In remote mountains of central China
moisture borne on the monsoons
nurtures a forest world of isolation...
and mystery
Across ages
bamboo{Poaceae(family)}has flourished in the persistenet mists
erecting nearly impenetrable thickets
barriers against time and the outside world
For nearly a decade
a Chinese scientist has searched the bamboo
forest for one of the world's most elusive animals
Though its image is known to millions
the giant panda {Ailuropoda melanoleuca}has
kept its life in the wild hidden from humans
For Professor Pan Wenshi
deciphering the panda's secret is an urgent matter
The species clings precariously to existence
Only about twelve hundred remain
In captivity
pandas have not reproduced enough to
increase or even maintain their population
If the species is to be saved
we must understand and protect
the secret life of pandas in the wild
Now an unprecedented opportunity
In a mountain cave
a newborn panda is found...
permitting the first comprehensive film record
and the first long-term study of a young panda
embarking on a remarkable life unlike
that of any creature on earth
The Qin Ling mountains...
rugged divide between northern and southern China...
...and one of the last retreats of the giant panda
Concealed by dense foliage and its own distinctive color pattern
the panda is literally hidden here
In the panda's world nothing is quite what it seems
The clown-like mask elicits instant human affection
But it's probably seen as a threat by other animals...
one of the panda's many subtle defenses
Pandas are shy and seldom aggressive
When one is seen, it is usually retreating
They are solitary animals... rarely together
But they are aware of each other...
keeping in touch by sound... and especially scent
Their social lives consist largely
of reading and leaving scent marks
Rubbing its scent glands on trees and rocks
a panda says "here I am" or "there I was"
By smell alone
pandas can tell the identity and sexual mood
of a neighbor who may go unseen for months
Almost exclusively giant pandas eat bamboo
Equipped with a unique sixth digit ideal for eating bamboo
pandas have been shaped by evolution
for this life-sustaining activity
They consume up to eighty pounds of bamboo
(Bashania fargesii and Fargesia spathacea)
A day wity great technique and efficiency
But they're finicky about this monotonous diet
They eat different parts of the bamboo in different seasons
Sometimes they prefer the tender leaves and shoots
while at other times it's the tough woody stems they crave
It's a lot of word for little reward...
only about 17 percent is digested
So pandas must eat relentlessly up to 14 hours a day
They eat till they're full
then sleep wherever they are until they awaken... hungry again
But young pandas are the exception
To survive they must learn about the world... they must play
Seemingly vulnerable
the panda has endured while other more
formidable mammals have become extinct
lts margin of safety is narrow...
but for millions of years it has been sufficient
Yet an understanding of how the wild panda survives
has been as elusive as the animal itself
To unlock the panda's secrets
a former logging camp called Shashuping
now serves as a research station
From this base,
biology professor Pan Wenshi and his students monitor
more than sixty pandas in the surrounding forest
the first long-term study of wild pandas and their young
With Lu Zhi, former student and now a research colleague
Pan has long hoped to discover why panda young
fragile in captivity seem to thrive in the wild...
This knowledge could save the species
After years of patient searching
Pan and Lu Zhi now suspect a birth has occurred in a high den
and set out on a September morning to investigate
The treacherous slopes of Qin Ling are like fortress walls...
and perhaps explain why the existence
of giant pandas here was not confirmed until 1964
A gentle approach... to glimpse without disturbing
In a cramped cave an adult female they have tracked closely...
Cradled in her paws a tiny pink body
Pan will find that a panda mother
devotes herself entirely to her newborn
She holds and soothes the baby continuously...
neither leaving the den nor feeding for 25 days
Blind and helpless the newborn is dwarfed by its mother...
at about four ounces it weighs only 1/900th as much
Perhaps in part to prevent an accidental crushing
the infant panda wields a voice out of all proportion to its body
Professor Pan's hope is that by studying the baby's needs
he can learn enough to help avoid misadventures
of the past involving pandas and human beings
A panda was not seen alive in the West until 1936
when a cub named Su Lin was carried to the United States
Though Su Lin would survive only 18 months
it was love at first sight
The public craved more pandas and zoos responded
The sudden fad was called "panda-monium"...
