Yunnan's 'lonely' orchid king is self-taught expert

A Vanda orchid grows in Guo Xibing's garden in Malipo. CHEN LIANG/CHINA DAILY

Malipo county's wild bounty proves to be path out of poverty for resourceful guide turned businessman

For the past 20 years, one man has helped botanists find dozens of new plant species, and in recognition of his work, a new species now bears his surname.

That man is 52-year-old Guo Xibing, a plant hunter, hostel owner, orchid expert, contractor of academic projects, tour guide and true Renaissance man.

Guo grows more than 500 species of orchids in his 300-hectare mountain-top garden in Yunnan province, quite a few of which will go on to appear in botanical gardens in big cities sooner or later. Thanks to his plants, his property is estimated to be worth millions of US dollars.

In addition, he runs a homestay with dozens of rooms that over the years has served as a temporary workstation for hundreds of college students majoring in plants and biology, some of whom have stayed for months on end.

He also works with dozens of universities, scientific institutions and botanical gardens, and if you too are a botany enthusiast and love hunting for wildflowers, he may even be willing to guide you around the area for a reasonable fee.

A man of many talents, in the end, Guo describes himself simply as a farmer. "I do all these things to be able to support my family," he said.

Road to botany

Born in Daxichang village in Yunnan's Malipo county, Guo began growing corn on the family plot on the steep karst slopes in the area after graduating from middle school.

"As we were forced to plant in the cracks between rocks, our corn yields were very low," Guo said. "We were quite poor."

To support his family, he began to trade wild orchids and planted Lanxangia tsao-ko, a member of the ginger family, and found jobs as a migrant worker.

His life changed in 2002 when he met a botanist who had come to survey wild orchids in Malipo, which lies on the border with Vietnam and is known for its biodiversity, especially its plants. The researcher, who came from the Orchid Conservation & Research Center of Shenzhen in Guangdong province, hired Guo as his guide.

Thanks to a passion for exploring the wilderness he has had since he was a child, Guo knows the area's karst mountains and forests very well. He was able to help the researcher complete the survey successfully, and in March 2003, he was hired by the center as a temporary orchid surveyor.

In addition to covering his costs, the center paid him 1,500 yuan ($218) a month, and their temporary working relationship lasted until 2017.

As more botanists came to Malipo, Guo began to realize that his home was a treasure trove of wild plants and that growing Dendrobium orchids, treasured herbs in traditional Chinese medicine, might help him finally shake off poverty.

Paphiopedilum malipoense, a rare orchid named after Malipo county in Yunnan province. CHEN LIANG/CHINA DAILY

He learned from the researchers he guided and bought books, teaching himself photography and learning how to use the internet from his children just so he could "know a little more".

As Guo's knowledge of the kingdom of botany deepened, he gradually became known in the area as a "soil expert", not only for growing Dendrobium, but also for nurturing other orchid species and for his ability to find wild plants.

"An expert specialized in the Laurel family asked me to help him find 20 different samples. He showed me photos and illustrations," Guo said, "Then I started searching for similar plants in the wild and gradually got to know the family. Later, a Melastome specialist sought my help, and I became familiar with another family of plants."

The experience accumulated over the course of numerous field trips has turned Guo into a walking map of wild plants. "There are around 6,000 species of flowering plants in Malipo, and more than 80 have been named after the county," he said. "This is more than in many other provinces, and that's why botanists have kept coming here."

Entomologists, zoologists and ecologists have followed the botanists. "While they are here, they turn my home into their workstation," he said.

A man researchers rely on

Gradually, scientists began to hire Guo for assignments, including plant surveys, specimen collecting and even pollination experiments. Effectively, he has become a research project contractor.

Because they needed to be able to drive researchers in the wild, Guo's wife, Wang Yongchun, learned in 2007 and is now a seasoned hand. "She was the first to learn to drive in the family, and drove me around looking for plants," Guo said. "She once even drove me to Tibet on an orchid survey."

Guo himself has refused to learn. "In the car, I need to be on the constant lookout for plants," he explained.

