Wild China Page #4

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where her charges will spend

the next six months

until they're big enough

to fend for themselves.

For the past 20 years,

small-scale conservation projects

like this

are all that have kept China's

Just south of the alligator country,

dawn breaks over

a very different landscape.

The 1,800-metre-high granite peaks

of the Huangshan or Yellow Mountain.

To the Chinese,

Huangshan's pines epitomise

the strength and resilience of nature.

Some of these trees are thought

to be over 1,000 years old.

Below the granite peaks,

steep forested valleys

shelter surprising inhabitants.

Huangshan macaques, rare descendants of

the Tibetan macaques of western China,

are unique to these mountain valleys

where they enjoy strict

official protection.

(SCREECHING)

After a morning spent in the treetops,

the troop is heading for

the shade of the valley.

A chance for the grown-ups

to escape the heat

and maybe pick up a lunch snack

from the stream.

As in most monkey societies,

social contact involves

a lot of grooming.

Grooming is all very well for grown-ups,

but young macaques have energy to burn.

(SCREECHING)

Like so much monkey business,

what starts off as a bit of

playful rough-and-tumble,

soon begins to get out of hand.

The alpha male has seen it all before.

He's not in the least bothered.

But someone, or something, is watching,

with a less than friendly interest.

The Chinese moccasin is

an ambush predator with a deadly bite.

This is one of China's largest

and most feared venomous snakes.

But the monkeys have lived alongside

these dangerous serpents

for thousands of years.

(MONKEYS SCREECHING)

They use this specific alarm call

to warn each other

whenever a snake is spotted.

Once its cover is blown, the viper poses

no threat to the monkeys,

now safe in the treetops.

And life soon returns to normal.

By late summer, the rice fields of

southern China have turned to gold.

The time has come

to bring in the harvest.

Nowadays, modern high-yield strains

are grown throughout

much of the rice lands,

boosted by chemical fertilizers

and reaped by combine harvesters.

This is the great rice bowl of China,

producing a quarter of the world's rice.

Insects, stirred up by

the noisy machines,

are snapped up by gangs

of red-rumped swallows,

including this year's youngsters,

who will have fledged several weeks ago.

This could be their last good feast

before they head south for the winter.

Mechanized farming works best

in the flat-bottomed valleys

of the lowlands.

To the south, in the terraced hills

of Zhejiang Province,

an older and simpler lifestyle persists.

It's 7:
00 in the morning

and Longxian's most

successful businessman is off to work.

In the golden terraces

surrounding the village

the ears of rice are plump

and ripe for harvesting.

But today, rice isn't uppermost

in Mr Yang's mind.

He has bigger fish to fry.

Further up the valley,

the harvest has already begun.

Yang's fields are ripe, too,

but they haven't been drained yet.

That's because for him,

rice is not the main crop.

The baskets he's carried up the hillside

give a clue to Yang's business.

But before he starts work,

he needs to let some water

out of the system.

As the water level drops,

the mystery is revealed.

Golden carp.

Longxian villagers discovered

the benefits of transferring

wild caught carp

into their paddy fields long ago.

The tradition has been going on here

for at least 700 years.

As the water level in the paddy drops,

bamboo gates stop the fish escaping.

The beauty of this farming method

is that it delivers two crops

from the same field at the same time.

Fish and rice.

Smart ecology like this

is what enables China

to be largely self-sufficient in food,

even today.

Back in the village,

Yang has his own smokehouse

where he preserves his fish

ready for market.

Longxian carp have unusually soft scales

and a very delicate flavour,

perhaps as a result of the local water.

Meanwhile, outside the smokehouse,

there's something fishy going on.

(PEOPLE CHATTERING)

To mark the harvest,

the village is staging a party.

Children from Longxian school

have spent weeks preparing for

their big moment.

Everyone from the community

is here to support them.

The rice growing cycle is complete.

By November, northern China

is becoming distinctly chilly.

But the south is still relatively

warm and welcoming.

Across the vast expanse of Poyang Lake,

the birds are gathering.

Tundra swans are long-distance migrants

from northern Siberia.

To the Chinese, they symbolise

the essence of natural beauty.

The Poyang Lake Nature Reserve

offers winter refuge

to more than a quarter

of a million birds

from more than 100 species,

creating one of southern China's

finest wildlife experiences.

The last birds to arrive at Poyang

are those which have made

the longest journey to get here,

all the way from

the Arctic coast of Siberia.

The Siberian crane,

known in China as the white crane,

is seen as a symbol of good luck.

Each year,

almost the entire world population

of these critically endangered birds

make a 9,000-kilometre roundtrip

to spend the winter at Poyang.

Like the white cranes,

many of south China's unique animals

face pressure from exploitation

and competition with people

over space and resources.

But if China is living proof

of anything,

it is that wildlife

is surprisingly resilient.

Given the right help,

even the rarest creatures

can return from the brink.

If we show the will,

nature will find the way.

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