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Published: September 23rd 2013
There are five species of snub-nosed monkeys in the world. Three are restricted to China, one is found in both China and Burma, and the last is found solely in North Vietnam. The golden snub-nosed monkey is the most widespread, with a fairly wide distribution in China but there's not many places to actually be able to see them. The Zhouzhi Golden Monkey Reserve outside Xian should be one of the best as it is home to what is described in one book on Chinese wildlife as “the world's only habituated group”. Researchers have been feeding them here for years, which has allowed visitors to be able to go there and reliably see them. It was, nevertheless, very difficult to find out much information about the place – even though it is on Tripadvisor of all places!! I knew the reserve was in Yu Huang Miao village near the town of Shuang Miao, and I knew there was “basic but clean” accommodation for visitors, and that the monkeys were fed in the mornings. That was about it.
The helpful girls at the Warriors Youth Hostel in Xian had looked up as much as they could on the internet for me the day before I went. I had to take a city bus to the bus station, and from there a bus to the city of Zhouzhi, and from there a bus to Yu Huang Miao. Simple. At 6.30am I left the hostel, intending to make as speedy a journey as possible. The first problem was that the city bus I wanted did not leave from the stop I had been told. I wasted some time searching for the right stop, went back to the hostel but the morning girl was about as much use as a wet tissue, and eventually ended up taking a taxi instead. I didn't get to the bus station until 7.30am but there was a bus to Zhouzhi just about to leave, so that was alright. It was an hour and a half to Zhouzhi. I used my written-down Chinese instructions to show the bus drivers until I found the bus that went to Yu Huang Miao. The driver held up two fingers to show....something? I figured it couldn't mean two o'clock, so maybe two hours, or eleven o'clock, or twenty Yuan fare? I asked him to write down what he meant but he just wrote a long string of Chinese characters which didn't help. I still don't know what he meant because the bus left at 12.30pm (a
long time just sitting on the bus waiting!) and the fare was thirteen Yuan.
It was almost three hours to my destination – the road was sealed for the first two hours but then became a dirt road – and the scenery was amazing! Really just like those Chinese paintings with the straight up and down mountains forming perfect arrowhead-V valleys. I tried taking some photos but the bus was too bumpy and the results were not good. Just after 3pm, as the bus came up to a little cluster of buildings, there was a big signboard with golden monkeys on it. This must be the place. The bus stopped and everybody piled off; end of the road. A girl stopped as she was getting off the bus and asked (in English) if I spoke Chinese, and I said no.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Yu Huang Miao,” I said.
“Oh but that is very far! Twenty kilometres.”
“And this is the last stop for the bus?” I ask, thinking twenty kilometres, no problem, I can walk that.
“Yes, this is Shuang Miao. But you are not allowed to go to Yu Huang Miao. It is forbidden for foreigners to go there!”
“Oh,” I said, because I couldn't think of anything more profound to say right then! This did indeed put a slight wrinkle in my plans!!
“How did you find out about this place?”
“From the internet, and books, “ I said, “I thought there was a reserve where the golden monkeys are fed and people can go to see them?”
“No, nobody is allowed there.”
It turned out the girl worked for the reserve so we walked to the headquarters where there was a man who also spoke English and who was also just as confused as to what on Earth I was doing there. They had never known somebody to arrive wanting to see the monkeys!! One problem, which was my fault I guess, was that it turned out this was a National Nature Reserve, which requires a permit to enter. Everything I had found just called it the “Zhouzhi Golden Monkey Reserve”, I knew people had previously visited there to see the monkeys with no mentions of permits, and one of the Chinese-language sites the girls at Warriors had found said there was an entry fee; so my understanding had been that it was a reserve open to visitors, perhaps within a wider park system, but one at which you paid on arrival.
Once they had established that I wasn't at the wrong place (I showed them the photocopy from the book I mentioned, and some other stuff I had), they tried calling the “leader” to see if I could visit but he basically said “no, put him back on the bus”. There's only one bus per day (leaving Zhouzhi at 12.30pm and going back the next morning at 6.30am), so they put me up in the headquarters for the night (the accommodation I mentioned earlier) and fed me. After the initial surprise at my arrival, the man and girl (I won't call them by name) started telling me a bit more about the situation there which apparently didn't actually have anything to do with permits at all. The “leader” had been there for three years now and since he arrived no-one has been allowed entry. If anyone turns up the people at the headquarters have to make excuses to why it is not possible to visit. What I gather is that before then there were “tours” (for want of a better word) to see the habituated monkey groups there but now not at all, which does rather explain why I couldn't find any really recent visitor information on it . What seemed to particularly frustrate the man was that the “leader” takes his friends and relatives in there to see the monkeys, but doesn't allow anybody else (like me!). I was extremely disappointed about all of this, but there wasn't much I could do.
At dinner the little lady who was the cook was very interested in me and asked the others lots of questions. Apparently I was the first foreigner she had ever seen! She thought I must be very rich if I had come all this way just to look at monkeys. Relatively speaking I was of course, but also (again, relatively speaking) very much
not rich at all! The man thought it unusual that I had only been in China a week and yet was so good at using chopsticks (I was eating Chinese porridge at the time, which is not like Western porridge at all and is a bit like trying to eat soup with a fork). I guess using chopsticks must be my special skill, and I should probably give up looking for animals and just, er, eat with chopsticks. The only saving grace of the quest (small though it was) was that I saw some red-billed blue magpies, my third species of magpie in China and probably the nicest of the lot.
On the bus from Zhouzhi to Xian the tv up the front was playing the sixth installment of The Fast And The Furious movies. The one with Gina Carano in it, which makes it the only one of the six worth watching.
Back at Warriors I tried to find out information on Dafeng Milu National Nature Reserve near Shanghai. It's like swimming through treacle trying to get information on things in China. I had found out what I could from English sites before leaving NZ but things invariably are completely wrong. The Chinese sites the girls are finding have the same problem. All the phone numbers are wrong so they can't call anybody there to find out about permits, costs, accommodation. I think I'm going to have to just turn up at Dafeng and see what happens.
I tried uploading photos to the last few blogs (as I've said before, it doesn't work from my laptop so I can only do it from a better computer if I can find one). China is funny with websites though. I can access Travelblog and post text blogs, but on the computer I got onto the whole “upload photos” part of the site did not exist. I also can't access the Mammalwatching blog which is annoying!
Tomorrow, Yangxian for crested ibis. I don't care to think too much about how it will turn out....
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Peter Ericsson
non-member comment
You took all that pretty graciously I think. Not sure I would have done the same.