Close to the lions

A Chongqing man's wildlife conservation efforts in Kenya are gaining media attention, Cheng Yuezhu reports. 

During his childhood, Zhuo Qiang often dreamed that he would transform into a lion and run freely across a vast expanse of green.

Zhuo, now 46, has lived and worked for almost a decade among the lions of Africa as a Chinese wildlife conservationist. He is locally known as Simba, meaning "lion" in Swahili.

Before going to Africa, he first learned English and French-both commonly used languages on the continent-at Sichuan University in China and then worked in foreign affairs as a civil servant in the city of Chongqing for over 10 years. And when he had the chance to set foot on Africa in 2004, Zhuo felt he might be able to finally answer his true calling.

"Africa looked exactly the same as in my childhood dreams. I felt the ultimate freedom that the Earth is round and expansive, that everything is happy and free," he says.

"When I first saw the lions in the wild and learned that they were becoming extinct, I made up my mind to protect them."

However, deciding in his 30s to leave everything behind in China and go to Africa for wildlife work didn't seem an easy task, even to him, at first. It took him six years of deliberation before he submitted his resignation and settled in the Ol Kinyei Conservancy in Maasai Mara National Reserve of Kenya in 2011.