As China opens its doors ever wider to the rest of the world, some of its wilder inhabitants are also making their debut on the world’s stage. Wild China highlights China’s efforts at endangered species protection, habitat preservation as well as a nascent environmental movement in a country where such concern for the natural world has taken a back seat to economic development.
But of course it’s the animals that make Wild China such a treat to watch. The world’s smallest mammal, the bamboo bat, no larger than a bumble bee, makes its home in hollowed out bamboo stalks. Remarkable Yunan snub-nosed monkeys call across the forest like rambunctious children at play, their faces living portraits in ancient wisdom. And a 400 year old turtle, the species now extinct in the wild, lives out its final days in a temple pond.
Wild China takes great pains to show the close interaction of the Chinese people to their environment. But it is an uneasy relationship at best. Recent and rapid economic development has caused wide-spread habitat destruction and pollution in heretofore inaccessible rural areas. And China must somehow balance centuries of resource use of plant and animal species with increasing demands on those resources.
Wild China is an armchair traveler’s dream come true, offering a lushly filmed look at corners of the country few Chinese themselves have ever seen. It is also an alarming environmental wake-up call that we should all heed. Reserve it today HERE.
One of the best DVDs I've seen in years
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