The Forever Walk: China (2022) s01e03 Episode Script

1
Some people think I'm crazy.
Fair enough.
My name is Paul Salopek.
I'm a biologist by training,
a foreign correspondent
through long experience,
and a National Geographic
writer and explorer.
Since 2013, I've been walking continuously
from the human species' birthplace
in Africa,
all the way to where our wandering
ancestors ran out of horizons
at the tip of South America.
Except, my trek is about
more than ancient migrations and survival.
The journey I'm on is about slowing down,
taking the time to listen,
to learn,
and to interact with humanity
in the most immersive way possible.
People are my destination.
Regardless of who I encounter,
it's the daily lives of the individuals
along my trail
who offer windows
into the big issues of our time.
Their stories form a mosaic of meaning
that can connect us all.
Now, my journey is taking me
and my local walking partners
deep into China.
Who will we encounter?
Where are they from
and where are they going?
The answers always
are revealed one footstep at a time.
What a view!
-Not too many people get this view.
-Yeah.
People used to travel
the Tea and Horse roads
for lots of reasons,
I walked them to get a little lost.
This is how you meet other wanderers.
Since setting foot in the Middle Kingdom,
I've been following the Hu Line.
It's an imaginary boundary
that divides East and West China,
and it will steer me some 6,000 kilometers
across ten provinces.
Now, it's brought me here
to Mount Erlang in Sichuan.
Since the Tang dynasty,
merchants blazed zigzag routes here
exchanging bricks of tea
from Hunan and Sichuan
for sturdy ponies from Tibet and more.
All these goods were balanced atop mules,
yaks and human porters
who straddled rivers and high passes
along this rugged branch of the Silk Road.
At that time,
the bricks of tea they carried
could be as heavy as 100 kilograms.
I find it hard to imagine.
During this trip, I've carried less than
20 kilograms on my back
but after a few days of walking
my old knee injury recurred
and I had to stop.
So imagine these tea porters each carrying
goods weighing 80 to 100 kilograms
on a much more rugged mountain path
and then having to carry the rice
exchanged with these bricks of teas
all the way back.
I think this is absolutely incredible.
-Yeah.
-Thank you so much.
73-year-old Chen Shoukang
has carried memories of these legendary
tea porters since childhood.
A village historian,
he shares his insights
into these incredibly sturdy men
who are sometimes joined by women
and even children.
This is the trademark for our family's
tea business at the time:
Maosheng Tea.
We have the first seal of authorization
for tea processing
in the entire plantation.
It is on the front and the back.
This is the golden claw used by
porters carrying tea bricks.
There is snow in winter.
It is used when climbing Erlang Mountain
and Ma'an Mountain
and while crossing Angzhou River.
They didn't wear socks since there were
no socks back then
so they would just wrap
their feet up like this.
This is a foot-binding cloth.
You wrap it up and wear it like this
tie it up like so
and untie it when you've finished
mountain-climbing
and untie it once you've finished
climbing the mountain.
When they climbed Mount Everest,
they had no clue in the beginning,
so they referred to this and made
climbing tools just like it.
It was optional if there was no snow
on the mountain
but during winter they most certainly
had to bring it.
This is a sweat wiper used by the porters.
If they wiped their sweat with towels
they may not have been able to see clearly
but if they used this tool
their eyes would be fine.
This also helped to prevent them from
getting dizzy.
Well, the ancestors
were incredibly clever.
They came up with this handmade device
that is portable,
it doesn't weigh anything, it's
It's disposable, recyclable.
You can make it
You can stop where you're resting
and make another one.
And it just scrapes away
the sweat from your forehead.
If an archeologist managed to find these,
I don't think he or she would ever
guess what it was for.
It's like this mysterious object.
But then this old dude demonstrates
and you say, "Of course!"
It has layers of scrapers,
not just one, but two or three,
so it really does the job.
Thank you for coming to China
to learn about our history.
Paul says thank you so much,
but this is valuable, please keep it.
And I didn't take one
because I don't feel comfortable
taking away the legacy
of the societies and cultures
that I walk through.
