China's Golden Monkeys

A hard lesson learned!

Golden Monkeys in the Chinese Forest

An assignment from the San Diego Zoo

The San Diego Zoo made history as one of the first places that China allowed to "borrow" and display Giant Pandas. The zoo's relationship with China in this regard was cemented by scientific exchanges by both countries....but I suspect some money probably changed hands in the process. These exchanges continue to this day.

I had been involved in photographing another research project supported by the SD Zoo involving "hacking"....the raising and acclimatization.... of zoo raised California Condors in the Arizona desert near the Grand Canyon, A project that has been justifiably credited with saving California Condors from extinction. That assignment led to several others including a film to document the research effort of Zoo scientists from both countries....while studying a rare forest primate named The Sichuan Golden Monkey!

We travelled to Sichuan Province and met with research scientists that informed us that the monkeys were extremely shy, hid from any human contact and were almost never seen or photographed in the wild. This was not good news for me...and turned out to be more than prophetic.

The only way into the study area was on foot. Fortunately the nearest village could provide us with porter help to get our gear many hour's away to a meadow that adjoined the forest where the monkeys could be "found?"

As we trekked up a trail I noticed that the villagers were spending alot of time glancing over at our audio engineer...Chris Barbieri! It got to be so obvious that during one of our many rest and water breaks...we finally asked what it was about him that had captured such intense interest? The villagers were reluctant to say what it was....and it took some insistence on our part to finally get them to tell the story!

Some time before, a man who looked like Chris and lived in their village, had left his wife and family and disappeared with another young girl and had not been seen since! The villagers could not decide if Chris was that same man....and had returned to the village! They seemed pretty serious about it but that didnt keep the rest of us from giving Chris a hard time for the rest of the trip.

The trek dragged on long into one hot afternoon and at one of the stops we asked "How much longer?" The answer came back through our interpreter..."Soon". As if we all had the same thought in mind at exactly the same time....we all answered in unison.."HOW SOON!" This episode we added to our hassling of Chris B.....who became HOW SOON the man who had disappeared, at that point...for the rest of the trip and even to this day!

We pitched our camp in the meadow and readied our camera gear to start seaching for the elusive monkeys. To describe our fruitless efforts over several days would simply bore current readers to death....but it became obvious that our group made so much noise....no matter how hard we tried to tread lightly....that the monkeys, who we could hear nearby chattering in the trees,could hear us every time and simply slip slowly away just out of camera range

The San Diego Zoo Expedition members….The notorious “How Soon” kneeling alone second row.

Finding the monkeys turned out to be extremely hard to do. Our group was pretty sizable what with the Zoo people, researchers, local guides, film crew and so forth. Anyone who has tried to sneak up on elusive animals will sympathize. It is virtually impossible for a group our size to move through difficult terrain....quietly. There is always some strange noise created by that many even though we were taking great care to be silent.

After many attempts to get our shots without any luck..."How Soon" addressed the group. Chris,who lives, as the rest of us on the crew do,in Colorado.... is an avid hunter of deer,elk and antelope. Through his experience,he figured that the only way to get our film done was to settle quietly in a likely spot and the send some of the villagers helping us....way around behind where we could hear the monkeys sitting.....and ever so slowly, ever so gently....move the group towards our camera.

On our first attempt with this new strategy, we could hear the troop coming towards us through the trees. As the first ones appeared above us....I learned that they each followed the path of the one before them from branch to branch.....and if I focused my lens on a specific opening in a tree, I had many chances to get good shots of the monkeys as they travelled above us. They even frequently stopped in frame to sit for a moment and look down at us....or groom each other. I could not have hoped for more and in short order we had what we had been sent all this way to do.

Our adventure drew to a close shortly after that...we packed up and trailed back down to the Chinese village base and home leaving the villager's wondering ....to this day....if the handsome man who had appeared among them was really the long absent "How Soon". Only one person knows the answer to that mystery!