Why Ben Fogle thinks he discovered the ‘real’ China in new TV series

This unsettling mise-en-scène occurs during Ben Fogle’s Chinese Adventure, available on Now TV, at the Shenshuping Panda Base, a remote, government-run wildlife unit in Wolong, Sichuan province, where pandas are born and raised before being released to repopulate the mountains.

Trouble is, the cubs cannot be allowed a glimpse of a human face, lest they become too trusting of the world’s most dangerous species. So Fogle and his three-strong film crew must dress up in full-length panda costumes for their encounter.

Looking like bank robbers at a fancy-dress party thrown by The Joker, they set off to engage with China’s cuddliest, most venerated beast – appropriate for Fogle’s quest during the three-episode miniseries to discover whether the “timeless ways of the past”, as he puts it, can endure “as China races towards the future”.

Fogle’s 8,000-kilometre (4,970-mile) odyssey, much of it undertaken by high-speed train, begins with him as a bricklayer – albeit a “brickie” relaying some of the world’s most celebrated bricks. On the Great Wall north of Beijing he helps with preservation work on another symbol of China that his new boss says is in the hearts and minds of all Chinese people. This too chimes with his mission to “get to know the ‘real’ China”, cliché or not.