It is about the middle of my three-month China trip since Nov 12, 2009. This is my third time stepping on Chinese soil, and like the previous two trips, this trip is just as significant. As a climber, climbing steep limestone, surprisingly, is my secondary purpose of this trip. My primary objective is to perform reconnaissance for my adventure travel business, LittlePo Adventures (a working title), and therefore I have been actively investigating aesthetic areas in China for active exploration and ultimate adventure. In the meanwhile, I have been making connections with local businesses and proposing collaboration projects with local residents.

I have been incubating the idea of launching a China adventure travel business since 2004. It was the fourth year of my PhD study at University of Pennsylvania and the second year since I started engaging in outdoor endeavors. Many of my outdoor friends who have strongly related to my passion towards nature and technical skills often asked me what the outdoor environment is like in China and Taiwan. I often was able to amaze them by enumerating geographical facts I acquired from textbooks, literature and historic novels; however, I was not capable to describe any deeper connection and appreciation people usually feel after physical exertion, i.e. hiking, climbing, and paddling etc. I left my friends hanging, longing for adventures and exploration in China’s mountain ranges, scenic rivers, and rich culture. The only difference is that I have been feeling the void for a couple decades and they have perhaps for only a few years. I made up my mind then - someday, I will bring my English-speaking friends to experience China and Chinese speaking friends to awe the natural wonders in the States.

Since then, I have actively accumulated my credentials. I became an active volunteer backpacking leader for the AMC. In order to acquire technical skills in a systematic way to speed up the learning process, I took several NOLS courses on glacier mountaineering and rock climbing. In May 2007, I defended my thesis and secured my PhD degree in computational linguistics and a month later I was in Alaska attempting Denali, the highest peak of North America. Denali climb was, and still is, the most exhausting expedition I had ever endured; I also learned a valuable lesson on Denali: I had to turn around at 19,400 feet because of acute mountain sickness. After I arrived home safely, I realized that while I like computer science, I have to do what I love. It is like when nature calls, you just ought to act upon it. “Like” is not enough to push me far in life; “Love” can and it brings enlightenment along the journey. I practice a near dirtbag lifestyle to climb at various climbing destinations to build up a solid foundation and to familiarize with different type of rocks in order to become a better climber. I work for several outdoor education organizations, including NOLS, and now I dare to call myself a competent outdoor educator and climbing instructor.

Last winter, I spent a month climbing in Yangshuo, one of the most developed rock climbing destinations in China. The experience struck me that it was time to put forth my five-year-old baby into reality. And these three months scouting in China will be my springboard for a well thought-out launch.

Like all small business entrepreneurs, I am always thinking of my niche. What are my strengths? What can I provide? Who are my potential customers/clients? What is my mission? All these questions formed a gigantic spider web and at times I felt anxious and stuck. I went back and forth trying to escape from the phantom threat of this imaginary poisonous spider. Finally, resorting to my original motivation gave me the answer. I wanted to bring my American friends to experience China and that is it. I want to guide a small and intimate group from the States to enjoy what they love to do in the outdoor in foreign terrain. The foreign terrain provides excitement and healthy risk for them to endure and I can enrich the China experience not only because I am a native Chinese speaker but also I am well educated in Chinese literature, history, geography, and philosophy. In addition to my outdoor expertise, my clients who are also my friends can have the safety net in a foreign land.

My plan is to consult with every single client with what they need and what they want to accomplish and work hard towards fulfilling them. My clients will be with me and my local friends from the very first second till the last second and they will not be thrown around between random outsourcing companies. Every trip will be personal and completely customizable.

So far, I plan to present three types of adventures (all the names are working titles):

1. Dirtbag China Climbing Series - suitable for rock climbers who look for maximum time of rock climbing in amazing scenic destinations, are willing to sacrifice some physical comfort in exchange of cost reduction, and are excited to enjoy cheap but delicious street food for most meals.
2. Active China Trekking Series - suitable for hikers or backpackers who appreciate trekking in pristine mountain ranges or hard-to-get-to historical sites to experience way beyond what ordinary tourists can endure.
3. Recon Trip Tag-Along - suitable for anybody who wants to tag along with me on my scouting trip and is okay with only figuring out a few days ahead at a time, and can tolerate the unexpected. The benefit is to explore a totally unknown territory with an experienced traveler and native Chinese speaker.

