Transcript逐字稿
Machine transcription with names checked by hand. Small errors may remain; the audio is the record.机器转写，人名地名已人工校对，可能仍有少量误差，以音频为准。
0:00His name is Simba. In Swahili, the language of East Africa, Simba means lion. Most people are given one life. Simba likes to say that he has been given four. The first in China, the second in Africa, the third in North America, and a fourth still to come. Welcome to Africa Conservation Stories, a series about one man's life among the wild animals of Africa. This first episode begins where everything began. On an afternoon in 2004, when he saw wild lions for the very first time, the story starts earlier in 1995.
0:46Simba was a student of English literature at Sichuan University. One day in the library, he found a book, Tarzan of the Apes. The freedom of that life in the African jungle was exactly the life he longed for. It inspired his graduation thesis, which he called Return to Nature. And in it he wrote openly of his wish to go to Africa. At the time he thought Africa might be the farthest dream of his life. After graduating in 1996 he went to Chongqing and took a job in the city government. He married, settled down, and followed the traditional Chinese path for 15 years. But the dream did not leave him. He often climbed Nanshan Mountain, stood above the meeting of two great rivers, and wondered how he could ever reach the African savanna. Should he board an ocean liner to Mombasa, or grow wings like an eagle and simply fly there? He also climbed Jinyun Mountain where there is a peak called Lion Peak. He loved to stand on Lion Peak, gaze in the direction of Africa, and imagine himself already standing on the great grasslands. He was drawn too to the old Taoist temple on Nanshan. He believed in the Taoist teaching to follow nature and to live in harmony with it. He did not yet know that those ancient ideas would one day fit perfectly with the work waiting for him on the African plains. In 2004 Simba turned 31. That year his daughter Arianna was born.
2:34And that same year he set foot in Africa for the first time, travelling to Kenya and South Africa. In Kenya's Maasai Mara he saw wild lions for the first time. A whole pride lay resting on the grassland, and the air itself was hot. The lions were close, lazing in the sun, completely at ease. And yet their presence was unlike anything he had ever seen in a zoo. These were not lions behind bars. These were the true kings of the savanna. He turned to his guide and asked a simple question. "How many lions are left in Africa?" The answer kept him awake all night. "Fewer than thirty thousand," the guide said. "And if no one protects them, they will soon be gone." "Thirty thousand." It may sound like a great many, but across a continent as vast as Africa, in what was once the lion's kingdom, fewer than thirty thousand remained, and the number was still falling. In that moment Simba understood.
3:42The dream of his childhood had not been a fantasy. It had been a call. Africa was calling him. The lions were calling him. The faraway dream of his 1995 thesis suddenly had weight. When he returned to China he gave himself a pen name, Xingba, Simba. He wanted the name to remind him every single day of his mission, and to push him to find a way back to Africa to protect the lions. Wanting it was easy. Doing it was another matter. He had no training in conservation, and everything he knew from his old job was of almost no use in Africa.
4:27He had to start from zero. He had to go back to school. So he began to prepare. He studied wildlife conservation. He learned field survival skills, heading out alone into the wild to walk, to pitch a tent, to cook for himself. And he sought out scientists. He was fortunate to meet Dr. Xie Yan of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who was then studying Siberian tigers in Hunchun, in the far northeast of China. She taught him a great deal about how conservation work is actually done. Through Dr. Xie, he was introduced to Dr. George Schaller, a towering figure in world conservation. The first scientists to systematically study mountain gorillas. African lions, Bengal tigers, jaguars, snow leopards, and giant pandas.
5:27Schaller became his pen friend. Simba wrote to him often, asking about the habits of lions. And Schaller always replied quickly, answering everything, holding nothing back. Later, when Simba wrote a book for his daughter, called Little Simba Travels Africa, Schaller even helped to proofread the English. The preparation took six years. Through all of it, his wife, Yang Lily, stood firmly behind his decision to go to Africa. Without her support, he says, he would never have made it that far. Then came 2011. Simba was 37 years old, and the moment of choice had arrived. He resigned from his government post in Chongqing and left for Kenya to find his path in conservation. At the airport, he said goodbye to his wife and to his daughter, who was seven years old. His daughter cried. She did not want him to go. He had no guarantees that day. He knew only one thing. The wheel had already turned.
6:39From that afternoon in 2004, go to Africa, protect the lions, do not let them disappear. This was the thing he had to do. What followed is a much longer story. He would spend more than a decade in Africa. He would be welcomed into the Maasai people. He would found a conservation academy in the Maasai Mara, and then the first Natural History Museum the Mara had ever seen. In this series, he will tell those stories, one by one. But every one of them starts in 2004, with a pride of lions lying in the hot African air. In the next episode, his first days in Africa, a friend's house in Nairobi, the wild rides of the Matatu buses, and a journey to the plains south of the city to meet two injured lions. This is Africa Conservation Stories. Join us next time.