A passion for nature helps a former teacher find his true calling

Training

Then he and his colleagues started promoting nature education in schools in Xishuangbanna. Training primary students to be XTBG's voluntary tour guides, building nature clubs in local schools, encouraging students to have "nature journals" of their own, designing and promoting the "night hikes" - one after another, his efforts have helped to turn the botanical garden into one the country's most popular destinations for nature education.

He is a lecturer of various training courses about nature education and one of the initiators of the annual China Nature Education Forum, which has become an exchange platform for the country's nature educators since it was first held in 2014.

As a nature educator, he says, you always need to improve yourselves and learn new things. "In China, school teachers and families are reluctant to set children free in nature for the safety concern," he points out. "They don't take nature education seriously. Even some of our nature educators don't take their work seriously. They consider their job to be just playing around with children and their parents. That's why I think we need training and exchange."

Also in 2014, he received the Marsh Award for Botanic Garden Education, given by the Botanical Garden Conservation International, the world's largest plant conservation network, and supported by the Marsh Christian Trust, for his work in promoting environmental education.

Sophie Williams, a lecturer in conservation science at Bangor University, in North Wales, the United Kingdom, who is doing research related to environmental education at the garden for half a year, every year since 2013, says one of the exciting things about working in XTBG on environmental education is to work with Wang.

"He is such an inspirational educator and communicator, and you can feel how passionate he is about the subjects, not only plants and birds, but all the other parts of natural history," she said. "I think his passion is infectious. Children particularly pick on that and feel really excited about the natural world, which is what we try to do."

Living in an old condominium within the garden with his wife, who is also working with the garden, and his two-year-old son, Wang says that there are two sides to living in the place where you work.

"The good side is that it's truly convenient for me to move between home and workplace," he says. "The bad side - mainly for my family - is that you can hardly separate your work from your life."