I am very excited and committed to make it happen. I am also willing to take input and suggestions from any of you to help me refine the plan. Feedback and a different perspective always helps, and that is especially true because the following principle is what I will always apply when conducting my business - “your friend is your guide.”

Stone Forest, Yunnan China

Alberto Bolting a new route in Fumin Yunnan China

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Dear all,

I just got down from the mountain and found out that my gmail and facebook accounts have been compromised. I was climbing Aconcagua from 12/28 to 1/11. During the time period, if you received anything from either account, please discard it. I’m working on retrieving my accounts back, but it will take a while. Sorry for any inconvenience.

As for the result of climbing. My team reached 21,250 ft, turned around because of weather, and therefore didn’t summit Aconcagua.

- Szu-ting (Little Po; Ting Ting)

Dear all,

I am leaving for Argentina in a few hours so this blog will be quiet for another while. I know I haven’t written any climbing article regarding my China trip yet; however, the rest of the blog articles of the China series will all be related to climbing. Some tentative titles are as follows:

Sport Climbing versus Traditional Climbing
Trip Report of the overall climbing theme in Yangshuo
Trip Reports of my favorite climbs
China’s (or Yangshuo’s) potential on rock climbing

Wish me good luck on the Aconcagua climb and I wish everybody a merry Christmas and happy holidays.

-Little Po

Dear all,

I am back home in Taipei now and that means that my Yangshuo climbing trip is officially finished. This trip is my first climbing trip focusing on sport climbing; I have to say I’ve learned a great deal from my climbing partners and from simply doing it. I am never an objective judge when it comes to my climbing progress but with no doubt this trip is very productive and I I got a bit stronger.

I updated my Climblog to include this trip. Among all the climbs I’ve done, my favorites are The Witch Woman of the Rock and Dark Star. The most memorable route is still The Witch Woman of the Rock and then Sai Yan. I have good reasons and I’ll tell you why in later blog articles. Before that, if you want to get a bit taste of my trip, visit Ian’s blog - Ian has already published a few articles, and one of them includes a good photo of me!

I expect to publish an article or two before my next big trip - Aconcagua, and after that I need to find a job to support more climbing trips…

-Little Po

The climbing in Yangshuo China continues to be great, and I am getting stronger and more confident on things I used to be afraid of. The local residents live right next to the crags are usually very friendly and helpful. And they like to call me a brave girl because Chinese climbing girls are not commonly seen (However, I’ve learned from the guidebook that there are quite a few stronge local Chinese girl climbers participating in route development.)

Yesterday I bumped into a guy (a westerner) who was bolting in a new area, and I learned that there are tons of climbing areas in China waiting for development. It’s a very exciting news. I am thinking that I should learn how to establish a new route and open some new routes in China. It’s nice to see Chinese names in the FA column in a Chinese guidebook, isn’t it? If anybody has info about learning how to bolt, project a new route and all that, let me know!!

Can’t wait to share photos with you guys once I get the photos from my climbing partners!

Dear friends,

I am currently in Yangshuo China doing some limestone rock climbing. This town has been a famous scenic town since generations ago. Not long ago, people discovered that Yangshuo has much great rock climbing to offer and this new discovery has ever since attracted many climbers from overseas. Even though this town is sort of westernized, it still perserves much local flavors. Especially for me, a native Chinese speaker, it’s easy to see what my English climbing friends can’t see.

Because of weight issue, I didn’t bring my laptop here; therefore, I can’t do much blogging. But for sure I’ll share my climbing stories with you, my friends, when I get back to the States.

- Little Po

I worked three climbing courses this summer in Pacific Northwest for YBOYS. It’s self-explanatory that our students were all boys, and they were middle school or high school Seattle urban kids. Besides that, all my co-workers were guys, and therefore I was the only female on board.

