To outsiders this is a mysterious land.
It contains dazzling  man-made structures.
And it's home to some of China's rarest  and most charismatic creatures.
(ROARING)
The people who live here,  the Han Chinese,
comprise the largest ethnic group  in the world,
and their language, Mandarin,
is the world's oldest  and most widely spoken language.
(SPEAKING CHINESE)
In the last 50 years  China has seen massive development,
bringing many environmental problems.
But the relationship of the Chinese  to their environment and its creatures
is in fact deep, complex  and extraordinary.
In this programme we will look for clues  to this ancient relationship
and what it means  for the future of China.
Our journey starts  at the very heart of China, Beijing.
China's capital is a vast metropolis,  home to 15 million people.
This bustling modern city  seems an unlikely place
for traditional beliefs and customs.
But beneath the contemporary veneer,
it's possible to see glimpses  of a far older China.
Every morning, people head to the parks  around the Forbidden City,
to continue a custom  which is centuries old.
Many Chinese keep birds as companions,
specifically a type of laughing thrush  from southern China.
But they know that cooped up indoors,  birds may become depressed.
So they try to brighten their day  by meeting other birds.
(BIRDS TWITTERING)
This surprising scene  in the heart of modern Beijing
is a clue  to China's oldest spiritual ambition,
the harmonious co-existence  of man and nature.
(WHISTLING)
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
But from the 1950s onwards,
this ancient belief  was to be severely challenged.
After a century of humiliation  and intervention by foreign powers,
Chairman Mao sought to rebuild  China's dignity.
Mao believed strongly in self-reliance,
achieved through using  all of nature's resources.
Mao's first concern  was to feed the Chinese people
by turning as much land as possible  over to grain production,
destroying non-cereal crops
and uprooting fruit trees  in the process.
A campaign to eliminate  crop-raiding sparrows backfired
when insect-eating birds  were also targeted,
causing an increase in insect pests.
Efforts to make China  self-reliant in steel
resulted in 10% of the country's forests  being felled to feed the furnaces.
This had a profound impact  on China's environment,
with effects, in some cases,  lasting until the present day.
Mao's policy towards the countryside  has been described in the phrase,
"Man must conquer nature."
Quite different from the ancient concept  of harmonious co-existence with nature.
As modern China  engages with the outside world,
which of these attitudes  seems likely to prevail?
To find the answers,
we'll travel to the far reaches  of the heartland
to see how its traditional cultures  and unique creatures are faring today.
Beijing has always depended  on the North China Plain,
a rich farmland  twice the size of the UK.
The fertility of this plain  derives from further west,
from the Loess Plateau.
The mineral-rich soil of  the Loess Plateau is incredibly fertile.
People have lived here  for thousands of years,
hollowing their homes  out of the soft soil.
(WOMAN SPEAKING CHINESE)
The caves might lack  the glamour of Beijing,
but people can survive here.
Warm, secure, but best of all, well fed.
(WOMAN LAUGHING)
As a result of centuries of farming,
glamour
the landscape has become scarred  with thousands of water-worn gullies.
But this spectacular erosion  has had an unexpected benefit.
The streams which drain the gullies
carry the fertile yellow soil  into the plateau's major river,
known to the Han people  as the Mother of Chinese civilisation.
This is the Yellow River.
Each year the Yellow River  carries billions of tons of sediment
from the Loess Plateau
eastwards to the crop fields  of the Chinese heartland.
Historically, the Chinese relationship  with the river has been uneasy.
Sediment, building up on the riverbed,  has caused the Yellow River
to burst its banks periodically,
unleashing devastating floods,  resulting in millions of deaths.
But when tamed with dykes and channels,  the river's bounty is legendary.
Even today, half of China's wheat  comes from the Yellow River floodplain.
For thousands of years,  the sediment-rich Yellow River

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