The panda was immediately beloved
but poorly understood...
treated as if the living animal were itself a child's toy...
...And the toy arrived without an instruction manual
Keepers could only guess at its needs
Nearly half died within five years
As a result of our enchantment
one in ten of the world's remaining
pandas lives in captivity today...
among the most popular and profitable of zoo animals
The dream has been to breed pandas
in captivity for release into the wild
but arranged matings produce very few offspring
The result has been a record of more deaths in captivity than births
Even in a more natural enclosure
in a Chinese panda reserve
successful reproduction remains uncertain
A female can conceive only during a few days each year
In captivity males are mainly indifferent
in part because they lack competition and often overweight
Loud love songs frequently lead to no more than a wrestling match
Even when young are produced
their chances of survival are bleak
In the past three decades
nearly 60 percent have died within their first year
Despite intense care this cub would live only five months
So far, it has not been possible to breed
a self-sustaining panda population in captivity
For the species to survive protecting it in the wild is critical
But time and habitat are running out
A panda homeland that once stretched
across southern Asia from Vietnam to present-day
Beijing has shrunk under human pressure to only six small
unconnected areas
For about 240 wild pandas
the slopes of the Qin Ling mountains are a last refuge
By fitting pandas with radio collars and monitoring their signals
professor Pan and Lu Zhi have been able
to track the pandas in their study group from atar...
...and locate them easily for closer observation
Theirs is an unprecedented bond between human and panda
Never before have wild pandas wild pandas
become so accustomed to scientists and allowed them so close
"For nine years in Qin Ling
Lu Zhi and I have lived among giant pandas
We drink water from the same small stream with them
and we have stayed together with them almost everyday
They are familiar with our scent
These pandas know us very well
Lone pandas are often very tolerant
But will a mother be so trusting if they
attempt to visit the newborn inside the den?
Hoping to conduct a thorough examination of the panda cub
Professor Pan and Lu Zhi approach while the mother
feeds some distance away from the new den.
She has stayed away so long they now fear the cub
may be dead erasing a scientific opportunity
and another life in a lineage where each has become precious
Their fears prove unfounded
Pan knows his time to inspect the cub is limited
Too long in the den and
despite their efforts to gain her acceptance
the mother could react violently to
their presence here and attack them
They usually observe from a distance
but they must sometimes examine the infant
panda closely to document its growth
It's a female... an advantage for science
In the years to come
she may bear cubs of her own
permitting study of a panda family across generations
At seven weeks the baby weighs more than three pounds
Her eyes are opening on the world
Her expanding repertoire of sounds could alarm her mother
still browsing nearby
Pan is heartened by what he finds the cub appears normal and fit
with a stomach full of mother's milk and a strong heartbeat
Time is up
The baby must be returned quickly to avoid a confrontation
In the weeks to come
Pan and Lu Zhi make an important observation
When her cub is weeks old
a wild mother leaves it to feed for hours at a time
In the past
this natural behavior was often though abandonment
and many cubs were taken from their mothers
only to die later in human care
This all began with a boyhood dream
of adventure in a far away exotic land...
"When I was in high school
I read Jack London's books
Among the books, two greatly impressed me
"White Fang" and"The Call of the Wild"
Form then on
I dreamed of living in remote areas like
western America or Alaska or the Yukon River Valley...
Living in the wild and among wild animals...
that was my early dream and I hoped to make it my future
The years have turned early fascination to enduring devotion
Pan spends months of each year in primitive conditions
paying some research expenses out of his own pocket
working late hours to log and analyze data
in a tiny cubicle that is both office and bedroom
Pan's other world offers a stark contrast
The rest of the year he spends in Beijing
sprawling symbol of modern industrial China
Here Pan is a biology professor at Beijing University
His work was mainly in the laboratory until he
and the panda had their first fateful encounter
"Um, after graduating from college
when I was 25years old,
I had the opportunity to
um, to go visit
um, the Beijing Zoo
where they had the first captive-born baby panda
And that was the first time that I was able to hold a panda
and it was very interesting
The baby panda climbed all over me
and that was when I decided I wanted to
devote my whole life to studying the pandas"
At a zoo in the ancient capital
city of Xi'an a visit to a friend...
