Wild China

18-06-2008

Planet Earth is wondrous - don't expect too much in the way of insight or revealing science, just be amazed by the awesome images. The episode "Ice Worlds" is my favourite - very powerful stuff.

18-06-2008

PS. Planet Earth fans, the same BBC team is now filming a follow-up called The Frozen Planet which looks exclusively at the polar regions. It should be ready for 2012. Can't wait, even though it is only going to be 6 episodes this time.

19-06-2008

Could we be seeing spectacled eiders here, like on life of birds?

21-06-2008

Or should it be called "Life in the Freezer 2"...

Just to be clear... Are people stating that the propaganda was forced on the producers by the Chinese government, it wouldn't suprise me but surely they could have changed it when they got back to England..?

21-06-2008

I agree with Chris79: the "Planet Earth" series is amazing. Check out the thread here at ZooBeat to learn more about this wonderful set of nature documentaries.

21-06-2008

You know how people are these days-most likely, the Chinese would have sued the BBC then and in the end the documentary would have never been shown...

21-06-2008

I didn't see the last part of the series, but as wildlife films go there was much about destruction of nature. Wiping out larger animals and tree-cutting was mentioned in each part, often several times.

There was forced industrialization and disastrous sparrow-killing campaign under Mao, non-existence of wild giant softshells and wild Siberian tigers.

If you expected to be shown non-governmental organizations like in the West, they don't exist. What I didn't like is green propaganda/wishful thinking about how valuable is nature to Chinese. I suppose they wanted to use Chinese self-importance to make them value nature, but it was hard to listen to.

And, overall, they captured a spirit of eastern China - total destruction of nature. Every metre of land is under cultivation, climbing into mountains where in Europe you have forest or ski villages. Only wild animals are insects and few small birds. When I first time returned from China to Europe, I was enjoying seeing mallards, crows and gulls - they don't exist in China.

24-06-2008

Indeed, it will be an amalgam of "Life in the Freezer" (1993) and "Kingdom of the Ice Bear" (1985), but this time I expect we'll get a lot more stuff about climate change....

24-06-2008

Life In The Freezer was fantastic for anyone who missed it, I had to hire it on DVD down here in NZ...

You right Chris I suspect... Global Warming will be a BIG theme...

13-07-2008

the first episode of Wild China FINALLY aired down here in NZ. I thought it was fantastic. Best scenes were the huge expanse of rice paddies (just for the spectacle of it), the macaques plunging into the swimming pool (I expect that will be expanded upon in a later episode?), and the karst landscapes were simply amazing! The shots of the Francois' langurs creeping along ledges in the dark to hole up in the depths of the cave were really bizarre. As usual with the BBC "Wild..." series, now I really want to travel there!

08-09-2008

has anyone else read the Wild China book? It follows the same structure as the series but can go into more depth and can be a bit more critical of China's wildlife record. On page 10 for example, it says "There are no official statistics on the amount of wildlife being eaten in China, but the China Wildlife Conservation Association estimates that in Guangdong province alone [a tiny area relative to China's overall size], 50 tons of wild frogs, 1000 tons of snakes and several thousand tons of wild birds are consumed in stores and restaurants each year, plus an array of mammals including badgers, civets, bats and pangolins." Sort of left me wondering how many individual frogs there might be in 50 tons!

Best of all though is the gazeteer at the back which details where and how to see China's animals in the wild. It is slightly disturbing though to read of "the world's only fully habituated troop of golden monkeys" -- but which have to be herded to the viewing area every day by local farmers. More surprising was the book's recommendation that if you want to see Siberian tigers you should visit the Hengdaohzei Felid Animals Raising And Breeding Centre -- although at least they added the warning that one should be aware "that Chinese visitors sometimes pay for live animals - including cows - to be thrown to the tigers".