I collect stories.
I don't collect objects.
Please keep it.
People of China need to see this.
Let younger generations in China come
and have a look at these artifacts.
He won't take it but thank you so much.
These kind of artifacts
are very evocative to me.
They make me think about the enormous
number of people who've done
extraordinary things in their life,
like walk through the mountains of Sichuan
carrying 80 kilos of tea, right?
That's as much as I weigh.
It makes my imagination race
to think about other lives,
other journeys,
and how much of it is unrecorded, right?
That's the nourishment of this project.
That is the richness
that comes with connecting
with ordinary people along the way.
And in this case, these local historians
are kind of the memory keepers
of communities.
Thank heavens that they are still there,
because if they weren't there,
all of this collective experience,
all of this knowledge
would be lost.
And part of my project's mission
is to help preserve that.
Entering the city of Ya'an,
a new walking partner,
Becky Lin, joins us.
Like everyone, she brings her own energy
to the walk's route
along the old Tea Horse Road.
I wanted to tell you guys a joke.
Okay.
I'm listening.
I started to laugh
before telling the joke.
I love this joke, about people walking
-Okay.
-One day
This historic pathway
was an important network for commerce.
But it was also just as important
for an exchange of cultures,
beliefs and new discoveries.
In 1869, for example,
a French missionary
and naturalist stationed in China,
Father Armand David,
became the first outsider
to learn of the existence
of a black and white bear here in Ya'an.
He sent specimens back to France,
and it was found to be a species
totally new to science.
Even to this day, new things
are being discovered about this animal.
So what do you know about pandas?
A giant bear.
I don't know too much about it
because not too many Chinese
have actually seen it, you know?
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Tao Yu, an educator
at the Giant Panda Breeding Center,
tells us more about
one of China's cultural icons.
Is there Is there something
about their behavior that surprises you?
-The voice.
-Yeah.
The voice.
The giant panda has many voices,
dozens of them.
The sound that can often be heard is
like a goat bleating similar to "maaah".
That does sound like goat bleating.
It's quite similar but not the same.
And what does that mean?
Usually it means it wants to eat.
It's the same cry during the mating season
but it would sound more urgent
That means it is eager to find a mate.
Okay.
I didn't know that.
I didn't know
they had all these vocalizations,
all these many different
Its vocalizations are rich in variability.
There is saying that it is a voice actor
in the animal kingdom.
-Mimics
-Mimics.
They can mimic the sound of dogs,
birds or even goats.
Why should we care about pandas?
First of all, they are rare.
They are a rare and protected species
unique to China
and have very important scientific
research value and cultural values.
In terms of its current status,
it is our flagship species
for wildlife conservation
which can also be referred to
as an umbrella species.
While protecting pandas,
we can also protect other wildlife
living in the same area.
And And the ones
that are in the captive programs, the 673,
is part of the goal
to reintroduce them to the wild?
-Or is it mainly
-We got
We launched this program
more over ten years ago.
And now we have released 11 pandas
-Okay.
-in the wild.
All these pandas, they have
They trained for two-and-a-half year.
-Okay.
-Their training.
-Before releasing into the wild.
-The experts, they will
Some physical checks.
-Before being released.
-Yeah.
We're eating like pandas now.
Mr. Tao is very lucky to be working here
because it's
There are very few places like this
in the world,
right, where so much thought
has been put into conserving a species.
I have walked for nine years.
What is that?
I don't even know what it is.
That's like 3,500 days
here into China.
And I can tell you, of those 3,500 days,
the numbers of days
that I've seen wildlife
Maybe 50.
We Everybody around this table
is living through the
The biggest mass extinction
in the history of the planet.
We are nowhere near having
enough facilities like this.
There needs to be
not hundreds, but thousands and tens
of thousands of facilities like this
to educate people.
So the walk in a small way,
tries to share the stories.
Like Mr. Tao,
you bring students here to show them
there's value in this animal.
There's value in nature.
And you are a part of nature.
Ya'an is one of the oldest
tea capitals of China.