Her name is Dan-Dan...
a reference to her reddish-brown and-white coloration
She is one of only three such pandas they know of
Pan and Lu Zhi think this color scheme may be
a throwback to prehistoric times
Pandas may have developed their black
and-white coloration as camouflage during the ice ages
Finding Dan-Dan ill in the wild
Pan and Lu Zhi brought her here for temporary care
hoping she would be released later
Her confinement disturbed Pan
who was himself held prisoner in the late
Sixties during the Cultural Revolution
"The Cultural Revolution was a big mess
No one dared to speak the truth
Because I told the truth
they put me in jail
beat me and pulled my hair
I thought: The only thing I can do
is to insist on seeking the truth..."
After 56 days of beatings and confinement in darkness, Pan escaped
"Overcoming this suffering has become the
basis for my conviction as a scientist always to tell the truth"
In a Beijing classroom
Pan carries his campaign on behalf of
pandas to a wildly receptive audience
Using props made from the skins of pandas who died in captivity
Pan teaches about the need to protect wild pandas
His stories evoke surprise
The children thought pandas lived only in zoos
Pan wants to inspire understanding of wild pandas in the generation
that will probably decide their fate
In a country to nearly 1.2 billion people
with urgent human needs he faces a long road
Even some friends cannot understand why he leaves his home
and family several times a year for the sake of a wild animal
the trip south to the Qin Ling mountains is itself a test of resolve
22 hours by train then 14 hours by bus
For Pan, this journey retraces the ancient retreat
the panda before advancing waves of human settlem
The last stands of wilderness
like the last pandas survive only where food crops cannot...
at the highest edges of existence
For years, Professor Pan and Lu Zhi conducted a lonely enterprise
But they have now attracted a following of students
who staff the Qin Ling research station in seasonal shifts
To Pan, they hold promise that the panda will not be forgotten
And they have been staunch companions in
an adventure that has sometimes been an ordeal
"There were many difficulties when we started this research
We always felt cold and clothes were always wet
Lu Zhi got frostbite on her face
and Ding Qian had frostbitten fingers
Mid-December
Four months have passed since the
birthing season among Qin Ling pandas
Cubs are now old enough to crawl from their dens
and are sometimes found outside
while their mothers browse nearby
Face to face with humans,
the cub seems by turns reticent and full of bravado
To symbolize her importance for the future of pandas
the two researchers have decided to
name her Xi Wang-meaning "Hope"
The christening is of no interest to a baby
who may sleep 20 hours a day
even when guests are present
Easy slumber is a panda trait
Nearby, her mother unwinds from the labors of eating bamboo
Xi Wang seems vulnerable
But animal predators pose less of a threat than humans
A panda pelt can bring poachers more than $10,000
and dozens of panda cubs have been taken into captivity
by well meaning "rescuers"who believed
or wanted to believe that they had been abandoned.
Xi Wang is still nursing so bamboo
which will dominate her life is for now just a plaything
A surprise...
The mother returns and decides to move
Xi Wang to a new den a routine occurrence
But for Pan and Lu Zhi it's a rare moment
Despite years of observation
they have seldom seen two pandas
even mother and young together in the open
Touched by her devotion
they call the mother Jiao-Jiao or "Double Charming"
In Pan's study area
only one farm has persevered in the
harsh altitudes of panda territory
En route back the two scientists visit the Li family
who count themselves protectors of the pandas
Pan has heard reports that a panda has been sighted in the vicinity
It behaved as though ill
Have the Lis seen it?
