My Electric Postcard

One of the luxuries I’ve been able to enjoy on the trip is the fact that I’ve been given my own room at every location we’ve been. A few months ago I would not have gotten this treatment, and to be honest, didn’t quite expect it now. My understanding is that it comes with the addition of a few extra letters to my name, and the fact that with these letters you are essentially promoted to another class of citizen here in China. Anyway, I wanted to introduce the team: Jun Wen - Smithsonian Curator, botanist, and organizer of the trip. Rick Ree described her as a “Force of Nature”. That almost sums her up. Sue Lutz - Jun’s assistant from the Smithsonian. Jackie Van De Viere - U of Ill. at Chicago/Field Museum graduate student. Working on systematics of Primula. Nie Ze-Long - Associate Professor, Kunming Institute of Botany. One of the co-organizers of the trip. Xie Lie - Postdoc in botany and KIB. Also did a 1 year postdoc with Jun at the Smithsonian and was one of the people to pic...

Sorry it’s been a while since my last report. After our stop in Markam we were in Bomi. There the fungal collections picked up quite a bit. I’ve also somewhat intensified my attempt at video documenting. I’m fortunate that my new Macbook Pro has the capacity to handle all the photos and video that I’ve been collecting. It’s becoming a challenge to try and keep up with the management of my files, collect and describe fungi, and video document this trip. Sadly my attempts to keep a traditional scrapbook/journal of my trip has fallen by the wayside. I’ve even failed to collect one beer label to put in the book, though that’s not to say that I haven’t been drinking beer. At least I got a Tibetan sticker for the front of my journal. In retrospect, I guess I should be somewhat glad that collecting fungi hasn’t been all that intense. Otherwise I would not have been able to document the trip as much as I have. But that seems to have changed as of yesterday. Right now I’m in Linzhi X...