It also was a frontier.
And for centuries, tea, silk, porcelain,
along with other elements
of Chinese culture,
spread to other parts of the world
from these green hills.
Influences from the Tea Horse Road
can still be seen and felt today.
All right, thank you.
Tell the ladies
we're gonna be joining them.
We will be picking tea.
So, as a new chapter begins,
another one ends.
It's time to say goodbye
to my walking partner, Yang Wendou,
who has shared more than 1,000 km of trail
over two months of trekking.
He's not only been my guide,
interpreter and teacher,
he's also become family.
Hey, buddy.
-Okay.
-You're my buddy, too.
So, you
You text me when you get into Ya'an, okay?
Yeah.
Bye.
It's difficult to explain
how deeply you get attached to people
when you're walking.
I mean, from day after day,
that unlocks a part of your heart
that apart from, like, very deep,
maybe romantic relationships,
it's almost unequalled,
at least in my life.
I consider my walking partners
like family.
This is amazing. These ladies,
what they turn out in this kitchen
Have you seen the kitchen?
Traditional. They're using it, yeah.
Beautiful.
Look at you two.
She She was picking tea.
-We saw her today.
-Yes.
And then after all those hours of work,
-she makes this, right?
-Yes.
-You say that she's beautiful?
-She's very beautiful.
Tea farmer Yang Shaoyin and her friend
treat us to a vegetarian feast.
It's as nourishing as the views
overlooking the plantation.
And here lies a core joy of the journey.
One of the great gifts of the walk
is the opportunity it has offered
to slow down my life,
to slow down my thinking, my feelings,
my writing over these past nine years.
It's this opportunity
to move in the opposite direction
of an ever faster spinning world.
I'm relearning the rewards of daily life
in meaningful detail
through my body's own speed and rhythms.
And it feels deeply right.
The ability to be patient,
to be alert, to be empathetic,
I think we're losing these connections
through our obsession with speed.
If you want to truly learn
about somebody's life,
toil alongside them.
I joined the tea pickers in their work.
Look, you pluck them one by one.
So, like, it's not like leaves.
It's just like a cluster.
-Yeah. So, she's picking the cluster.
-Cluster.
Each one of them has three leaves.
Usually it's three leaves together.
-A cluster of three leaves.
-Okay.
-Three leaves.
-All right.
Some of them are four.
Because these are three leaves,
so when the tea we make
When we make the tea,
it's prettier on the
It's prettier on the shapes.
If you tear them apart one by one,
-it's not so pretty.
-Not so good.
So you try to pick three at a time?
-Yes. Yeah.
-Is that it? Okay.
Multiple leaves is better than one.
Okay. All right. Great.
I can't pick much in one day.
10 kilograms at most.
And 10 kilos for, like, how many hours?
That's like six hours, eight hours?
How many hours does it take
to pick 10 kilograms of tea?
About 12 hours.
About 12 hours.
Hundreds of millions of people drink tea,
but probably
almost none of them understand
how difficult the process is to gather
and, you know, make tea.
Absolutely.
-She said, "Absolutely."
-Yeah.
This is a traditional culture
and it's also
the source of income for the locals.
What's impressive about the last day
or two here in a tea garden
in Southern Sichuan
is manual labor still does to societies.
Becky and I just spent
the morning picking tea,
and now I think I can write
a better story
knowing what my muscles feel like
after a morning of tea picking,
knowing what the tea leaves feel like,
not just to test it for once
and then take a picture and leave,
but hundreds and hundreds
and hundreds of tea leaves.
Because you are simply
in the middle of it.
You're You're in the world.
You're in the moment.
You're under the sky.
It's raining, it's sun
You're feeling the wind on your skin.
We all identify ourselves a lot
by what we do to feed ourselves.
One of the most reliable doorways
into people's lives,
for me, is to work with them.
So, the walk, in a sense,
is like a needle pulling a thread
through the lives
of many different people,
stitching together
a larger story about where we came from,
who we are,
but also, where are we going
and how do we go together.
That's the forever walk.