Author finds inspiration from elephants

Sun's parents say he was a silent boy and only got excited when he got close to animals. As a child, he also raised insects and arachnids, such as crickets and scorpions. While Sun lives in the heart of the capital city, he spends several months every year staying in the family home to be close to the animals.

Because of the pandemic, Sun has been forced to stop working at elephant shelters in Asian and African countries. He is now working, free of charge, on the translation of an English book, The Amboseli Elephants: A Long-term Perspective on a Long-lived Mammal, which he hopes will be helpful for elephant lovers in China. It's a tough job, however, as in the book, there are hundreds of terms which can't be found in Chinese, he says.

According to Sun, who got his master's degree in ecology from Beijing Normal University in 2016, there are about 300 wild elephants in Pu'er city and Xishuangbanna Dai autonomous prefecture in Yunnan province, near the border with Laos. It was from here that, earlier this year, a herd of 15 Asian elephants started wandering hundreds of kilometers north toward some uncertain destination, capturing the imagination of the Chinese public. It was the longest recorded elephant migration in China's history.

Sun says foreign elephant enthusiasts and experts paid close attention to the migration and communicated with him via email.

"Our government really did a good job on directing these wandering elephants and protecting them," says Sun, who played the role of ambassador, providing information about the migration to his foreign peers when the story rose to global prominence.

In the future, Sun hopes to open a retired elephant shelter, where elderly pachyderms can roam free and members of the public can watch them from a distance.

On many of Sun's social network accounts, he writes that he wants to learn more about elephants and how to protect them. He is already headed in the right direction.

"Though I'm not materially rich, I feel that I have a wealth of knowledge and experience when it comes to elephants," he says.