The last hidden world China For centuries, travellers to China have told tales of magical landscapes and surprising creatures Chinese civilization is the worlds oldest and today its largest with well over a billion people Its home to more than 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 worlds 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 Its a landscape of hills but also of water It rains here for up to 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 isnt just wildlife that thrive in this environment the swampy ground provides ideal conditions for the remarkable member of the grass familyrice The Chinese have been cultivating rice for at least thousand years It has transformed a landscape Late winter in southern Yunnan, its 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 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 Yunnans 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 Its the mating season and male paddy frogs are competing for the attention of females But it dosent 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 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 Its midday and the Song family are tucking into a lunch of rice and vegetables Oblivious to the domestic chitchatgranddad 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 Songs living room a pair of red-rumped swallows newly arrive from their winter migration is busy fixing up last years 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 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 Songs 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