China explorer Wong How-man is gathering backers to form a tourist reserve in the heart of Cossack country in remote northwestern China. Since finding out about the area last September, Mr Wong put a formal proposal to the local Government and took a group of Hong Kong executives last month to visit the inhospitable part-desert, part-glacial area. After numerous expeditions across China, including one last year when he found the source of the Yangtze River, Mr Wong will give a lecture to the Royal Geographical Society tonight on his exploits. The high-altitude area of his latest interest is where the Qinghai Tibetan plateau meets the Mongolian and Xinjiang deserts. A strip of mountain ranges splits the site into two 'where two totally different geographical areas meet right there', said Mr Wong, the president of the China Exploration and Research Society in Hong Kong. Though within an hour's drive of the tourist town of Dunhuang on the Silk Road, the area peopled by about 100 nomadic households is poor and lacking facilities. But with bountiful herds of wildlife, including yaks, blue sheep, wild asses and Tibetan gazelles, Mr Wong has proposed to the local government they open the area for eco-tourism to conserve the animals and bring in money. Company chiefs including former Hong Kong Ferry chief executive Peter Wong Man-kong and John Lee of Tom Lee Music were interested in the scheme, though they would like some more home comforts there, he said. 'There is a four to five-hour jeep journey to get there. They would like an airstrip so they could arrive in a small aircraft.' Mr Wong has begun training Cossacks as guides and aims to take mainland schoolchildren on a biological field trip next summer. 'None of the animals has been properly observed scientifically, so it's a research ground and an educational ground,' he said.
