锦绣华南英文字幕

锦绣华南英文字幕

The last hidden world

China

For centuries, travellers 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 50 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 that 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 a landscape

锦绣华南英文字幕

Late winter in southern Yunnan, it's a busy time for local farmers

as they prepare the age-old paddy field ready for the coming spring

These hill slopes of Yuanyang county

plunge nearly 2 thousand meters to the floor of the Red River Valley

each contains literally thousands of stack terraces carved out by hand using basic digging tools Yunnan'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 dosen't always pay to draw too much attention to youself

The Chinese Pond Heron is a crapulous predator

Even in the middle of a ploughed paddy field

<i>nature is red in beacon claw</i>

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

Terrace paddies like those of Yunyang county are found across much of southern China This whole vast landscape is dominated by rice cultivation

In here in 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

Oblivious to the domestic chitchat

granddad Guyong Song has serious maters on his mind

Spring is a start of the rice growing season

the success of the crop will determin how well the family will eat next year

so planting at the 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 ceiling of the Song's living room

is busy fixing up last year's nest

In China, animals have value does much for their symbolic meaning as for many good they may do

Miao people believe that swallow pairs remain faithful for life

锦绣华南英文字幕

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, granddad Gu knows the exat 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

higher up the hillside

All the Song's neighbors have turned 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

Bedny 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 mom

quite a chance for litter beaks

锦绣华南英文字幕

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 seperated by dry empty valleys

This is the karst

a limestone terrain which has become the defining image of southern China

Karst landscapes are often studed with rocky outcrops

forcing local farmers to cultivate tiny fields

The people who live here

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 natural wonder has a famous tourist spot

receiving close to 2m 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

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 witness in the rock can not allow the river to increase its gradient to flow in

providing a real challenge for the cave explorers

The downward 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

锦绣华南英文字幕

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

This vertical gorge in Guizhou province

is a focal point for the region's wildlife

This is one of the world's rarest primates

Fran'c'ois' langur

In China, they survive in just two southern provinces

Guizhou and Guangxi

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 jinger fur

which gradually turns black from the tail end

Young infants have a vise-like grip

used for cling on to mom for deer life

As they get older

they get bolder and take more risks

Those are the 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