YBOYS has ambitious goals and one of them is to encourage diversity. Our groups often consisted of boys from different backgrounds in terms of race, ethnicity, household income etc. I often joked that I was hired because I would add diversity to the program – I am a female, I am Asian, and I speak English as a second language. My responsibility should have been just hanging out there, posing in photos for fund-raising purposes. It turned out that it was only perhaps less than 1% of my duty. All my trips were technical, mentally challenging, and sometimes frustrating. However, I enjoyed them all because they were all super fun and rewarding; I gained precious experience, I made good friends with my co-instructors and I made some difference for the boys.

I can’t recall what my answer was when Andrew Jay, the program director of YBOYS, asked me about how I feel about possibly being the only female on board. That was the last interview question and I knew that he was more or less simply curious because at my previous job I worked with all-girl courses for seven months. That question made me start thinking; other than disguising myself better when taking a natural break, not being able to talk too openly about my period, what else? I hate stereotypes and I don’t like to overgeneralize, but I couldn’t help but wonder would there be significant difference between all-boy and all-girl groups and would I have to make adjustments interacting with boys?

The last time I asked myself similar questions was before I attended college. I chose computer engineering as my major so I knew that I would be one of the few girls in class. That was a big transition for me because I was from a single-gender high school. I finally decided that I would treat all boys the same way as I treated all my high school female friends. I was so outgoing and so enthusiastic to know everybody that in my junior year many of my good male friends confessed to me that my over-passionate style of breaking ice made them wonder whether I was hitting on them. I was puzzled, did it really take them two years to realize I just wanted to be friends?

The first course was a 6-day rock climbing camp at Tieton River Rocks, I felt that I was more like a caretaker than an outdoor educator. Those middle school kids had tons of energy and enjoyed provoking each other more than rock climbing. My co-instructor Ian Farquhar and I spent more time asking them not to throw rocks or stick fight than teaching them how to move on rocks. In the morning, we often spent much time resolving conflicts before we felt safe to take them to the crags. Ian commented that some of these kids projected a mom figure onto me despite that it was the last role I wanted to possess. His not-at-all persuasive argument was that if I had a kid when I was about their age, I would have a kid their age now. Toward the end, when I started to feel some connection with some kids and successfully convinced them to step out of their comfort zone, I suddenly did not mind anymore if they considered me as a mom. A short trip like this with such a young group, it was all about planting seeds.

The second course was a 14-day rock climbing camp at Squamish BC, Canada. Ian was again the course lead and we had a third volunteer instructor, Craig McKibben, who was awarded the position of President of the Washington Trails Alliance this year. This course, we had high school kids, and many of them were either alumni who understood the structure of a typical YBOYS trip or had intention to learn all about rock climbing. We therefore were able to execute our curriculum pretty well; many of them mock led on sport routes and were guided up a multi-pitch trad route.

Kids in general respected me as a climbing instructor; however, there were some awkward moments for me because kids made borderline comments toward me which could be interpreted as affection or flirting. Sometimes I was aware that they pushed too far and I asked them to keep the conversation appropriate; however the request was usually not effective because I was fairly friendly with them and they even told me that I should not discipline them with a big smile on my face. Sometimes I was not even aware that they might have pushed too far, due to cultural and language barriers. Ian’s explanation was that I should have been prepared for this; he said “they are high school kids and there is no girl around.” I respect Ian as a professional outdoor educator and climbing instructor but in terms of the dynamics between me and the boys, I took his words only for reference.

The third course was a 14-day mountaineering expedition in Alpine Lake Wilderness area. Salz was the course lead. The terrain was less technical than the previous two rock climbing camps, we never traveled on fifth class terrain, but the trip was in fact more intense and physically demanding. We had many long days, much off-trail travel and bushwhacking in the area was demanding. When we attempted peak ascents, the approach was usually a combination of snow travel, hopping over boulder fields, walking on screes, and traversing exposed slabs. It was not technical but the consequences were high. Kids were scared when they did fixed line travel and when we belayed them or lowered them down. We were most afraid when kids were on less technical terrain and they felt relatively safe and felt okay to mess around.

