My destiny with Amur Tigers

Me and Loneliness

Conditions in the wild are not as good as you may imagine. After all, primeval forest is not a well-built tourist attraction, even the road conditions are very bad. We, who fight in the front line, patrol in the mountains and forests all day long. We just bring simple rations for a quick lunch. We've always been working in the field, trekking the piercing river in spring, enduring humidity and heat in summer, exposed to mosquitoes called "autumn tigers" in autumn and suffering dozens of degrees below zero in winter. One time, when I was patrolling, I walked all day long to a camera monitoring site, only to find that the camera was lost. I sat under a tree at the top of the mountain, smoking a cigarette. I suddenly felt a whirlpool of emotion - misunderstanding from my families, difficulties in work and life, freedom of walking alone in the woods, and many lonely sleepless cold nights. Then I burst into tears……

It's different from working in cities, solitude and loneliness is normal here since we are far away from people. Listening to birds and watching weeds are a fresh experience at first, but it is tough to repeat the same work day after day. I have worked in such a natural environment for more than 20 years, and today I'm still working in the front line of wildlife conservation. There were many people who volunteered to protect wild animals with me, but after a period of time, they failed to persist. Very few of them can stay for more than ten or even twenty years.