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Wild at heart

Andy Chen

Call him China's David Attenborough. At a spry 75, environmental author Tang Xiyang is still criss-crossing the mainland, reminding today's generation not to repeat the mistakes of the past. To a certain extent he finds his actions hard to explain, but perhaps, he says, that is his fate.

In the 15 years since retiring as editor of The Nature magazine, Tang has been writing books and travelling around the mainland, lecturing university students on what's happening in nature.

He was in Hong Kong earlier this month giving a lecture at Chinese University about the destruction of the Yellow River's ecology.

Having travelled to more than 30 mainland nature protection zones - areas similar to nature reserves around the globe - between 1980 and 1990, Tang is critical of the central government's attitude towards preserving natural resources. 'These nature protection zones receive little funding from the government. They have to rely on tourism to survive,' he says.

But to woo domestic and international tourists to visit the zones, there is a need to develop local transportation infrastructure - things such as expressways and cable cars - which also greatly disturbs local wildlife.

Local residents are also responsible for the deteriorating condition of these zones, with mining and the search for other resources having an impact. As a result the wildlife is disturbed and resources are exploited, Tang adds.

'The top priority of national nature reserves in the west is the protection of wildlife, but the main concern of the mainland national protection zone operators is making money. Protection comes second, even third,' he says.

This observation was brought to Tang's attention by his second wife, Marcia Bliss Marks, who took him to nature reserves in countries such as Germany, the US and Britain.

'It was not until I had been to other countries that I understood the full picture of Chinese nature,' he says.

A former political journalist with the Beijing Daily, Tang was classified as right-wing in 1957 during the Cultural Revolution and sentenced to a life of hard labour, which meant planting vegetables and building village roads in Beijing. He survived, but his first wife was beaten to death.

He was vindicated in 1980 at the age of 50, and given a job in a Beijing museum where he first saw the magazine, The Nature, which reported and commented on the mainland's nature protection zones.

It was during a trip to Xishuangbanna , Yunnan , in 1982 that Tang met Bliss Marks, an American university lecturer. He was there to see elephants; she was there to observe birds. He later helped her to visit various nature protection zones, while she helped translate and publish his first book, Living Treasures, in New York. 'It was because of this book that I could later visit the various national nature reserves overseas,' he recalls.

While Bliss Marks spoke some Putonghua, Tang did not speak English, which meant they sometimes required an interpreter to communicate. But language proved no barrier to their romance and they married in 1987.

They were brought together by a love of nature, something Tang says took root in his heart during his years of hard labour. He says his love of nature was different from those who cultivated a similar passion in their youth.

'During my days of labour, the distance between people was too close - life was tough,' Tang says. 'While I could get nothing from society, I could get everything I needed from nature, and I loved nature from the bottom of my heart. And as I got to know more about nature, I felt it was suffering more than I was.'

He says some of his visits to mainland nature protection zones have been heart-breaking experiences. He has seen rare species offered on dinner tables and wildlife displaced by roads and careless management.

In Zhangjiajie nature protection zone in Hubei province , he says he saw people eating giant salamanders.

Guizhou province's Fanjingshan nature protection zone was home to more than 200 Chinese snub-nosed monkeys, whose protection was a top priority in the 1980s. 'However, to boost tourism, cable cars were built through the monkeys' habitats, which disturbed them because they were afraid of people,' he says.

Greed also drove people to trample on nature in Jilin province's Changbaishan nature protection zone, where core trees were blown down by a typhoon in 1988. People invaded the forests to remove the fallen timber, but they did not stop there. 'They even removed trees that were not blown down. Humans are more harmful than natural disasters,' he says.

'I always ask the same questions: what is more important - protecting the environment, including the forests? Or tourism, hunting and herbal medicine collecting?'

In the 1990s, gold miners were found busy at work in a previously uninhabited Xinjiang province nature protection zone for Tibetan goats. However, it was not long before the trickle of miners was followed by a rush of people looking for gold.

'The government could not manage to control the situation because the area was too large,' Tang says.

Visiting different national nature reserves with his wife made him acutely aware of the need to remind future generations not to repeat the mistakes of the past. After learning from overseas experiences, the couple wrote the Chinese book, A Green World Tour, in 1993, which was translated into English in 1999.

In 1996, the couple launched Green Camp, which gathered mainland and overseas university students, including those from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Russia and Finland, to work on environmental projects. The projects required them to get to grips with mainland nature, including wetlands and forests.

'The mainland government simply did not have the capacity to pursue these kinds of activities. I thought it would be great if students from different places could come and work together, because it could generate widespread interest and trigger their thoughts,' he says.

Bliss Marks, who was diagnosed with alimentary canal cancer early in 1996, died the day the team set off for Yunnan's White Horse Snow Mountain forest.

Last month, Green Camp launched its 10th annual summer trip, with Gansu province nature protection zone as its destination.

Funding of Green Camp comes from the sales of Tang's books, membership fees and community donations. In 2001, Tang was appointed ambassador for the central government's Environmental Protection Bureau.

In organising Green Camp, Tang learned an important lesson from his wife: to be democratic and open to other ideas.

'I used to be subjective but I learned the importance of listening to different views from Marcia, when we organised Green Camp with some other helpers,' he says.

Last year, Tang launched his new book, Wong! Wong! Wong!, which took three years of writing and editing. The book contains the views of more than 180 friends and environmentalists and a summary of his thoughts.

He says the aim is to provide a platform for people to express their views about nature and its destruction.

'They can disagree with me. What I wanted was a book that will leave future generations our ideas on nature,' he says, adding that 10,000 copies have been sold. 'It is not easy to sell 10,000 books on environmental protection on the mainland.'

Although his two daughters, who work as accountants, are supportive of his work, they have no interest in succeeding their father's green mission.

Looking back at his 25-year green journey, Tang is adamant it is Bliss Marks who changed his life.

'From Marcia, I learned to look at environmental issues from an ecological point of view. Protecting the environment should always come first,' he says.

'An American friend said once: 'The greatness of Marcia is that she found Tang Xiyang in China.' I agree.'

Additional reporting by Michael Wei

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