The Kingdom of Animals and Plants 

Wild Elephants

For the time being, Xishuangbanna is the only district where large piece of rain forest is kept in China. The tropical rain forests of the world mainly distribute in the Amazon Valley, the Zaire Valley of Africa and Southeast Asia. Xishuangbanna situates in the high-pressure belt of the  Tropic of C, and nature endows it with an exuberant sea of forests; but in places of the same latitudes in other parts of the world, such as in West Asia, Middle Asia and North Africa, they only have deserts. The varieties of living creatures in the rain forests are many. On this land that only takes up one 500^th of the Chinese territory, there are about 5000 varieties of high-rank plants, which account for one 6^th of the country; there are about 600 types of vertebrates, and take up one 4^th of the country. Among the plants, there are Shorea chinensis, which is as tall as 70 meters; wild rice, which is extremely precious; and Codariocalyx gyroides, which could dance to music etc.; of the animals, there are Asian elephants, buffaloes as heavy as one ton, previous blue and green peacocks, and pheasants etc. We could also see many nature-endowed fantastic views in the rain forests, such as “entangling plants”,“one tree forest”,“flowers on aged stalks”,“beautiful gardens in the air”,and “board roots”etc. Therefore, Xishuangbanna is also praised as the “Kingdom of Animals and Plants”.