Rare and beautiful

By Mark Fletcher

The Himalayas stretch east into southern China, through Yunnan province, and along the border with India and Myanmar, sliced up by river gorges two miles deep. Victorian plant hunters ventured into the eastern end of the Himalayan range, bringing back rhododendrons, orchids, irises – and stories of battling with blizzards over mountain passes and descending into hidden valleys untouched by man. Higher than the Alps or the Rockies, these valleys are warmed by air that flows up deep gorges like central-heating pipes, creating pockets of life that seem to defy the mountains. In what is now the Baima Snow Mountain Nature Reserve, those early travellers found a riot of life, where bamboo grew, flowers opened, birds sang and strange creatures, almost human, were spotted in the distance, eating the lichen that hung from the trees like candy floss.

In the 1960s a Chinese expedition, using yak and mule trains, spotted these Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys, living quietly among the trees, cut off from the world by peaks 22,000ft high. But it was not until the 1990s, when a Chinese film-maker, Xi Zhinong, spent 12 years battling to photograph them, that we learnt more about their habits and the way they have adapted to life above the clouds. His images and footage show a creature that looks quite unlike any other. The adults have flowing black and white coats, neat noses and the kind of puffed-up pink lips that would have made any plastic surgeon rich; their babies have pointed Yoda ears. Yet it is their character, shaped by their extraordinary high-altitude home, that sets them apart from other monkeys.