Changing China

Explorer running with the torch

Wong How Man is one of China’s best known and most active explorers, whose accomplishments include an expedition that discovered a new source of the Yangtze, China’s longest river.   

More recently the Hong Kong native and his group, China Exploration & Research Society, have taken on a number of conservation projects in Tibetan areas of China — work that helped him land a spot as an Olympic torch runner last week.

Wong, one of Time magazine’s Asian heroes, carried the torch briefly on a section of the route in Qinghai province — home to many Tibetans — on June 23, opting for the lower-key destination to draw attention to his work rather than the more controversial leg in Tibet.

He wrote an e-mail about his experience to Reuters Taiwan bureau chief, Doug Young:

Q: Can you give some quick thoughts on the experience?   

A: Outside of Everest and Lhasa, this is highest relay site (Shangri-la is about same elevation as Qinghai Lake).  Again, not counting Everest, this is only site in a natural setting and synonymous with much of my work, dealing with nature, wildlife and culture.  

Q: What were some of the most enduring memories you took away from your participation?  

Where next for the torch?

Preparations for the Beijing Olympics have understandably taken a back seat to the tragedy in Sichuan.

On Sunday, it was announced that the torch relay would be suspended from Monday to Wednesday to mark three days of national mourning.

The question officials at the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) returned to wrestling with after observing the three-minute silence at 2.28pm today is what should happen when it restarts?

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the torch was scheduled to visit Shanghai. Can a torch relay that is supposed to visit all of China’s provinces really skip the country’s financial capital (and venue for several Olympic soccer matches)? Will Sichuan, and most particularly the city of Mianyang, really be ready to host the flame in mid-June?     

Some in China have said that it should not resume at all, despite the fund-raising for the victims that has taken place along the route since the earthquake. 

A former deputy editor of the Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily suggested last week in Caijing Magazine that when the worst of the destruction was cleared, the torch should be taken to the epicentre of the 7.9 magnitude quake and relayed from there to Beijing.

“Continuing the high profile torch relay must take a large quantity of resources and attention of people, which does not match  either the need of concentrating on disaster relief, or the deep grief at losing our compatriots,” wrote Huangpu Ping.

Day 14 – Mission accomplished

The Beijing Olympic torch is held aloft at the top of Mount Everest on Thursday in this image taken from television footage.

Three months to the day before the Games open, members of a 31-strong team reached the top of the 8,848-metre (29,030-ft) peak carrying the Olympic flame in a lantern before lighting the torch.

The climbing team, which included 22 Tibetans, eight Han Chinese and one man from the Tujia minority, had been on the mountain for more than a week preparing the route along the north-east ridge.

Take a look at Nick’s story about the moment so many Chinese have been waiting for.

But the trip is more than just another stopover on the Olympic torch’s journey around the world, read about the controversy and the deep symbolism surrounding the project.

Our Reuters team of Nick, Dave and Mark will be in touch with a us soon to give a personal account of today’s achievement.

Nick (& Mark & Dave), the torch and Everest – Day 13

If the word around camp is anything to go by, the final assault on the summit of Everest will begin in the early hours of Thursday morning. Journalists and accompanying officials have spent much of the day taking souvenir photos and snapping up post cards at the “world’s highest post office”.

The rumours would appear to be based on nothing more than collective will (or hysteria, perhaps).

A brief flurry of concern fizzed around camp when, after two days of clear skies, the wind picked up and clouds blocked our view of Everest.

This project is no walk in the park, though, as the climbers hanging around here are keen to emphasise.

But optimism remains that by mid-morning tomorrow, the mighty achievement may have been accomplished.

Dave and I will be keeping our fingers crossed. Mark, being a South African, is holding his thumbs.

China mountaineering team spokesman Zhang Zhijian details on a diagram the proposed route for the Olympic torch’s ascent of the world’s highest mountain Mount Everest, also known as Qomolangma. Photo by David Gray.

Dave (& Mark & Nick), the torch and Everest – Day 11

Well, we are still here. Invited as we were to cover this amazing event, we have been kept at the press centre located near Everest Base Camp for over one week now, and still we do not know the answers to a basic, important question  – Where is the Olympic torch now?

Frustrations are obviously still running high, and at 5200 Metres altitude, that frustration is unfortunately multiplied.

Sitting at breakfast this morning, the remaining foreign press contingent decided we would list the good things about our situation, rather than just dwell on the obvious annoyances. This is what we came up with:

1. The view……lets face it, it does not get much better than this.

2. The internet facilities…….the only reason why I am able to send my pictures, and now blogs, so easily is due to the excellent set up at the press centre. Plus, it allows us to watch repeats on YOU-TUBE of British comedies.