They have, by the river
and were surprised to encounter one so far down the mountain
In a chill are rain at one in the morning
Professor Pan and his team are summoned on a special mission...
Villagers have sent word that a wild
panda has appeared on a doorstep
Pan thinks it may be the animal seen by the Lis
The scientists are puzzled by a tendency of
wild pandas to come to human dwellings when ill...
an enigma in a creature normally so withdrawn
Though they are neighbors of wild pandas
few in the village have ever seen one
Beneath corn {Zea mays} dried for hog {Suidae(family)}feed
the creature huddles as if seeking help
The animal appears old
Pan asks if the panda has been fed
It has not
The man discovered it whimpering... ...and he was amazed
Suspecting a digestive problem
Pan decides to treat the panda back at camp
It proves no easy task to relocate the 200-pound creature
At Shashuping research station
therapy begins with a breakfast of bamboo
Weighing the old panda's good fortune at being rescued
the students call him by a name that means"Lucky"
Already, his appetite is returning...
Antibiotics and vitamins mixed in honey
meal quickly revive Lucky's spirit
In ancient texts
a creature believed to be the panda was
known as "the iron-eating beast"
...because it chewed up metal cooking utensils
...and it still tries to
Lucky, it turns out, has an unruly curiosity
and an indiscriminate palate
Eventually the cautious researchers manage
to retrieve this unusual delicacy
In Shashuping's field lab
Lu Zhi adds samples of Lucky's blood to a
growing collection from pandas living in isolated groups
Through genetic analysis
she seeks to learn how much inbreeding has occurred
In a hundred years, she fears all
Qin Ling pandas could be first cousins
This could cause extinction through
harmful mutations and vulnerability to disease
"There is a critical question: If this animal is inbreeding
then how much and how bad the inbreeding could be
This work, we hope will answer this question
and then we'll find a way to help pandas"
Recovered after a week of treatment
Lucky is ready to be released...
Pan is hopeful
but the scientists know Lucky
may be too old to survive in the wild
Weeks later their fears will be confirmed
Again ill
Lucky will be taken to a feeding center
where he will die
In the bitter cold of early January
while other Qin Ling animals hibernate the panda cannot
Enslaved by the need to eat almost perpetually
pandas continue to roam the frozen forest
Pan and Lu Zhi have learned to respect
the panda's tough constitution
Thick, oily fur and bulky bodies insulate them
and they seem immune to the cold
For Xi Wang, snow is just a new terrain to explore
Now a five-month-old toddler
she seems dimly aware that trees are important
In the months to come
they will offer her only safety from
predators in her mother's absence
But to hide in a tree
Xi Wang must first learn to climb it
For now, baffled by the challenge she gives up
For those who would study pandas
winter in the Qin Ling mountains is a test of resolve...
The cold is relentless... even inside
Days and nights pass in the shared chores of
a dwelling heated only by wood fire
lit only by candle and lantern
As winter drags on
Jiao-Jiao begins to take Xi Wang with her while foraging
The ancient Chinese may have found
in such scenes of tranquility a symbol of peace
According to one account
retiring armies waved not a white flag but an image of a panda
For Xi Wang another attempt to climb
Success brings not only safety but a measure of youthful adventure
As winter gives way to spring
the panda's realm in the Qin Ling mountains
reawakens with sound and color
By may the new foliage intrigues Xi Wang
At nine months
she continues to nurse
but
like human babies
she investigates the world with her mouth
For Jiao-Jiao
spring brings not only the bamboo shoots she treasures
but the seasonal agony of ticks {Metastigmata(suborder)}
and leeches {Hirudinea(class)}
Xi Wang will watch her mother from the trees another four months
until she's ready to join her foraging along the forest floor
Once tentative, she now climbs about freely
sometimes showing greater daring than judgement
Jiao-Jiao seems concerned about a well-padded youngster
especially when succulent bamboo shoots are abundant
For both, life is serene
They look awkward
but pandas are deceptively agile
their joints so flexible they can bite their own tails
and perform gymnastic routines in suspenseful slow motion
Clear-cut harvesting of the panda's forests
is the paramount threat to their continued existence
Food and cover dwindle
Populations are further isolated
Panda ranges have declined by half in
only two decades... primarily from logging
A billion people in China need wood for homes and heat
In fifty years it could be almost two billion
Over the years
Professor Pan has watched timber companies
invade 70 percent of Qin Ling's panda habitat
He asks how far the loggers intend to go
Next spring, they will cut all the way over the mountains
the slopes now roamed by Jiao-Jiao and Xi Wang
To penetrate the panda's forest
new roads must be blasted out of the mountainside
By most standards
the operations are crude
sometimes conductecd with a casual daring
that mixes gun powder with cigarettes
Industrial safety is a recent development here
but despite accidents
the work goes on relentlessly
Risking all
Pan has pleaded with authorities to stop the logging of Qin Ling
With stubborn insistence
despite threats and harassment
he has succeeded
The government has halted the timber
cutting in the 125-square-mile study area
An excursion to check on Xi Wang
now outfitted with a radio collar...
