Call of the Wild

Hit documentary recollects man’s adoration of animals By Tao Zihui

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Setting the scene: After a wild yak,raised by a herdsman, has long returned to the wild, years later, the herdsman encounters a giant beast, rushing over to lick his ears, just like it had back in the day.

Drone picture of the film crew on a fishing boat in Taishan, Guangdong Province, in April 2020

“According to Tibetan legend, the day the world’s first ray of sunlight struck Mount Kailash in Ngari Prefecture of China’s Tibet Autonomous Region, was the day the first yak was born. Kailash’s ridges are the yak’s backs. Yaks are the herd of the mountain deity.” The narration is accompanied by shots of picturesque plateaus and snow-capped mountains, taking viewers right into the vast wilderness of Tibet.

This is the opening scene of the documentary, which was first released on July 11 and has so far gained 9.3 points out of 10 on Douban,China’s popular reviewing platform.

It tells the tale of four “divine” animals—the wild yak, white dolphin, Asian elephant and Amur tiger. They were used as totems in ancient times but today, they are the species that best reflect the region’s ecological status.

Principal director Zeng Hairuo set out to document the relationship between humans and these animals.

But why are they “divine?” In ancient times, human power alone was not strong enough to accomplish big things and so huge wild animals were honored as gods;but with the development of modernization, mankind began to disappoint nature.

“We want to help rebuild mankind’s reverence for life, for animals, and restore our ability to communicate with nature,”Zeng told.

Chinese storytelling

“Congrats! I think this is the best native Chinese nature documentary out there this year,” one comment on Douban read. “The look in the animals’ eyes is so touching. I cried watching this,” the viewer added.

Every species that exists in nature has its own mission in life. “If you maintain an appreciation for nature and animals,you will respect their territory,and respect their way of life,” the director said.

Promo poster for The Land of Spirits

The film illustrates the land through the creatures living on it; it’s also not a purely animaloriented story because it contains the interaction between these creatures, ancient people and contemporary people as well as presents the prehistory of the land and the source of local culture through the stories of animals and humans alike.

“This is the difference between Eastern and Western thinking,”Zeng said. “The Western documentary style prefers more subdisciplines and a subdivision of research.” Zeng brings the audience a typical Chinese way of recording the scene: nature and humanity as one, in other words,one story integrating animals,mankind and nature.

As far as Zeng is concerned,one cannot mention these four animals without bringing in the human factor. “Observing these animals is like looking in a mirror for humans, which makes this documentary stand out from many other nature documentaries,” he said.

A special power

In early 2018, Zeng was spending some time in Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province, when he learned that a group of Asian elephants had clashed with locals. This sparked his interest, and slowly but steadily he got to know more about the 15 Asian elephants in the province’s Menghai County.

Theirs was a group of lost Asian elephants moving away from the reserve and migrating up north.

Zeng originally wanted to narrate the story of these elephants, but the film crew later decided to widen their focus by zooming in on ancient and unique species in China—to give Chinese audiences a more familiar feel. The film crew shot across China’s northeastern, southeastern,northwestern and southwestern corners,their lens recording all different landforms.

Humans are like animals. “The animals in the narration face the dilemma of survival with the modernization of human society, so they choose to seek a better way to survive and a more comfortable living space,” he said.

When the territories of animals and humans coincide, how should they then be divided? This dilemma is even more intense for the wild yaks than for the Asian elephants.

“It was unplanned, the unexpected filming of a wild yak; it was completely off-script,” Zeng said.

Kunlun the wild yak appears on the screen. Every summer, he goes on a grand expedition, seeking to court and mate with domesticated yaks.

“It was very dangerous at the time, we could not predict whether this giant would attack us or not, so we just took our chances,”Zeng said, “He’d been observing us and eventually allowed us to film him.”

After spending a long time tracking their every move, people will gradually develop a connection with the animals, “and the filming itself is the process of being selected by the animals,” the director said.

“If we want to resolve conflict and live in harmony with wild animals and nature, we have to understand them, who they are,what they are thinking, and what they are doing,” he added.

So in this documentary, the crew also captured people trying to help wild animals survive. For example, the first story saw a little yak lost in the herd.

To save its life, the rangers helped the herdsmen by raising money to buy boxed milk for the little guy so he could survive the harsh winter. “In [Tibetan epic], the wild yak is an auspicious sign,the main reason for that is although we can’t communicate with words, if we treat them well, they will not hurt us,” one herdsman said.

Their combined efforts paid off. Zeng said he was just lucky enough to witness and record it.

Humans managed to establish a new home for themselves on the plateaus thousands of years ago and the animal has always been the backbone of nomadic life in Tibet. The yak’s ancestors, on the other hand, roamed the region millions of years ago. It’s no wonder then that most Tibetans believe that a yak’s true owner is not man, but the mountain god. BR