He charges researchers 1,000 yuan to collect a plant specimen. "If they ask me to collect 40 different specimens, I might lower the fee to 700 yuan per species," he said, adding that it is a tough and challenging job and he often needs to hire a driver to travel around southeastern Yunnan and other local guides, too.

"Some plants are truly rare and can only be found in a small patch of forest in a remote area," he said. "A single commission can take between one or two days to two weeks."

Guo said he often has to combine several jobs before setting out into the field. Otherwise, he risks losing money.

Some of his other jobs also require endurance and can be physically intensive, too, he said.

Once, he spent 15 days with a group of doctoral students observing the pollination process of the Paphiopedilum dianthum, an endangered orchid species found only in China, Laos and Vietnam. Their goal was to discover the insects involved in the process.

They spent hours each day in the wild, watching and waiting for any insect to enter the orchid's large frontal pouch, but it wasn't until the 15th day that their patience paid off.

Just as they were about to give up, Guo noticed that a nearby orchid was moving. He quickly grabbed his camera and DV camcorder to capture the moment, and managed to catch the insect with a net.

As a result, the students were able to complete their thesis about the orchid's pollination process.

Guo has lost track of the number of times he has done these kinds of experiments. Sometimes, he spends a month in the mountains, working around the clock to help experts from across the country explore southeastern Yunnan.

For many botanists and researchers, he has become the man they rely on, and whenever they come to Malipo, Guo is the first person they seek out.

Since 2002, an average of 50 to 60 specialists call on him for research purposes a year. Some stay for just two or three days, while others stay for as long as 40 or 50.

Every summer, a large group of graduate students come to study at his plantation.

To house the increasing number of visitors, Guo and his family built a four-story building in their old compound in 2012, and then a second one nearby in 2016.

Over the past three years, strict epidemic control and prevention measures have had a negative impact on the number of visitors, but despite this, Guo said that he is busier than ever.

He explained that due to the constraints on travel, some specialists chose to outsource their field collection and experiments almost completely to him.

There are cases of sealable bags in his office, along with a computer, a printer, an electron microscope and a refrigerator. "I'm a big customer of Shunfeng Express's Malipo branch," Guo said.

Covered in forests, the karst mountains straddling Malipo county in Yunnan and Vietnam are known for their abundance of rich fauna and flora. CHEN LIANG/CHINA DAILY

Orchid kingdom

Helping researchers has earned Guo a stable income, which he has invested in his orchid kingdom.

In 2004, he began planting Dendrobium on a plot of a little over 1 hectare.

"Although the area is mostly karst rocks, it is an excellent place for the orchids to grow," Guo said, adding that the area is known for its misty weather, with about 260 foggy days a year around Daxichang, weather perfect for growing orchids.

"I don't need to water them at all."

Since leasing additional land from other villagers, his plantation now extends over 300 hectares. He has devoted himself in part to breeding and growing 100 species of Dendrobium on 130 hectares of land, which produce 20 metric tons of edible fresh Dendrobium twigs a year.

On one 67-hectare parcel, Guo is growing between 500-600 species of orchids he has found in the wild over the years. Native to Malipo's karst forests, they flourish on his plantation, which has become a kind of orchid kingdom.

In May 2018, the International Conference on Wild Orchid Conservation, held that year in Hong Kong, chose Guo's plantation for its on-site research. Sixteen orchid experts from eight countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan, visited his gardens that September.

Because of his extensive collection of wild orchids and excellent growing skills, Guo has been invited to help design orchid gardens in other provinces and to introduce species he has grown to them.

"My orchids can be found in the botanical gardens in a number of big cities," he said.

His success with orchids is now shared by other families in the county. Over the years, he has held dozens of training courses and taught around 1,000 farmers how to grow Dendrobium orchids, and the plant has become a major source of revenue in Malipo.

He has also won numerous government and academic honors over the years. Despite this, neither of Guo's children plans to carry on his work. "This life is too hard and lonely for them," he explained.

His son works with the local government as a temporary worker, and his daughter lives in the county seat.

Guo employs six families to help him take care of his plantation, and although he spends between 400,000-500,000 yuan a year on seasonal workers, he and his wife still do most of the work themselves.

To that degree, it could be said that Guo is the lonely king of his remote orchid kingdom.