The heart of the dragon

The last hidden world, China. For centuries,travelers to China have told tales of magical landscapes and surprising creatures. Chinese civilization is the world’s oldest, and today it’s largest with well over a billion people. It’s home to more than fifty distinct ethnic groups and a wide range of traditional life styles often in close partnership with nature. We know that China faces immense social and environmental problems, but there is great beauty here too. China is home to the world’s highest mountains, vast deserts ranging from from searing hot to mind numbing cold, steaming forests harboring rare creatures, grassy plains beneath vast horizons, and rich tropical seas. Now, for the first time ever, we can explore the whole of this great country, meet some of the surprising and exotic creatures that live here, and consider the relationship of the people and wildlife of China to the remarkable landscaping which they live. This is wild China.

   Our exploration of china begins in the warm subtropical south. On the li river fishermen and birds perch on bamboo rafts, a partnership goes back more than a thousand years. This scenery is known throughout the world, a recurring motif in Chinese paintings and a major tourist attraction. 

   The south of china is a vast area eight times larger than the UK. It’s a landscape of hills, but also of water. It rains here for up to 250 days a year and standing water is everywhere. In a floodplain of the yangtse river, black-tailed godwits probe the mud in search of worms. But it isn’t just wildlife that thrive in this environment, the swampy ground provides ideal conditions for the remarkable member of the grass family---rice. The Chinese have been cultivating rice for at least 8 thousand years. It has transformed the landscape.

   Later winter in southern Yunnan is a busy time for local farmers as they prepare the age-old paddy field ready for the coming spring. These hills slopes of yuanyang county plunge nearly 2000m to the floor of the red river valley, each contains leterally thousands of stack terraces carved out by hand using basic digging tools. Yuannan’s rice terraces are among the oldest human structures in China still ploughed as they always have been by domesticated water buffaloes whose ancestors originated in these very valleys. This man-made landscape is one of the most amazing engineering feats of preindustrial china. It seems as if every square inch of land has been pressed into cultivation. As evening approaches, an age-old ritual unfolds. It’s the mating season and male paddy frogs are competing for the attention of females. But it doesn’t always pay to draw too much attention to yourself. The Chinese pond heron is a crapulous predator. Even in middle of a ploughed paddy field, nature is red in beak and claw. This may look like a slaughter, but as each heron can swallow only one frog at a time, the vast majority will escape to croak another day. Terraces paddies like those of yunyang county are found across much of southern china. This whole vast landscape is dominated by rice cultivation.

   In heated guizhou province the Miao minority have developed a remarkable rice culture. With every inch of fertile land given over to rice cultivation, the Miao build their wooden houses on the steepest and least productive hillsides. In Chinese rural life everything has a use. Dried in the sun manure from the cowsheds would be used as cooking fuel. It’s midday and the song family are tucking into a lunch of rice and vegetables. Oblivious to the domestic chitchat, granddad guyong song has serious matters on his mind. Spring is a start of rice growing season, the success of the crop will determine how well the family will eat next year, so planting at a right time is critical. The ideal date depends on what the weather will do this year, never easy to predict. But there is some surprising help at hand. On the cileing of the song’s living room a pair of red-rumped swallow, newly arrive from their winter migration, is busy fixing up the last year’s nest. In china animals are valued does much for their symbolic meaning as for many good they may do. Miao people believe that swallow pairs remain faithful for life so their presence is a favor and a blessing, bringing happiness to a marriage and good luck to a home. Like most miao dwellings, the song’s living room windows look out over the paddy fields. From early spring, one of these windows is always left open to let the swallows come and go freely. Each year grandday gu knows the exact day the swallows return. Miao people believe the birds arrival predicts the timing of a season ahead. This year, they were late. So gu and the other community elders have agreed that rice planting should be delayed accordingly. As the miao prepare their fields for planting, the swallows collect mud to repair their nests and chase after insects across the newly ploughed paddies. Finally, after weeks of preparation, the ordained time for planting has arrived, but first the seedlings must be uproot from the nursery beds and bundled up ready to be transported to their new paddy. All the song’s neighbors have turned out to help with the transplanting. It’s how the community has always worked. When the time comes, the songs will return the favor. While the farmers are busy in the fields, the swallows fly back and forth with material for their nest. Many hands make light work. Planting the new paddy takes a little more than an hour. Job done, the villagers can relax at least until tomorrow. But for the nesting swallows, the work of raising a family has only just begun.

   In the newly planted fields, little egrets hunt for foods. The rice paddy harbor tadpoles fish and insects and egrets have chicks to feed. This colony in Chongqing province is established in 1996. when a few dozen birds build nests in the bamboo grove behind Yanguang village. Believing they were assigned of luck, local people initially protected the egrets and the colony grove. But their attitude change when the head of the village fell ill. They blame the birds and were all set to destroy their nests when the local government stepped in to protect them. Bendy bamboo may not be the safest nesting place, but at least these youngsters won’t end up at someone’s dinner. These chicks have just had a meal delivered by their mum, quite a challenge for litter beaks. Providing their colonies are protected, wading birds like egrets are among the few wild creatures which benefit directly from intensive rice cultivation. Growing rice needs lots of water, but even in the rainy south, there are landscapes  where water is surprisingly scarce.

