You may be forgiven for picturing China as an endless succession of grey-skied cities. Unfortunately, if you're like most expats, this is the part of China in which you belong. If you were to plane, train, bus, then walk to the clean and green parts of China that aren't carefully manicured tourist traps, you might miss a meal, or have to relieve yourself outdoors, or worst of all, have nowhere to recharge your iPod. Then where would you be?

You'd be in the seldom-seen Chinese realm that is the subject of BBC's Wild China. Even if you only watch documentaries during the commercial breaks between wrestling matches, and you don't know your Xi'an from your Xinjiang, Wild China is a cinematic exercise in natural grandeur that will re-Orient your view of Chinese ecology.

Filming wildlife in China is still more difficult than it is in Zimbabwe, for easily inferred reasons. The producers of Wild China most likely got their break thanks to their avowed intent to address the growing misconception of China as an environmental basket case. Half a million miles of travel over 57 filming trips resulted in a six-part series that will leave the Sinophile agog, the tree-hugger with a tear in her eye, and the average Expat with a score of new China travel plans.

What sets this nature-doco apart lies in China's population crisis, or opportunity if you like. Langur primates seeking winter refuge in limestone caves compete for real estate with the residents of Dongzhong village, who live, work, and go to school in the biggest, comfiest cave man or monkey could hope to live in. After the elephants of southern Yunnan trample through a virgin stretch of forest, the Jino people follow behind to forage in the new break. Golden macaques leaping over the rocks of the raging Nujiang River have nothing on the Dai who zip over it from cliff to cliff on rope slides, their pigs and produce tied to the runners.

Man and nature intersect at far more ostensibly mundane locales in China. Wild China evinces the striking harmony in these arrangements. Miao farmers on their narrow terraces welcome swallows in the spring, timing their arrival with rice planting. Golden carp live free and easy in Southern China rice paddies, until the fat ones fall into the hands of a farmer who knocks a hole in a levee. In fact, so much of the documentary follows the dancing of rural Chinese with natural rhythms that it might have been more accurately titled Minority China = Sustainable China. But what did marketing ever have to do with accuracy?  Enough that the cancerous rumor of all Chinese farmers as unwashed brutes bringing endangered species to market be exposed as inaccurate.

It's not all man and animal in symbiosis, however. Wild China ventures to some of China's most inaccessible nooks and crannies to bring you the kind of rare animal footage that homonids of any age will wonder at, if the internet has left any wonder in them. Snub-nosed monkeys do Mick Jagger imitations on the snowy slopes of Mount Kawakarpo. Siberian tigers stalk the still considerable tracts of Manchurian forest in Dongbei. Whale sharks cruise the South China seas. Throughout, masterful camera work and a soaring Chinese soundtrack performed by Cheng Yu and the UK Chinese  Ensemble lend drama to every moment.

Wild China represents a milestone in documentary film, the most comprehensive look at rural China to date. Given the extremism of the world's fastest growing religion, Environmentalism, it's also good to know that our relationship with Mother Earth isn't necessarily dependent on one of us saving the other. As Wild China claims, "If we show the will, mother nature will find the way."

Wild China is available at Amazon, downloading sites, and finer DVD shops across China.