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Peering
into the dark undergrowth from the very edge of the forest was like
looking into a whole new world. Even from this vantage point so close to
civilization, Dr. Beth Smith could see that it was teeming with life. She stood with
her fellow tiger expert Dr. Li Pang and their interpreter Yu Quan at the
end of an extensive agricultural development that abruptly ended at
dense forest. Beyond this were the vast mountain
ranges of the Simian Shan nature reserve on the border of the
Sichuan and Guizhou provinces. Li had told Beth that
tigers had existed here until twenty years ago and that plenty of pig
and deer still roamed freely. They agreed that this would be the perfect place to reintroduce
the South China tiger if the possibility ever occurred. However, Li then informed
her that the Fanjinshan reserve in the neighboring province of Guizhou
was even better.
“But
what of the habitat of the existing tigers?” asked Beth.
Li
went into a detailed account.
“The Tao Yuan Dong reserve in the Jiangan
mountains on the Hunan eastern border is believed to hold an
undocumented amount of wild tigers. Unfortunately logging and deforestation
has taken its toll on
all the other provinces, and the reserves now only cover 10,000 and 20,000
ha. This is totally inadequate to sustain a viable tiger population. But
in the mountains wild pig and sambar are plentiful and good habitat
exists for approximately 2000 km2. If anywhere I believe this to be the
place where the tiger still roams.”
“We
have to go there.” Beth whispered.
Li looked at Yu for an interpretation and
smiled as she told him what Beth had said.
“I was hoping you might say that,
but it will be a long train journey and
in reality we will only see forests and mountains just like the ones we have seen today.”
She
didn’t care; she had already made her mind up, she wanted to go, but she wasn’t sure why. Maybe there
was a divine reason why she was in China. It seemed as if the mountains of the Hunan province were
drawing her to them. She decided that they would leave as soon as
possible.
Two
days later the old steam train left Chongqing station at five in the morning, they were
scheduled to reach Guiyang by lunchtime and then their final destination
of Guilin by late evening. The landscape changed dramatically each hour from sprawling flat
plains to
heavily wooded mountain ranges and plateaus torn in half by winding
muddy rivers, giant lakes, and steep gorges.
Although
the journey was uncomfortable and the carriages cramped Beth used the
time to catch up with her journal between listening to more of Li’s
anecdotes. He told her how he had grown up in a small forest village
nestled on one of the high plateaus over looking what is now called the
Ba Bao Shan reserve on the Guangdong and Hunan border. He seemed to be
looking forward to going home. Yu Quan also enjoyed talking about the
local people and their traditions, all of which seemed fascinating to
Beth. When the train finally pulled into Guilin station the trio
was extremely tired so they decided to stay in town overnight, before
hiring a four-wheel-drive and heading out into the mountains early the
next morning.
Li laughed out loud as Beth and Yu entered the small hotel restaurant for
breakfast wearing identical clothing. Beth blushed and Yu smiled before
saying something to Li in Chinese, which made them both giggle.
Beth
was becoming accustomed to the Chinese staple diet of rice, noodles and
boiled vegetables and ordered her usual morning bowl of rice. When they
finally left the hotel the main street was already a bustle with hundreds of people on
bicycles and mopeds, and horse
drawn carts laden with hay and market produce. The roads were divided into two; one side was for
bikes and carts, and the other trucks, busses and cars. All the buses
were crammed full of people over spilling onto the roofs and hanging on
side rails. Heavily laden old trucks with squeaky suspensions trundled
by spewing out diesel fumes and bouncing on the poor road surface.
They managed to hire a fairly good four-wheel-drive reasonably
cheap and set off on their way south towards the Guangdong border. Of
all the landscapes that Beth had witnessed the giant limestone pinnacles
that jutted out of the earth as far as the eye could see at Guilin were
amongst the most unusual. But even in this famous and natural tourist
attraction every piece of flat land that lay between the giant dragon's
teeth and the river that slivered amongst them was cleared for
agriculture. This appeared as a patchwork of different colored crops
that created an almost surreal
stalemate between nature and
civilization.
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