   This vast area of southwest china, the size of france and spain combined, is famous for its clusters of conical hills like giant upturned egg carton sepearted by dry empty valleys. This is the karst, a limestone terrain which has become the defining image of southern china. Karst landscapes are often studded with rocky outcrops, forcing local farmers to cultivate tiny fields. The people who live here are among the poorest in china. In neighboring Yunnan province limestone rocks have taken over entirely. This is the famous stone forest, the product of countless years of erosion, producing a maze of deep gullets and sharp-edged pinnacles. Limestone has a strange property that is dissolves in rain water. Over many thousands of years, water has corrode its way deep into the heart of the bedrock itself. This nature wonder has a famous tourist spot, receiving close to 2 million visitors each year. The Chinese are fond of curiously shaped rocks and many have been given fanciful names. No prices for guessing what this one is called.

   But there is more to this landscape than meets the eye. China has literally thousands of mysterious caverns concealed beneath the visible landscape of the karst. much of this hidden world has never been seen by human eyes. And it’s only just now being explored. For a growing band of intrepid young Chinese explorers, caves represent the ultimate adventure. Exploring a cave is like taking the journey through time, a journey which endless raindrops would have followed over countless centuries. Fed by countless drips and trickles, the subterranean river carves ever deeper into the rock. The cave river’s course is channeled by the beds of limestone. A weakness in the rock can not allow the river to increase its gradient flow rate, providing a real challenge for the cave explorers. Thedownward rushes halted when the water table is reached. Here the slow flowing river carves tunnels with a more rounded profile. This tranquil world is home to specialized cave fishes like the eye-less golden barb. China may have unique kinds of cave evolved fishes than anywhere else on earth. Above the water table, ancient caverns abandoned by the river slowly fill up with stalactites and stalagmites. Stalactites form as trickling water deposites tiny quantities of rock. Over hundreds or thousands of years, stalagmites grow up where lime laid and drips hit the cave floor. So far, only a fraction of china’s caves have been thoroughly prospected and caves are constantly discovering new subterranean marvels. Many of which are subsequently developed into commercial show caves. Finally escaping the darkness, the cave river and its human explorers emerge in a valley far from where their journey began or now the adventure is over. 

   Rivers which issue from caves are the key to survival in the karst country. The vertical gorge in guizhou province is a focal point for the region’s wildlife. This is one of the world’s rarest primates, Francois’s langur. In china, they survive in just two southern provinces, guizhou and guangx, always in ragged limestone terrains. Like most monkeys, they’re social creatures and spend a great deal of time grooming each other. Langurs are essentially vegetarian with a diet of buds, fruits, and tender young leaves. Babies are born with ginger fur which gradually turns black from the tail end. Young infants have a vise-like grip used for cling on to mom for dare life. As they get older, they get bolder and take more risks. Those have survive spend a lot of time travelling. Yet experienced adults know exactly where to find seasonal food in different parts of their range. In such steep terrain, travel involves a high level of climbing skill. These monkeys are spectacularly good rock climbers from the time they learnt to walk. In langur society females rule the roost and take the lead when the family is on the move. One section of cliff, woops is a trickle of mineral-rich water which the monkeys seem to find irresistible. These days there are few predators in the mayanghe reserve which might pose a risk to baby monkey, but in past centuries, this area of south china was home to leopards, pythons, and even tigers. To survive dangerous night prowlers, the langurs went underground using their rock climbing skills to seek shelter in inaccessible caverns. Filmed in near darkness using a night vision camera, the troop clambes along familiar ledges worn smooth by generations before them. During cold winter weather, the monkeys venture deeper underground where the air stays comparatively warm. At last , journeys end, a coated niche beyond the reach of even the most enterprising predator.

  But it’s not just monkeys that find shelter in caves. These children are off to school. In rural china, that may mean a longtrek each morning passing through a cave or two on the way. But not all pupils have to walk to school. These children are boarders. As the day pupils near journey’s end, the boarders are still making breakfast. In the school yard, someone seems to have switched the lights off. But this is no ordinary playground and no ordinary school. It’s house inside a cave. A natural vault of rock keeps out the rain, so there is no need for a roof on the classroom. Zhongdong cave school is made up of 6 classes with a total of 200 children. As well as a school, the cave houses 18 families together with their livestock. This could be the only cave dwelling cows on earth. With school work over, it’s play time at last.

   In southern china, caves aren’t just used for shelter, they can be a source of revenue for the community. People have been visiting this cave for generations.