I became more authoritative during this course. There was just no time to engage in a conversation with a kid while descending a steep rock pile. I wanted them to follow specific instructions promptly because I didn’t want them to get hurt; if I happened to hurt somebody’s feelings, so be it. We could deal with that after we made it back to camp. Salz and I understand that nobody likes to be commanded all the time, and teenagers are even more rebellious. We explained to them the circumstances and most of the kids understood it and took it just fine. However, there was this one kid who had strong resistance toward authoritative figures, and he reacted to Salz and I differently. He would argue with Salz but after Salz reiterated himself, he would suck it up and complain about it covertly. With me, he would try to engage endless arguments, defending himself, and then propagate his complaints overtly among other boys. Because the requests from Salz and I were pretty much the same and the method we used to deliver them was similar, I sometimes wondered whether I got the special treatment because I was not a guy.

Some parents were surprised when they learned that their kids would be with a female instructor, but the reactions were always positive; it seemed that they were happy to see a co-ed instructor team. A father said that I was brave to spend two weeks mountaineering with boys. A female social worker was excited to see me work with YBOYS and a couple moms said “I have to meet you” and shook my hands passionately when they picked up their sons after we returned from the backcountry. I was flattered and encouraged and at the same time I felt a little bit bad because my co-instructors worked just as hard or harder than I and they didn’t get the same kind of recognition.

Even though I have reported some observations from working with boys this summer, I still haven’t had a definite conclusion or genius discovery to share about the differences between working with boys and girls. Instead, I have realized that there are more similarities than differences when working with boys or girls. The decision I made years ago before I entered the man-dominated engineering world is still in style. I love to address people’s needs in a more generic sense; as for non-biological driven differences between males and females, I’d like to deal with them on a person-to-person basis. It is just more fun for me to not make assumptions, not think about stereotypes and to interact with people on a more personal level. Especially in a professional setting I would rather others treat me as a human being rather than a female. In order to accomplish this I should take the initiative to treat others as human beings as well.

On July 15th I finished instructing a 2-week advanced climbing trip for YBOYS in Squamish BC Canada. This was my first time at Squamish and I have to say the climbing there is really sweet — I will definitely do my personal climbing trips out there to get some multi-pitches done. Everybody climbed a bunch, including me. (If you’re interested in what I’ve climbed, check out Little Po’s climbLog)

My next trip for YBOYS is not until the coming Saturday. You might think I have much time right now for blogging, yes and no. If you’re an outdoor blogger, will you climb more or blog more? Not too difficult to answer that, isn’t it? I will spend the next two days doing some objectives over Washington Pass. If you can’t wait to get a taste of the Squamish trip, check the report written by my awesome co-instructor, Ian.

Until next blog article, keep enjoying your life, my friends!

- Little Po

Just got out of the NOLS AKIC (Alaska Instructor Course) a few days ago. The course went well; however, I will not work for NOLS until next year because my calendar is very booked for this year. Currently I am at Pacific Northwest working for YMCA Seattle for three summer courses. I will have some in-town days between courses and I’ll try to throw some articles online because I have had thoughts storming in my brain for a while and I cannot wait to share them with you all.

Take care my friends and enjoy your cool summer!

Well, I am supposed to be in Anchorage tonight (5/8); however, I am stuck in some random hotel near Salt Lake City airport. My first flight was delayed so I missed the connecting flight to Anchorage, and won’t arrive there until tomorrow afternoon (5/9).

I really love Alaska and I guess that is why I visit Alaska three summers in a roll. This time I am going to stay for another 34 days. Friends asked me, “Are you going to try Denali again?” Of course I want to; however, not this summer. What I am going to do is also something as exciting if not more exciting than Denali. I am taking the NOLS Alaska Instructor Course, which means if I successfully complete the course, I will be a NOLS instructor. Maybe I will start teaching wilderness courses, but hopefully I can teach technical courses very soon!

That being said, my blog is going to be quiet for a while. (I did put a couple articles in the queue though). Don’t forget me and give me some of your best wishes!

- Little Po