Tibet 1.6 - It’s good to be a Ph.D.

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 pick me up at the airport.

Yang Fusheng - Associate Professor, Institute of Botany Beijing. Nice guy, but don’t know much about him.

Niu Yong - Ph.D. student in botany, KIB. Nice guy. Good with photography. Accompanied Jackie on some of her previous fieldwork in China.

Li Gudong - One of the youngest graduate students. Masters student in botany at KIB. Has been given the task of booking our rooms and coordinating our meals at each stop. I wonder if he had gotten stuck with this job because he’s the ‘rookie’ so-to-speak.

Feng Bang - Ph.D. student in mycology at KIB. He has an interest in ectomycorrhizal fungi (who doesn’t?). He has also helped me to identify some of the fungi we’ve collected. Found a gynormous Leccinum (see picture).

Hu Yongfu - AKA ‘Rodney’ becuse he reminded us of Rodney Dangerfield. A bit of a jokester. He drives the little red Mitsubishi van that goes by the nickname ‘little red’. He’s also seems to be a bit of a cheapskate as he tries to get the other drivers to take all the luggage because it weighs down his car and reduces his gas milage.

Zhang Xiaopeng - Drives the white Toyota van which has become the “support vehicle” that carries most of our luggage and the botany supplies. He’s also a bit fond of barley wine as he ended up purchasing 10 cases of it when getting supplies for the trip. This pissed Jun off to say the least.

Ma Hongqi - Driver of the silver Mitsubishi SUV. Seems to have problems with directions as earlier in the trip he was continuously making wrong turns. Once we started heading into Sichuan instead of Xi’zang (Tibet) because he went strait instead of crossing a bridge. That put us back by about an hour. He’s also ‘Muslim”. I put that in quotes because he doesn’t eat with us since most every meal has a pork dish, but I have seen him sit down at the dinner table to drink beer. That confuses me because I didn’t think drinking alcohol was permitted in Islam. Perhaps he practices a particular brand of islam where it is permitted.

Anyway, that’s the crew. An interesting bunch, and for the most part, we all seem to get along pretty well.

Andy...

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