On an idyllic holiday, questions of population become a weighty matter

Urbanization has drastic and irreversible effects on our environment, not all of them negative. Deserted villages are a true indicator of the decreasing environmental pressure from our rural population.

At a remote village in Xishuangbanna, Yunnan province, an old hunter of the Dai ethnic group told me that hunting there has largely become a thing of the past because young people have migrated to cities to find work, considering hunting time-consuming, hard work, and unwilling to have anything to do with it when they return to their home towns or villages on holiday. For me, that is a positive consequence of urbanization.

When I go traveling I like to go to places that have natural attractions that are as little disturbed by humans as possible. Of course, I am more likely to find that outside China.

However, on a recent trip to Indonesia my feelings were mixed.

On the island of Halmahera and in Gede-Pangrango National Park in West Java, I saw beautiful tropical forests that are extremely rich in biodiversity. I saw many different species of birds and animals indigenous to the regions, such as Javan langurs (also known as Ebon leaf monkeys) and the fascinating Wallace's standard wings. This is a species of bird of paradise that presents its unique courtship display in a patch of forest on Halmahera.

However, in the lower part of the national park, which is dominated by the twin volcanoes of Mount Gede and Mount Pangrango, there was another not so unusual species: flocks of day trippers who were noisy, were often listening to radios, and who sang and shouted to each other. The also left a lot of rubbish on the trail. It reminded me of climbing Fragrant Hills, a park in Beijing well known for its maple leaves, on a weekend in autumn.

On Halmahera, so as to avoid weekend traffic, I changed my plan to explore the national park for another morning and left at 6 am.

These are only two minor downsides on a trip that was otherwise highly enjoyable.

It needs to be remembered, too, that Java is the world's populous island, home to about 139 million people, 57 percent of Indonesia's population, so what I experienced was no huge surprise.