Our upcoming July book club will be on To Be the Poet with Maxine Hong Kingston. 

To Be the Poet is Kingston’s manifesto, the avowal and declaration of a writer who has devoted a good part of her sixty years to writing prose, and who, over the course of this spirited and inspiring book, works out what the rest of her life will be, in poetry. Taking readers along with her, this celebrated writer gathers advice from her gifted contemporaries and from sages, critics, and writers whom she takes as ancestors. She consults her past, her conscience, her time—and puts together a volume at once irreverent and deeply serious, playful and practical, partaking of poetry throughout as it pursues the meaning, the possibility, and the power of the life of the poet.

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Though this book club will be published as a podcast, we still want to ensure our book club followers have a voice in these chats, and as such are extending an open invitation to submit questions for the author. We will do our best to get through as many as possible and will include them in the final published podcast episode.

Please submit questions to kendra.tombolato@wildchina.com by July 5th.

Aki Yang, Head of the WildChina Shanghai Office & Director of WildChina Corporate Services shares reflections from two months of lockdown in Shanghai.

"It’s hard to put into words how much this meant to me. To hear these stories of adaptation, of making light in the absolute dark. That even in the most unexpected of circumstances, we can still live hard and live well."

In July, we're headed to the high plateau grasslands of western Sichuan for a Tibetan expedition. Then we’re heading north for wine and vineyard tours in Ningxia. 

In the second half of July we’re off to Pingyao to see the setting of Zhang Yimou’s Raise the Red Lantern before going to Shangri-La to decide for ourselves if this is the inspiration for James Hilton’s Lost Horizon.   

For August we’re making our way across Gansu via trains, cars and even a traditional goat-skin raft on the Yangtze. Then we’re finishing off the summer with Sho Dun Festival in Tibet! 

Our education team has been working hard creating new conservation education programs designed around the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

In June they ran two of these programs: a sea turtle conservation and outdoor education camp in Guangdong (pictured above) and a mangrove conservation camp in Fujian.   

Upon completion campers have the opportunity to apply for an official United Nations Institute of Training and Research certification (presented by WildChina as a certified issuing authority).