Back Home from China
----- 转发的邮件 ----- 小核桃反日乖乖 么索兰托爷爷到。 发件人 收件人 抄送 : 发送时间 星期四 下午北京 / 重 庆 / 香港 / 乌鲁木齐 主 题 Just to let you know that we are back home in Colorado. The bodies are still vacillating between central China and here, but give us another day and we will be whole again. I am sorry I missed TCR, and especially the Kunathian remembrance of the sucker days. I sent some emails from Chongqing from a local computer that had a choice of Chinese or French. Although when I got into our email server, the messages were in English, some of the controls were NOT. If you recently received a “strange” email from me, obviously intended for someone else, rest easy as it was my typing error, not some Oriental Spam take-over of my email. After sending our Silk Road tour group off in Shanghai to return home, Mary and I flew to Chongqing and then by local bus southeast to Wulong, now home to Erin Lynch and Duncan Collis (and therefore the Hong Meigui Cave Exploration Society: http://www.hongmeigui.net ). This area is nearly a blank space on older China maps and is also the location of the newly-designated Wulong Karst UNESCO World Heritage Site. The protected properties in Wulong include parts of Tianxing , San Qiao , and Houping active caving areas for Hong Meigiui (see their web site cited above and the proceedings of the recent International Congress in Kerrville, Texas). Here lie some of the most spectacular caves, collapsed dolines, unroofed caves, natural bridges, and karst known on Earth. Half-kilometer deep vertical sided sink holes, 1,000-meter deep caves, incredible underground pitches, gigantic river passages, and slot-canyons that have originated by roof collapse into major underground river systems . We are long past our expedition caving days, but I wanted to see the karst myself and to explore the possibility of visiting the region next year with a small tour group of cavers and karst hydrologists. We were fortunate to find Erin and Duncan above ground and in the area, and generous with their suggestions and encouragement to Mary and myself. Duncan was able to take a day off from his other cave-oriented tasks and accompanied me to their Tongzi Center for Karst and Cave Exploration outpost and the giant tiankeng and karst area west of Houping. Mary has a limited ability to speak Mandarin that was of some help, although the local farmers use a dialect that is mutually incomprehensible with Mandarin-speakers. We traveled on local busses, in taxies (small cars and three-wheelers), and a rented 4WD truck with driver. It was reminiscent (with some starting differences) of beating around in Mexico in the 1960s on local transport with minimal language skills. We were in no hurry and the locals very friendly and helpful. We had a great time in some really spectacular landscapes! Wulong is very small (tiny by Chinese standards) rural “city” with only 100,000 occupants. In the past coal mining and cement production have been important, but most of those facilities are now closed. Tourism (to Chinese tour groups) is now the major occupation in addition to farming and livestock production. A new highway (just opened 2 weeks before we got there) and railroad now link Wulong to Chongqing and the rest of China. The local government is jumping into the tourist business with typical Chinese flair and optimism. Part of the area is already developed for Chinese tourist groups and major upgrades are under construction that should be completed by October, 2010. Other parts are not yet ready for prime time. The only other westerners we saw while in Wulong were Erin and Duncan. If you have world-class expeditionary skills (this is not the place to learn them) and wish to contribute to the exploration efforts, contact Erin at Hong Meigui. The rest of us can cheer them on and marvel at their accomplishments. If I were 35 years younger, I would be there with them! We will definitely include a sampling of the Wulong Karst in our October 2010 karst tour to SW China. Dwight and Mary Deal
