My name is Akihiro, or Aki Nakamura, from Japan. I came to China in 2013, almost nine years ago. I have been working here, in Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), ever since. At the moment, I’m working as a professor and a group leader of the Forest Canopy Ecology Lab. My life here has been great.

Why did you choose to come to Yunnan?

It’s a long story. I think, first, I would like to address that it is important to become someone unique, instead of being one of many. If you want to be successful in your career, being someone unique is very important. I was looking for a place to be like that and I found this place is ideal because the natural places and the working environment provide great research opportunities for people like biologists and ecologists like myself to work. And I enjoy working with Chinese colleagues.

In 2010, I was in Australia. I started working with colleagues from CAS’s XTBG. We began three years of collaboration in 2010. I had a chance to visit China in the first year of that collaborative project. I experienced life in China, met a lot of people, and saw a lot of natural places. I thought China was nothing like what I imagined. This country gives unique opportunities for us to do tropical ecology like no other. I made a lot of friends. At the end of the international project in 2013, my colleagues invited me to work in Xishuangbanna. I said yes and I didn’t even think twice. I just said yes.

After coming to Yunnan, what have you been mainly working on?

I’m an ecologist, but I mainly work on insects, basically, conservation and ecology of insects. I work on insect specimens collected from Yunnan. We collected insect samples in 2011 and turned them into specimens about 10 years ago. We just finished databasing these insects about three years ago.

It took us seven years to document the diversity of the insects we collected in 2011. It takes a lot of time to document the diversity of insects and to understand their ecology. We need to build basic knowledge of insect diversity because we know nothing about insects in this region and across the world. Ever since I came to China, I have been working on the basic ecology of insects, mainly by documenting their biodiversity. We want to know how many species of insects are in Southwest China’s Yunnan Province, and where are they distributed.

Also, I was very much interested in educating students from China and Southeast Asia. We have a lot of students from different countries. I was mentoring them to obtain a master’s degree or a Ph.D. My work has been recognized in Yunnan and the Yunnan provincial government gave me some recognition; including the Yunnan Friendship Award, awarded for foreigners working in Yunnan. I’m very glad to have received it in 2019. I feel that I have achieved so little so far. I wish to stay here and I want to achieve more.

What does Xishuangbanna tropical rainforest contribute to your research?

You know this place, Xishuangbanna, is in the tropical area, a very unique area in China. It is great for people like us working on entomology, such as insect conservation and ecology. In addition, it is located very close to Southeast Asia, which makes my research very convenient in many ways. I can work in Southeast Asia as well as China.

A lot of research funding is available from the Chinese government, and from CAS, and the Yunnan provincial government. They help us to do a lot of research. The Yunnan provincial government supports us with ample resources. They recognize our contributions to science and conservation even though I am doing some basic science, not rocket science, not molecular biology, just basic science of documenting diversity.

CAS’s XTBG, my work unit, also recognizes the kind of contribution found in my work and they give us a lot of support. So, I sincerely appreciate it. I don’t think I could do my work anywhere else than in China.

What are your future plans in China, including your work and your personal life?

My wife is a Thai person. She feels comfortable here because the environment is similar to Thailand. She can even talk to local people here. They share a similar language. So this place is wonderful. If I were to use only one word to describe why I enjoy this place, it would be “diversity”. I love the cultural and natural diversity of this place. You know, as I said, insects are everywhere here; the diversity of insects is wonderful. Apart from insects, we even have elephants.

When you move from Xishuangbanna to the north, to Kunming, Lijiang or Shangri-La, you realize the diversity of animals and insects changes a lot, as does cultural diversity. We have a lot of different minorities. They have their unique cultural backgrounds. Their languages are different, cuisines are different. When you go to different places in Yunnan, you enjoy different cultures. So, what do I want to do in the future? A lot of things I’d like to do, but just to pick two, I’d like to continue to expand our knowledge about insect diversity in Yunnan and address the conservation significance of this place.

For my personal life, this place is getting more comfortable. You know the high-speed train was put into service in Xishuangbanna as of December 2021. It is exciting for me because I can go back to Thailand by train and visit Kunming easily. Our life is becoming more exciting and more convenient. Life is getting more comfortable here for us and there are a lot of work opportunities.

Source: YNTV