The video explores the enchanting yet lesser-known natural landscapes and wildlife of China, emphasizing the diverse ecosystems and species that thrive amidst the country's distinctive geographical environments. From the verdant subtropical regions in the south, featuring age-old practices of rice cultivation and the intricate balance between human and wildlife interaction, to the spectacular and mysterious karst landscapes hiding extensive cave systems, these areas showcase a side of China that is often overshadowed by its massive urban development.

Despite facing significant social and environmental challenges, China remains a nation of extraordinary natural beauty and biodiversity. The video delves into the intricate relationships between people and their environment, highlighting how traditional communities like the Miao cultivate rice in challenging terrains, symbolizing a harmonious coexistence with nature. Moreover, it brings attention to unique wildlife, including rare primates, the majestic Siberian crane, and endangered creatures like the Chinese alligator, showcasing conservation efforts crucial for their survival.

Main takeaways from the video:

Please remember to turn on the CC button to view the subtitles.

Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. subterranean [ˌsʌbtəˈreɪniən] - (adjective) - Existing or situated below the surface of the earth. - Synonyms: (underground, belowground, buried)

Fed by countless drips and trickles, the subterranean river carves ever deeper into the rock.

2. epitomize [ɪˈpɪtəˌmaɪz] - (verb) - To be a perfect example of something. - Synonyms: (embody, exemplify, typify)

To the Chinese, Hongshan's pines epitomize the strength and resilience of nature.

3. insidious [ɪnˈsɪdiəs] - (adjective) - Proceeding in a gradual, subtle way, but with harmful effects. - Synonyms: (stealthy, subtle, cunning)

The Chinese moccasin is an insidious predator with a deadly bite.

4. quagmire [ˈkwæɡˌmaɪər] - (noun) - A soft boggy area of land that gives way underfoot. - Synonyms: (swamp, marsh, morass)

But it isn't just wildlife that thrives in this environment. The swampy ground provides ideal conditions for a remarkable member of the grass family.

5. intrepid [ɪnˈtrɛpɪd] - (adjective) - Fearless, adventurous. - Synonyms: (fearless, courageous, bold)

Much of this hidden world has never been seen by human eyes and is only just now being explored. For a growing band of intrepid young Chinese explorers, caves represent the ultimate adventure.

6. noose [nuːs] - (noun) - A loop with a slipknot that tightens as the rope or wire is pulled. - Synonyms: (loop, snare, knot)

Before they release the birds, they tie a noose loosely around the neck to stop them swallowing any fish they may catch.

7. prospected [ˈprɒspektɪd] - (verb) - To search for mineral deposits or oil by drilling or excavation. - Synonyms: (explored, examined, surveyed)

So far, only a fraction of China's caves have been thoroughly prospected.

8. predicates [ˈprɛdɪkeɪts] - (verb) - States, affirms, or asserts about a subject. - Synonyms: (asserts, claims, declares)

Miao people believe the birds arrival predicts the timing of the season ahead.

9. detrimental [ˌdɛtrɪˈmɛntəl] - (adjective) - Tending to cause harm. - Synonyms: (harmful, damaging, injurious)

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.

10. ingenious [ɪnˈdʒiːniəs] - (adjective) - Clever, original, and inventive. - Synonyms: (clever, creative, innovative)

This man made landscape is one of the most amazing engineering feats of pre industrial China.

FULL EPISODE - Strange Creatures of Southern China - Wild China - BBC Earth

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 its largest. With well over a billion people. It's home to more than 50 distinct ethnic groups and a wide range of traditional lifestyles, 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 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 landscape in which they live. This is wild. 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 the floodplain of the Yangtze river, black tailed godwits probe the mud in search of worms. But it isn't just wildlife that thrives in this environment.

The swampy ground provides ideal conditions for a remarkable member of the grass family. Rice. The Chinese have been cultivating rice for at least 8,000 years. It has transformed the landscape. Late winter in southern Yunnan is a busy time for local farmers as they prepare the age old paddy fields ready for the coming spring. These hill slopes of Yuanyang county plunge nearly 2,000 meters to the floor of the Red river valley. Each contains literally thousands of stacked terraces carved out by hand using basic digging tools. Yunnan's rice terraces are among the oldest human structures in China, still plowed 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 pre industrial 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 the females. But it doesn't always pay to draw too much attention to your. The Chinese pond heron is a pitiless predator. Even in the 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 the vast majority will escape to croak another day.

Terrace paddies like those of the Yuanyang county are found across much of southern China. This whole vast landscape is dominated by rice cultivation. In Hili, 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 will 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 chit chat. Granddad Goo Yong SEO has serious matters on his mind. Spring is the start of the rice growing season.

The success of the crop will determine 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, a pair of red rumped swallows, newly arrived from their winter migration, is busy fixing up last year's nest. In China, animals are valued as much for their symbolic meaning as for any good they may do. Ngao 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, Grand Aguas notes the exact day the swallows return. Miao people believe the birds arrival predicts the timing of the 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 meow prepare their fields for planting, the swallows collect mud to repair their nests and chase after insects across the newly plowed paddle. Finally, after weeks of preparation, the ordained time for planting has arrived. But first the seedlings must be uprooted from the nursery beds and bundled up, ready to be transported to their new paddy higher up the hillside.

