chinese stuff is cheap at Wal-Mart or Tesco, you should see how cheap it is in China itself – hard to see how anything made anywhere else could possibly compete. I think Paul bought presents for all of his friends and family for a total of under $5. He was thrilled.

Early morning before the tourists woke up and the shops opened, I could just about imagine what it was like a hundred years ago … shiny cobblestones glistening in the morning dew, dusty lanterns hanging in the doorways, waterwheels turning in the bubbling clear canals that flow through alongside the streets…

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And then we had to question whether Rare really needs to set up a program in China at all. I photographed a cherubic five-year-old girl as she played with the leaves in one of the streams.  Angela asked her what she was doing. I will never forget her answer, as her eyes shone and she gave a huge innocent smile, “I am getting the leaves out of the water to put them on the tree, so that it can grow faster and be happier!” Who said the Chinese are not environmentally aware?
 
Lijiang to Chengdu

• 40,000 undergraduates
• 18,000 masters and doctoral students
• 800 international students
• 4,400 teaching staff
• 1,047 full professors
• 2,100 associate professors
• 110 years old
• In the top 10 out of 1,000 universities in China
• And a huge new campus on 600 acres, just outside the gleaming city of Chengdu.

That is Sechuan University! Plus it teaches 700 students each year in environmental education courses.

We were all deeply impressed by their understanding of Rare and their enthusiasm to host the program. Dean Qy Yang, head of the College of Architecture and Environment, and his young faculty, as well as the Party Secretary, all asked the right questions and answered ours gracefully and eloquently. They were particularly passionate about the benefits of working with a university not based in Beijing. 

And for icing on the cake, just across the city, is China’s leading center for giant panda breeding and research. There we saw four three-month old baby pandas nestled together in their playroom, nurtured minute-by-minute by their human nurses. China is clearly determined to save this species from the brink of extinction. 

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In the outside enclosures they have 36 adult giant pandas as well as red pandas. Compared to queuing for hours to get a glimpse of a sleeping Ling Ling at the Washington National Zoo, this was a real treat – they frolicked just a little more than arms length away, with almost no other visitors to spoil the peace (although someone’s cell phone always seemed to be ringing somewhere in the background of the all the video recordings I made!).

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