Birding China (2 Viewers)

[woodrip]

Why are so few Western Birders travelling to China? There are of course a number of excellent tour operators. But in addition to the high cost, they tend to focus on small regions which provide great birding and build large lists but inevitably this means many great birds are not on their itinerary. China offers some of the most exciting birds amongst some of the most stunningly beautiful countryside. Its so simple to navigate the high speed train system or book the cheap internal flights. Food and accommodation is so cheap and the country so safe? I could enthuse more but I am simply asking a question of those who are missing out on the amazing variety of birds ,why??
Is it because you don't speak Chinese? I have travelled throughout China from the mountains of Qinghai to find Sillem's Mountain finch then, to the Northern forests where I found Swinhoe's Rail. And yet I am still trying to learn how to say hello in Chinese.
I travel to Thailand and meet independent birders, I find I get cheated and its so much more difficult to reach, and expensive. Can anyone explain why China is ignored? In 10 years I have only met one pair of independent birders ,apart from at the very accessible and easy migration watch point on the Hebei coast around Beidaihe. ???????
Any one know the reason why?

 

[etudiant]

China is about as big as the US, so a more comprehensive tour is a big deal, several weeks at least. That limits the market potential.
Simultaneously, there is a residual perception that China is the world center of pollution, with meaningless environmental standards, where anything that can turn a buck will be exploited accordingly. Wet markets certainly feed these perceptions, even without viral fears. They do also cause visitors to wonder what is served for dinner though.
So people do not think of China as a treasure house of natural gifts, rather as a center of desertification and dust storms.
Reversing those prejudices is possible, but it will take serious sustained effort and a political decision to highlight and protect natural resources now, as opposed to thirty years from now.

 

[jurek]

You could describe your experiences to make China more interesting. How do you communicate without any Chinese dialect?

By the way, I heard that China developed a passion for facial recognition software recently, so you may endure yet another invasion of privacy when traveling. Any experiences?

 

[opisska]

So how do you actually get to sites? And I don't mean cross country travel, but the last miles

 

[etudiant]

So how do you actually get to sites? And I don't mean cross country travel, but the last miles

Thank you, Opisska, you put your finger on the core issue.
As a foreigner with no language skills, how does one get from the train or bus station to the desired hotel or birding spot?

 

[opisska]

In my experience with countries with weird languages, finding a hotel is never a problem, you will communicate it somehow and at least taxi drivers will expect people going to hotels and know where they are. The real questions are the birding places, which are typically very unusual destinations for people to go. I run into this problem in Egypt for example where I ended up leaving a city after not being able to explain to anyone where I want to go - mind you, that's a country where everyone seems to be either a taxi driver or a brother of one

 

[etudiant]

In my experience with countries with weird languages, finding a hotel is never a problem, you will communicate it somehow and at least taxi drivers will expect people going to hotels and know where they are. The real questions are the birding places, which are typically very unusual destinations for people to go. I run into this problem in Egypt for example where I ended up leaving a city after not being able to explain to anyone where I want to go - mind you, that's a country where everyone seems to be either a taxi driver or a brother of one

I'd have thought that in a quasi desert country, just asking to go to the sewage works would be a first step.
Admittedly, getting back might be an issue....

 

[opisska]

The problem with that was that in that one extreme instance, where we got really off the tourist trail, it seemed like nobody in a million-people city spoke anything but Arabic

 

[Owen Krout]

Thank you, Opisska, you put your finger on the core issue.
As a foreigner with no language skills, how does one get from the train or bus station to the desired hotel or birding spot?

Agreed. I live in Liaoning and my wife is native and it is still often extremely difficult and/or expensive to manage to get to good birding sites. We have the advantage of a nephew who is a taxi driver and will occassionally give us a good day rate as long as we stay in Panjin. Even if you get there, getting back is indeed the real problem. A great example is the "Bird Paradise" in Panjin. We have yet to find a taxi driver who knew how to get there, therefore if you don't know how to get there yourself your out of luck. Then the real problem, which is returning. There is no normal taxi service there and it is almost impossible to manage to get one to come to pick you up. They expect people to arrive and leave in tour groups or private vehicle. Therefore you have to manage to figure out how to hire a car and driver for the day. Even that is problematic as most people can't (or won't) read a map and will be highly resistant to following any directions you give. Same is true at the "famous" Red Beach, which also has high entry fees and the quality of the birding is only great during migration. Over crowding and over development is starting to ruin it as a birding location. After a few years in Panjin I managed to figure out bus routes to some better areas, but with the current issues I prefer not to brave the shoulder to shoulder crowds in the bus.