It is mid-October
At fourteen months
Xi Wang is passing her second autumn
Something is amiss
The signals lead to a tangled clump of brush
Expecting Xi Wang they find only her collar
Pan believes Jiao-Jiao tore the collar from her youngster
He suggests they search for Jiao-Jiao instead
But Jiao-Jiao's signal is weak...
...They will have to separate and scour the slopes
Xi Wang is invaluable to science
She has been monitored since birth
and has provided unprecedented information
But for Pan and his crew this panda has also become a friend
Following his instincts
Pan comes to a steep ravine...
Barely visible among the foliage
sitting casually in a tree
the familiar shape of Xi Wang
To re-establish contact
they must sedate and re-collar Xi Wang
They must act now before they lose her again
But her perch above a cliff makes it a delicate operation
The tranquilizing dart is necessary
the pain to be inflicted slight
But the moment is always disconcerting to those
whose lives are dedicated to protecting wild things
Several minutes pass as drowsiness sweeps across her
They pray she won't fall
Now docile
Xi Wang stays in the tree
enabling them to bring her down safely
At 80 pounds she is a precious but awkward burden
The professor who is her observer and defender
a father of two daughters
bears her as carefully as if she were a third
Using radio collars
Pan and Lu Zhi have been able to keep track of the whereabouts
and activity of more than 30 pandas at Qin Ling
Theirs is the first comprchensive study to document
social and breeding behavior of wild pandas
These periodic inspections are inconvenient
for Xi Wang and rob her of dignity
But she is contributing details of her development
that can be obtained in no other way
Xi Wang's story could affect her entire species
revealing how to ensure their survival in the wild
and to improve their care in captivity
For Xi Wang it has been a day of curious events
and a close encounter with another species...
She returns to her mother and the life of endless simplicity
now interested only in a drink of water and
soon perhaps, a little bamboo
At the Shashuping research station, a moment of farewell
Ater months of work
four of Pan's students must return to the university
Assistants will come and go during the years ahead
but Pan intends to stay here as long as it takes to
understand the life of pandas in the wild
and to keep them roaming freely through the surrounding forests
In the ritual exercise called qigong
Pan daily rekindles his deter mination
"My friends in Beijing always ask: 'Why do you continue to work...
"...in the field year after year?
When will it end?
Your work has been published
Why don't you stop?
I tell them: 'My goal is to protece the panda
and to establish a refuge for them in the wild
That is my mission but it will be difficult
Achieving this goal may take my entire lifetime
And even that may not be enouth"
So one man perseveres
as solitary as his pandas
a lonely figure in this island of wilderness
One man and one panda
Since these scenes were filmed
Xi Wang has struck out on her own
In the not too distant future
she could have a cub herself
As pandas have for millions of years
she will feast on the forest
drink from cold streams
endure the chillmists
But her passage though life will be recorded for the ages
because, like her name
Xi Wang represents for all her species...
a last fateful glimmer of hope