Natural China

A must have engaging guide to a country that is just opening up to ecotourism and offers fascination enough to lure visitors like Heather back again and again

Acclaimed natural history photographer Heather Angel has been travelling to China for many years: by the spring of 2010 she will have completed 27 trips and has had access to areas very few westerners have set foot in. In this vast country – the third largest in the world – varied climate conditions produce an array of habitat types, from the snowy wastelands of the frigid northeast to the tropical paradises of the far south. Spectacular scenery – much of it unique – includes breath-taking karst stone forests, multiple columnar peaks, dramatic caves and solitary pines clinging precariously to bare rocky peaks reminiscent of a Chinese ink - brush painting. Heather Angel has visited and photographed all these locations, from China’s ‘national treasure’ the giant panda to the whooper swans that spend the winters on the vast salt-water lake of Qinghai, from the endangered Amur tiger to the endearing pink dolphins of Hong Kong. Natural China is an engaging guide to a country of incomparable richness and diversity.