In April 2015, we came to Pu'er, Yunnan to photograph wild Asian elephants. The tropical rainforest is in the dry season at this time, and there is a shortage of food for wild Asian elephants. In order to find food, the elephants will cross the mountains from the Wild Elephant Valley to the Pu'er area.

This season is also the time when the elephants have the most conflicts with humans. We heard many versions of the story about human-elephant conflict in the local area. The most impressive one happened in 2014, also in this season. At that time, two banana farmers in a certain village went up the mountain to harvest bananas. They met a group of wild elephants on a narrow road and were chased and trampled to death by the elephants. After that, the township organized people to collect the bodies, and the bodies they picked up could only fill a plastic bag. After listening to the story told by wildlife conservationist Li Deming, everyone in the group looked solemn, and I clearly saw the muscles on Lao Qi's face twitching. We have never had such a terrifying feeling about plastic bags. After that, everyone was silent with their own thoughts.

Wildlife conservationist Li Deming, it was he who told us the story of the plastic bag

And so, we began to shoot the wild elephants.

Under Li Deming's guidance, after a few days of shooting, we found a way to safely approach the elephants. In fact, wild animals are still afraid of humans. The reason they attack humans is the stress response when they are forced into a corner. As long as we follow the rule of "giving way to the wild elephants, not making any radical moves, and shooting at a relatively high terrain", we will basically be ignored by the elephants and will be safe. The story of the plastic bag was gradually forgotten by us.

Photographing Elephants

It had just rained in the morning of that day, and we drove to a hill, planning to shoot the elephants walking on the ridge. We parked the car in a banana garden about 100 meters away from the hill, and saw a villager on the side of the road, holding a giant "Ma Lei Zi" (a kind of firecracker used by locals to drive away elephants, with a loud noise and great power), staring at the hill nervously. The hill was not high, only about 20 meters. We walked to the foot of the hill and looked up. Through the trees on the top of the hill, we could see the mountains in the distance. There were both foreground and background. It was a good shooting environment. We just had to wait for the elephants to appear from the top of the hill.

While waiting, we could see that Li Deming was a little nervous. He said to us, "The terrain here is not good. We are low and they are high. If the elephants come to attack us, we should ignore everything and run back desperately. We can't even take the camera." I was thinking, "No way. I have been shooting for a few days and nothing happened. This place is not an elephant trail." After waiting for a long time, I could hear the elephants' calls from time to time and feel the vibration of their footsteps, but they just didn't come out.

Suddenly, the hill was quiet in an instant. I thought to myself that I probably waited in vain. The elephants took another path, and my nervous hand, which had been on the recording button, also dropped. Li Deming's tense face relaxed slightly. Suddenly, a gust of cold wind blew. Before I could figure out what was going on, Lao Qi beside me had already flown across the puddle 30 meters behind me. At this moment, three huge adult elephants rushed out of the top of the mountain and led the herd to pounce on us.

"Run!" Li Deming yelled. I hesitated for a moment, but instinctively picked up the machine and ran back. At this time, Lao Qi had already run to where we parked.

"Damn, don't do this. Don't want the machine anymore. Don't even care about your brother. Run away without recognizing any relatives!"

Lao Qi ran without recognizing any relatives, and Jia Dashen hid behind

At this time, I also ran to the edge of the puddle. Suddenly, a blue figure passed by my left--"Who is it?... Fatty?!" I saw him draw a beautiful arc in the air, but he flew too early and his foothold happened to be a puddle of mud. He also realized it, adjusted his foothold in time, played a change of direction in the air, and decisively chose to land in the puddle, splashing huge water, and disappeared immediately.
"Damn, isn't it gout? That knee has said goodbye to a healthy life!" What is a flexible fat man? This time I saw it!

Grandpa Wen Ju, the chief director of the flexible fat man

It is said that at the moment when the flexible fat man changed direction in the air, Master Jia, who had been running beside me, was also preparing to take off. That running posture and that stepping point can definitely complete a wonderful leap, but the flexible fat man just landed right in front of him. I heard Master Jia "moan" and took back the take-off. When I ran back to the parking lot and looked back, I saw Master Jia limping and holding his strained right leg. He sat on the ground and said, "Teacher Li, don't take this..." Before he finished speaking, I saw a huge numb bomb flying to Master Jia's side, and it exploded with a "bang". Master Jia covered his left ear with a groan and yelled, "What the hell, you're using a cannon to blow it up!" It turned out that the villager saw the wild elephant rushing down the mountain and was afraid that his banana plantation would be destroyed. He lit the cannon and threw it out, regardless of whether there were people there. It happened to fall next to Master Jia. Master Jia was very hurt that day.

Master Jia, who was very hurt, had to look up at the stars.

In fact, when I was running back, the thing that kept flashing back in my mind was still the plastic bag.

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