Wild China Page #3

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orientate themselves in the darkness.

Night is the time to go hunting.

Rickett's mouse-eared bat

is the only bat in Asia

which specialises in catching fishes,

tracking them down from

the sound reflection of ripples

on the water surface.

This extraordinary behaviour

was only discovered

in the last couple of years,

and has never been filmed before.

If catching fish in the dark

is impressive,

imagine eating a slippery minnow with

no hands while hanging upside down.

Dawn over the karst hills of Guilin.

These remarkable hills

owe their peculiar shapes

to the mildly acid waters

of the Li River,

whose meandering course

over eons of time

has corroded away their bases

until only the rocky cores remain.

The Li is one of

the cleanest rivers in China,

a favourite spot for fishermen

with their trained cormorants.

(SPEAKING IN CHINESE)

The men, all called Huang,

come from the same village.

Now in their 70s and 80s,

they've been fishermen all their lives.

Before they release the birds,

they tie a noose loosely around the neck

to stop them swallowing

any fish they may catch.

(SPLASHING)

Chanting and dancing,

the Huangs encourage their birds

to take the plunge.

Underwater, the cormorant's

hunting instinct kicks in,

turning them into fish-seeking missiles.

(CHANTING)

Working together, a good cormorant team

can catch a couple of dozen

decent-sized fish in a morning.

(FISHERMEN EXCLAIMING)

The birds return to the raft

with their fish

because they've been trained to do so.

From the time it first hatched,

each of these cormorants has been reared

to a life of obedience to its master.

The birds are, in effect, slaves.

But they're not stupid.

It's said that cormorants can

keep a tally of the fish they catch,

at least up to seven.

So unless they get a reward now and then

they simply withdraw their labour.

The fishermen, of course,

keep the best fish for themselves.

The cormorants get

the leftover tiddlers.

With its collar removed,

the bird at last can swallow its prize.

Best of all, one it isn't meant to have!

(FISHERMAN SHOUTING)

These days, competition from

modern fishing techniques

means the Huangs can't make a living

from traditional

cormorant fishing alone.

And this 1,300-year-old tradition

is now practised mostly

to entertain tourists.

But on Caohai Lake

in nearby Guizhou Province,

an even more unusual

fishing industry is alive and well.

Geng Zhong Sheng is on his way

to set out his nets for the night.

Geng's net is a strange tubular

contraption with a closed-off end.

More than a hundred fishermen

make their living from the lake.

Its mineral-rich waters

are highly productive,

and there are nets everywhere.

The next morning, Geng returns

with his son to collect his catch.

(SPEAKING CHINESE)

At first sight, it looks disappointing.

Tiny fishes, lots of shrimps,

and some wriggling bugs.

Geng doesn't seem too downhearted.

The larger fish are kept alive,

the only way

they'll stay fresh in the heat.

Surprisingly, some of the bugs are also

singled out for special treatment.

They're the young stage of dragonflies,

predators that feed on

worms and tadpoles.

Nowhere else in the world are

dragonfly nymphs harvested like this.

Back home, Geng spreads his catch

on the roof to dry.

This being China,

nothing edible will be wasted.

There's a saying in the far south,

"We will eat anything with legs

except a table,

"and anything with wings

except a plane."

Within a few hours, the dried insects

are ready to be bagged up

and taken to market.

It's the dragonfly nymphs

that fetch the best price.

Fortunately, Caohai's dragonflies

are abundant and fast-breeding.

So Geng and his fellow fishermen

have so far had little impact

on their numbers.

But not all wildlife is so resilient.

(MONKS CHANTING)

This Buddhist temple near Shanghai has

an extraordinary story attached to it.

In May 2007, a Wild China camera team

filmed this peculiar Swinhoe's turtle

in the temple's fish pond.

According to the monks,

the turtle had been given to the temple

during the Ming dynasty,

over 400 years ago.

It was thought to be

the oldest animal on earth.

Soft-shelled turtles are considered

a gourmet delicacy by many Chinese,

and when it was filmed,

this was one of just three

Swinhoe's turtles left alive in China,

the rest of its kind

having been rounded up and eaten.

Sadly, just a few weeks after filming,

this ancient creature died.

The remaining individuals of its species

are currently kept in separate zoos

and Swinhoe's turtle is now

reckoned extinct in the wild.

In fact, most of the 25 types

of freshwater turtles in China

are now vanishingly rare.

The answer to extinction is protection.

And there is now a growing network

of nature reserves

throughout southern China.

Of these, the Tianzi Mountain Reserve

at Zhangjiajie is perhaps

the most visited by Chinese

nature lovers,

who come to marvel

at the gravity-defying landscape

of soaring sandstone pinnacles.

Winding between Zhangjiajie's peaks,

crystal clear mountain streams

are home to what is perhaps

China's strangest creature.

This bizarre animal is a type of newt,

the Chinese giant salamander.

In China it is known as the baby fish

because when distressed

it makes a sound like a crying infant.

It grows up to a metre and a half long,

making it the world's largest amphibian.

Under natural conditions,

a giant salamander may live for decades.

But like so many Chinese animals,

it is considered delicious to eat.

Despite being classed

as a protected species,

giant salamanders

are still illegally sold for food

and the baby fish is now rare

and endangered in the wild.

Fortunately, in a few areas

like Zhangjiajie,

giant salamanders still survive

under strict official protection.

The rivers of Zhangjiajie flow

north east into the Yangtze floodplain,

known as The Land of Fish and Rice.

On an island in a lake

in Anhui Province,

a dragon is stirring.

This is the ancestral home

of China's largest and rarest reptile,

a creature of mystery and legend.

Dragon eggs are greatly prized.

These babies need to hatch out quick!

It would seem someone is on their trail.

For a helpless baby reptile,

imprisoned in a leathery membrane

inside a chalky shell,

the process of hatching

is a titanic struggle.

And time is running out.

(CHIRPING)

It's taken two hours

for the little dragon

to get its head out of the egg.

It needs to gather its strength now,

for one final, massive push.

Free at last,

the baby Chinese alligators

instinctively head upwards

towards the surface of the nest

and the waiting outside world.

(CHATTERING)

But the visitors are not what they seem.

(BOTH SPEAKING CHINESE)

She Shizhen and her son live nearby.

She has been caring for

her local alligators for over 20 years,

so she had a fair idea

when the eggs were likely to hatch.

Back home, she's built a pond surrounded

by netting to keep out predators,

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