00:00...find shelter in caves. These children are off to school.
00:05In rural China, that may mean a long trek each morning, passing through a cave or two on the way.
00:13But not all pupils have to walk to school. These children are boarders.
00:22As the day pupils near journey's end, the boarders are still making breakfast.
00:31In the schoolyard, someone seems to have switched the lights off.
00:38But this is no ordinary playground and no ordinary school.
00:47It's housed inside a cave.
00:54A natural vault of rock keeps out the rain, so there's no need for a roof on the classroom.
01:11The cave school is made up of six classes, with a total of 200 children.
01:20As well as the school, the cave houses 18 families, together with their livestock.
01:29These could be the only cave-dwelling cows on earth.
01:37With schoolwork over, it's playtime at last.
01:53But on Sao Hai Lake, in nearby Guizhou province. An even more unusual fishing in the sea.
01:59The next morning, Gung returned with his son to collect his cash.
02:07At first sight, it looks disappointing.
02:10Tiny fishes, lots of shrimps, and some wriggling bugs.
02:16Gung doesn't seem too downhearted.
02:20The larger fish are kept alive, the only way they'll stay fresh in the heat.
02:27Surprisingly, some of the bugs are also singled out for special treatment.
02:32They're the young stage of dragonflies, predators that feed on worms and tadpoles.
02:37Nowhere else in the world are dragonfly nymphs harvested like this.
02:47Back home, Gung spreads his catch on the roof to dry.
02:51This being China, nothing edible will be wasted.
02:55There's a saying in the far south.
02:57We will eat anything with legs, except a table.
03:00And anything with wings, except a plane.
03:07Within a few hours, the dried insects are ready to be bagged up and taken to market.
03:13It's the dragonfly nymphs that fetch the best price.
03:23Fortunately, so high as dragonflies are abundant and fast breeding.
03:29So Gung and his fellow fishermen have so far had little impact on their numbers.
03:34But not all wildlife is so resilient.
03:46This Buddhist temple near Shanghai has an extraordinary story attached to it.
03:53In May 2007, a wild China camera team filmed this peculiar swinhose turtle in the temple's fish pond.
04:08According to the monks, the turtle had been given to the temple during the Ming Dynasty, over 400 years ago.
04:16It was thought to be the oldest animal on earth.
04:28Soft-shelled turtles are considered a gourmet delicacy by many Chinese.
04:32And when it was filmed, this was one of just three swinhose turtles left alive in China.
04:40The rest of its kind having been rounded up and eaten.
04:46Sadly, just a few weeks after filming, this ancient creature died.
04:53The remaining individuals of its species are currently kept in separate zoos.
04:57And swinhose turtle is now reckoned extinct in the wild.
05:03In fact, most of the 25 types of freshwater turtles in China are now vanishingly rare.
05:11Mechanized farming works best in the flat-bottomed valleys of the lowlands.
05:15To the south, in the terraced hills of Zhejiang province, an older and simpler lifestyle persists.
05:25It's seven in the morning, and Long Shen's most successful businessman is off to work.
05:33In the golden terraces surrounding the village, the ears of rice are plump and ripe for harvesting.
05:41But today, rice isn't uppermost in Mr Yang's mind.
05:45He has bigger fish to fry.
05:49Further up the valley, the harvest has already begun.
05:55Yang's fields are ripe too, but they haven't been drained yet.
06:00That's because, for him, rice is not the main crop.
06:10The baskets he's carried up the hillside give a clue to Yang's business.
06:14But before he starts work, he needs to let some water out of the system.
06:22As the water level drops, the mystery is revealed.
06:27Golden carp.
06:37Long Shen villagers discovered the benefits of transferring wild-caught carp into their paddy fields long ago.
06:44The tradition has been going on here for at least 700 years.
06:52As the water level in the paddy drops, bamboo gates stop the fish.
06:59Back in the village, Yang has his own smokehouse, where he preserves his fish ready for market.
07:10Long Shen carp have unusually soft scales and a very delicate flavour, perhaps as a result of the local water.
07:18Gentlyballs.