3. The food…..for make-shift kitchen facilities, the food is excellent, especially the dumplings.

4. The friendly staff who are trying to help.

Nick (& Dave & Mark), the torch and Everest – Day 9

I heard excited cries outside our hut this morning and the optimist in me immediately thought the climbers had reached the summit of Everest with the Olympic torch.

A warm bath, clean clothes and bedding were only a matter of hours away, I thought, as I poked my nose over the top of my sleeping bag into the icy cold.

Enthused by the prospect of the news, I slid out of my nylon cocoon, stepped into my boots and clad in little more than a ski jacket and long johns pushed open the cabin door.

The reason for the noisy excitement of our Tibetan hosts was immediately apparent as a huge clump of snow landed on my size 10s and a blizzard of white flakes obscured the medical tent which usually provides our outlook.

As with most people who have grown up in Britain, snow is a magical thing to me. Redolent of Christmas, snowball fights, evenings by the fire, a warming single malt and so on…

But here in the shadow of Everest, my immediate thought was that this would surely mean a delay to the climbers’ progress up the mountain.

Nick, the torch and Mt Everest – Day 4

More negotiations over whether we should delay our departure for base camp kept us off the road for an extra couple of hours and stretched the patience of the Chinese journalists.

All was forgotten, though, a couple of hours later when got our first real look at Everest from the top of a pass.

Arrayed in front of us was not only the famous mountain itself but four more of the world’s 14 8,000m-plus peaks.

It was a whole lot more impressive than I had thought it would be. I was not really aware of how much my concept of a mountain had been based on Everest itself.

Two hours later, we were at Rongpo Monastery (5010m) where the Everest Base Camp media centre is located.

There followed a frustrating evening and the first casualty of our rapid rise to altitude, read more about it here.

Nick, the torch and Mt Everest – Day 1

At last, 11 of us did get onto a plane to Lhasa last Friday. It was soon clear that while the Tibetan authorities were prepared to let us in, this was by no means going to be a free-ranging reporting assignment.

The hotel ‘near Lhasa airport’ that we had been promised turned out to be 300 kilometres away in Shigatse (3,900m).

The compensation was the drive up a stunning river valley. Tibetan prayer flags fluttered in a stiff breeze above the squat houses and children skinny-dipped in the aquamarine water beneath azure skies.

On one of the toilet stops, a friend of mine in the Chinese media party told me he had been acclimatizing in Lhasa for four days. It turned out that all the Chinese media had had at least one day more to get accustomed to the high altitude. 

We arrived at Shigatse late in the evening, were fed and told to be ready for departure at 9am the next morning.

Seen through the windscreen of an official Chinese government bus, a paramilitary soldier stands guard under a road sign located near Lhasa Airport April 25, 2008 indicating the road to the Tibetan capital of Lhasa and the town of Rikaze. A heavy troop presence was evident on Friday lining the road between the capital Lhasa and Shigatse, the second largest city in Tibet, after foreign reporters were allowed into the region to witness the Olympic torch ascend Mt Everest. REUTERS/David Gray (CHINA)

Nick, the torch and Everest – prologue

We’re here, where’s the torch?

We arrived. For a long time it looked like we wouldn’t, but on Monday morning, four days after leaving Beijing, 11 foreign journalists arrived at the media centre on the lower slopes of Mount Everest to report on the torch relay.

It brought to an end two of weeks of uncertainty that started when a briefing was cancelled and we heard nothing more until we were summoned to the Beijing Olympic media centre on the morning of our scheduled departure. The party of foreign media, at this stage 20-strong, was informed that bad weather had caused a delay to our journey and the departure ceremony for the climb team and torch had been cancelled.

Little did we know, although we might have guessed, that the Tibet Autonomous Region did not want foreign journalists poking around the still sensitive sores of the March riots. It took pressure from the central government, we have now learned, for them to finally allow us to go.

But the lost days meant we would be going from 54 metres above sea level in Beijing to Everest Base Camp (5,200m) in just three days – something that rang serious alarm bells with the doctors we consulted. “I would strongly advise against it,” said one British doctor, an expert on high altitude sickness who reached the summit of Everest last year. “You’re putting yourself in a position where you could get something that could kill you.”

There followed three days of back and forth with deadlines missed and pushed back, meetings in cafes, stand-offs, stand-downs, demands for money, demands for information and a BOCOG employee being chased down the street by reporters trying to stuff wads of cash into his hands.