Additionally, it is guaranteed that as a foreigner you will be paying foreigner prices for most things. Also, we have had taxi drivers that even my wife had great difficulty with their dialect. Finding a functional English speaker is a rarity. With the few you find their English is usually as bad as my Chinese.

A point for anyone not familiar with China, most hotels can't accept foreigners. Those that do must register their foreign guests with the local police each day.

 

[etudiant]

Agreed. I live in Liaoning and my wife is native and it is still often extremely difficult and/or expensive to manage to get to good birding sites. We have the advantage of a nephew who is a taxi driver and will occassionally give us a good day rate as long as we stay in Panjin. Even if you get there, getting back is indeed the real problem. A great example is the "Bird Paradise" in Panjin. We have yet to find a taxi driver who knew how to get there, therefore if you don't know how to get there yourself your out of luck. Then the real problem, which is returning. There is no normal taxi service there and it is almost impossible to manage to get one to come to pick you up. They expect people to arrive and leave in tour groups or private vehicle. Therefore you have to manage to figure out how to hire a car and driver for the day. Even that is problematic as most people can't (or won't) read a map and will be highly resistant to following any directions you give. Same is true at the "famous" Red Beach, which also has high entry fees and the quality of the birding is only great during migration. Over crowding and over development is starting to ruin it as a birding location. After a few years in Panjin I managed to figure out bus routes to some better areas, but with the current issues I prefer not to brave the shoulder to shoulder crowds in the bus.

Additionally, it is guaranteed that as a foreigner you will be paying foreigner prices for most things. Also, we have had taxi drivers that even my wife had great difficulty with their dialect. Finding a functional English speaker is a rarity. With the few you find their English is usually as bad as my Chinese.

A point for anyone not familiar with China, most hotels can't accept foreigners. Those that do must register their foreign guests with the local police each day.

Surely that is something that education and policy could address.
China is super rich in natural resources, but has not yet developed appreciation of that. National leadership can really help here.
It seems internal tourism is very much part of national policy, nature and birding seem a logical fit to expand these options.
I'd not known about the need to register foreign guests, probably something that will go away as the data collection becomes more fine grained.

 

[Jeff Hopkins]

I have travelled and birded in China, both on organized tours and on my own. Any of the "on my own" was birding sessions added on to a business trip.

FWIW, you can easily go birding in city parks and various tourist sites, but getting to remote areas for specialties is a challenge. You basically need someone who speaks Chinese and your native language. I speak a little Chinese, so I have it easier than most foreigners, but it was still next to impossible to get to a lot of remote places on my own. And then as Owen noted, you still need to figure out how to get home.

I have birded in China with some expats who spoke Chinese. Other times, I hired a local guide who spoke decent English for a couple days in some places. One time I organized a car and translator through a small local hotel I was staying at (The owner lived in the US for a while), but I still had to figure out where to go and what I was looking at based on online reports.

Alternately, you could try to organize something in advance with a local birding tour operator or set up a day trip through your hotel (assuming where you're heading is a known tourist site), but as a westerner, you'll likely pay a price consistent with a western tour.

Add to that, the challenge of getting a visa, the cost of air travel just to get there, and similar issues, and I just think people pick other places over China for independent travel.

 

[Jeff Hopkins]

Surely that is something that education and policy could address.
China is super rich in natural resources, but has not yet developed appreciation of that. National leadership can really help here.
It seems internal tourism is very much part of national policy, nature and birding seem a logical fit to expand these options.
I'd not known about the need to register foreign guests, probably something that will go away as the data collection becomes more fine grained.

I don't see the guest registration going away any time soon. The Chinese government is all about tracking people. For example, you can't just buy a train ticket - you need to show ID to buy it, in the case of foreigners, a passport. That ID is printed on your ticket, and you have to show that ID to board. Same with plane tickets (of course). The CCP doesn't want their own people traveling randomly, never mind foreigners.

As to internal tourism, it's definitely part of national policy, but because of the sheer number of people, where and when you go is strictly limited. Think of Yellowstone National Park in the US. Everybody goes to the same areas. You can't get away from all the people.


