Wild China: Tides of Change

From the eastern end of the Great Wall, China's coast spans 14,500 kilometres and more than 5,000 years of history. This is a place of huge contrasts: futuristic modern cities jostling traditional seaweed-thatched villages, ancient tea terraces and wild wetlands where rare animals still survive. Each year, endangered red-crowned cranes make an epic journey along the coast between their northern breeding grounds and their winter refuge close to Shanghai. Along their route they skirt the shallow Bohai Gulf, where traditional seaside communities collect shellfish from the fertile mud and cultivate vast seaweed farms which they share with wild swans, known as 'winter angels'. Out in the gulf, rocky Shedao Island is infested with venomous snakes lying ambush for the twice-yearly influx of migrating birds, which use the island as a resting point. The gulf waters are enriched by fertile sediment from the Yellow River, boosted by agricultural fertilizers which stimulate the growth of plankton, in turn providing food for plagues of jellyfish. Each summer, armadas of fishing boats set nets to trap the jellyfish, which in China are eaten as a delicacy.

Heading South along the coast, the Dafeng salt-marsh reserve is home to the remarkable water-loving Milu deer, rescued from the brink of extinction in the 19th Century when a small herd was established in England's Woburn Abbey. Returned to the wild in China, they now flourish under strict Government protection. Beyond the Yangtze River estuary lies the vast city of Shanghai - China's financial capital. On nearby Chongming Island, traditional bird hunters use their skills to lure migrant wading birds into their traps - allowing them to be weighed, measured and fitted with identification tags as part of an ambitious conservation project.

Hakka tea picking, Fujian.
credit: Charlotte Scott

South of Shanghai, the cloud-wreathed granite mountains of Fujian Province are home to one of China's oldest teagrowing cultures, that of the Kejia people. The Kejia live in circular communal houses where they produce fine oolong, or 'black dragon' teas. Ancient tea-trading routes follow the coast to ports from which junk-rigged sailing ships once plied the world's oceans. These are treacherous waters, battered by tropical cyclones. Lying at the outer margins of the Pearl River estuary, Hong Kong's sheltered deep-water harbour provides the best-protected anchorage in southern China, boosting its fortunes as a trading centre. Surprisingly, it is also China's foremost bird sanctuary - sheltering vast numbers of tropical migrants, including a quarter of the world's black-faced spoonbills. The outer estuary is also home to China's last remaining - and highly protected - White Dolphins.

Whale shark off Christman Island.
credit: Jurgen Freund/naturepl.com

South of Hong Kong lies the glittering turquoise expanse of the South China sea, studded with islands and remote coral reefs. Closer to the mainland, most of the coral has been damaged and the reefs severely over fished, though there are now efforts being made to replant coastal mangroves and protect remaining fish stocks. At the southern limit of China's coast lies the tropical paradise island of Hainan - a favourite with Chinese holidaymakers. Here macaque monkeys are protected for the amusement of tourists, and ancient calligraphy carved into the rocks announces the 'end of the world' - China's final frontier.

The issues that face China today, increasing pressures on resources, quality of environment and living space, are those that face us all. If there is any country in the world equipped to solve environmental problems on a vast scale it has to be China, with its tremendous human resources and powerful political control. The path it chooses will affect not just its own people and its natural environment, but the rest of the world too.