All the songs 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 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 food. The rice paddies harbor tadpoles, fish and insects. And the egrets have chicks to feed. This colony in Chongqing Province was established in 1996, when a few dozen birds built nests in the bamboo grove behind Yangguang Village.

Believing they were a sign of luck, local people initially protected the egrets, and the colony grew. But their attitude changed when the head of the village fell ill. They blamed 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 this youngster won't end up as someone's dinner. These chicks have just had an eel delivered by their mum. Quite a challenge for little geeks, 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 cartons separated by dry, empty valleys. This is the cast 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 gullies and sharp edge pinnacles. Limestone has the strange property that it dissolves in rainwater. Over many thousands of years, water has corroded its way deep into the heart of the bedrock itself. This natural wonder is 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 prizes for guessing what this one is called, but there's more to this landscape than meets the eye. China has literally thousands of mysterious caverns concealed beneath the visible landscape of the caste. Much of this hidden world has never been seen by human eyes and is 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 a journey through time, a journey which endless raindrops will 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 allow the river to increase its gradient and flow rate, providing a real challenge for the cave explorers. It's the downward rush is 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 eyeless golden barb. China may have more 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 deposits tiny quantities of rock. Over hundreds or thousands of years, Stalagmites grow up where lime laden drips hit the cave floor. So far, only a fraction of China's caves have been thoroughly prospected. And cavers 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. For 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, Francoise Langor. In China, they survive in just two southern provinces, Huizhou and Guangxi, always in rugged limestone terrains. Like most monkeys, they are social creatures and spend a great deal of time grooming each other.

Mangoes 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 vice like grip used to cling on to mum for dear life. As they get older, they get bolder and take more risks. Those that survive spend a lot of time traveling. The experienced adults know exactly where to find seasonal foods 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 learn to walk. In Langur society, females rule the roost and take the lead when the family is on the move.

One section of cliff oozes a trickle of mineral rich water which the monkeys seem to find irresistible. These days, there are few predators in the Ma Yanghe Reserve, which might pose a risk to a 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 training skills to seek shelter in inaccessible caverns. Filmed in near darkness using a night vision camera, the troop clambers 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, journey's end. A cozy niche beyond the reach of even the most enterprising predator. In southern China, caves aren't just used for shelter. They can be a source of revenue for the people have been visiting this cave for generations. The cave floor is covered in guano so plentiful that 10 minutes work can fill these farmers baskets. It's used as a valuable source of fertilizer. A clue to the source of the guano can be heard above the noise of the river. The sound originates high up in the roof of the cave. The entrance is full of swifts. They're very sociable birds. More than 200,000 of them share this cave in southern Guizhou province, the biggest swift colony in China.

These days, Chinese house swifts mostly nest in the roofs of buildings, but rock crevices like these were their original home long before houses were invented. Though the swifts depend on the cave for shelter, they never stray further than the limits of daylight, as their eyes can't see in the dark. However, deep inside the cavern, other creatures are better equipped for subterranean life. A colony of bats is just waking up, using ultrasonic squeaks to orientate themselves in the darkness. Night is the time to go hunting. Ricketts Mouse eared bat is the only bat in Asia which specializes in catching fishes, tracking them down from the sound reflection of ripples on the water surface. This extraordinary behavior 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 cast 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 favorite spot for fishermen with their trained cormorants. 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. Chanting and dancing the Huangs encourage their birds to take the plunge.

Underwater, the cormorants hunting instinct kicks in, turning them into fish seeking missiles. Working together, a good cormorant team can catch a couple of dozen decent sized fish in a morning. Hello. 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 labor.

The fishermen of course, keep the best fish for themselves. The cormorants get the leftover tiddlers. With its collar removed, the bird can at last swallow its prize. Best of all, one it isn't meant to have. These days, competition from modern fishing techniques means the Huangs can't make a living from traditional cormorant fishing alone. And this 1300 year old tradition is now practiced mostly to entertain tourists. 800 kilometers north of the Li river, the vast expanse of limestone hills terminates in what is perhaps South China's most dramatic mountain scenery, internationally recognized as a World Heritage site.

Though it looks like a karst landscape, this fantastical terrain of soaring pinnacles and vertical gorges is actually carved from a type of sandstone. Winding between Jiangjiazhu'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 meter 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 Jiangjiazhi, giant salamanders still survive under strict official protection. The rivers of Jiangjiazhi flow northeast into the Yangtze floodplain, known as the land of Fish and Rice. On an island in a lake in Hanhui 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 was seen 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. 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 p. Free at last, the baby Chinese alligators instinctively head upwards towards the surface of the nest and the waiting outside world. But the visitors are not what they seem, and her son live nearby. Shu 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, 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 150 wild alligators from extinction. Just south of the alligator country, dawn breaks over a very different landscape. The 1800 meter high granite peaks of the Hungshan, or Yellow Mountain. To the Chinese, Hongshan's pines epitomize the strength and resilience of nature. Some of these trees are thought to be over a thousand years old. Below the granite peaks, steep forested valleys shelter sepulchre surprising inhabitants.

Huangshan maaaks, rare descendants of the Tibetan macaques of western China, are unique to these mountain valleys where they enjoy strict official protection. 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. 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 ambushed 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. 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 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 ricelands, 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. By November, the rice harvest is a distant memory. 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 symbolize 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 a hundred 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 kilometer round trip 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. Sa.

CHINA, WILDLIFE, CONSERVATION, NATURE, ECOLOGY, GLOBAL, BBC EARTH