Everything Great has a Beginning
South China Karst Plain Project (SCKPP)
by UTD Instructor Chew Poh Chang
I
t started off over a casual conversation – an adventure and dream to explore the vast caves in
the Chinese region call Guangxi. Guangxi, an autonomous region in southern China, is known
for its rivers, caves and towering karst formations.
The project was started in 2016 where an international team of 14 cave divers led by Andrew
Georgitsis arrived in Nanning in September 2016 and SCKPP was formed.
SCKPP’s mission is to look for suitable cave training sites ,but more importantly to preserve,
conserve and educate the local community. Over the days the team’s mission was to explore
caves in Nanning, Liuzhou and Du’an. As the saying goes, “the difficult road often lead to a
beautiful destination.” The reward was an inspiring new generation of cave divers to chase their
dream safely.
The team is not here there to break records, but rather to ensure that safe cave diving and best
practices are in place in this region. The formation of a SCKPP community driven by local
Chinese divers echoes the message that caves are beautiful living organisms that need to be
preserved and respected.
In April 2017 Andrew Georgistis, Juan Naval and Poh Chang Chew headed to Laibin once
again. AG and Juan were exploring
new cave sites and Poh was conduct-
ing a UTD OHP and Cave 1 diver
course to continuing growing a new
generation of cave divers. The cave
expedition was a success and led to
the upcoming project in October 2017
to attempt to connect the upstream to
downstream Beiwu cave site.
Sometimes life is about chasing dream
that no one can see except you.
Rdgs, PC
TM