This is a picture of the entrance to JiuZhaiGou National Park in Sichuan. We got in early before the crowds were allowed in. But once they showed up, every one of those ticket lanes was full for the entire day. It's just bus after bus after bus.

 

[Ries]

Can't you just put the directions in your phone's navigation and the voice on Mandarin? Should even be able to use a Chinese navigation app and put in the GPS coordinates. But maybe internet connection is not good in some (a lot?) areas. Don't know; haven't been there, never probably will.

 

[Sangahyando]

This is a picture of the entrance to JiuZhaiGou National Park in Sichuan. We got in early before the crowds were allowed in. But once they showed up, every one of those ticket lanes was full for the entire day. It's just bus after bus after bus.

Yes, and once the crowds show up, you can forget sightings of anything other than insects and a few songbird species (which are still nice, but in a place like this, you should be able to see lots of vertebrate species in a single day, and not just a dozen or so). I didn't know it was possible to get in early by the way, IIRC they opened up at around 8 AM. Is it possible to access any such places at, say, sunrise?

 

[etudiant]

I don't see the guest registration going away any time soon. The Chinese government is all about tracking people. For example, you can't just buy a train ticket - you need to show ID to buy it, in the case of foreigners, a passport. That ID is printed on your ticket, and you have to show that ID to board. Same with plane tickets (of course). The CCP doesn't want their own people traveling randomly, never mind foreigners.

As to internal tourism, it's definitely part of national policy, but because of the sheer number of people, where and when you go is strictly limited. Think of Yellowstone National Park in the US. Everybody goes to the same areas. You can't get away from all the people.

View attachment 1398550
This is a picture of the entrance to JiuZhaiGou National Park in Sichuan. We got in early before the crowds were allowed in. But once they showed up, every one of those ticket lanes was full for the entire day. It's just bus after bus after bus.

I'd expect the registration to become automatic as China integrates the already copious data streams from cell phones.
Even the passport may become superfluous, once captured by the system, every transaction you make is retained and tagged with your ID.
That sadly does not help at all with the crowds....

 

[Andy Adcock]

It doesn't help eiether that foreigners cannot hire a car and self drive.

 

[etudiant]

It doesn't help eiether that foreigners cannot hire a car and self drive.

Hopefully that too will go away once they get the data collection sorted out.
Right now, there is chaos as the government bureaucracy has caught on to the reality that the digital world provides an enormously clearer picture of what is actually happening than their existing data collection and reporting systems. Once they regroup, think things will be simpler, but way more intrusive.

 

[McMadd]

Hopefully that too will go away once they get the data collection sorted out.
Right now, there is chaos as the government bureaucracy has caught on to the reality that the digital world provides an enormously clearer picture of what is actually happening than their existing data collection and reporting systems. Once they regroup, think things will be simpler, but way more intrusive.

And as a laowai driving a car you become an automatic target for insurance scams...deliberate accident which you will be blamed for regardless and either sued or pay cash bribe to "support" the "victim" (and their extended family who they just happen toby the breadwinner for...) while they recover...

My employer had a blanket policy that no posted employee could own or drive a vehicle.

Also, most folk visiting China are on a limited time budget...do you want to spend your day organising the birding or doing the birding...?

 

[MKinHK]

I agree with Woodrip - the rewards are there for those who put in the effort and get themselves organised.

There are plenty of birds to see in places that are relatively easily accessible with good transport food and accommodation. More and more people speak English, and the hardcopy and online travel guides have enabled masses of non Chinese speakers to travel widely. True, the furthest corners and the toughest birds are not necessarily reachable, but with a little imagination you can avoid the crowds and get into habitat for great birds. There are also plenty of trip reports available.

Cheers
Mike

 

[lgonz1008]

I agree with Woodrip - the rewards are there for those who put in the effort and get themselves organised.

There are plenty of birds to see in places that are relatively easily accessible with good transport food and accommodation. More and more people speak English, and the hardcopy and online travel guides have enabled masses of non Chinese speakers to travel widely. True, the furthest corners and the toughest birds are not necessarily reachable, but with a little imagination you can avoid the crowds and get into habitat for great birds. There are also plenty of trip reports available.

Cheers
Mike

Which field guide is there in English for China? I know there was a Chinese guide that was going to be translated for an international market, but I forgot the name of it, or if it's even been released yet.