Protecting the Real-Life Shen Xiaobao, Starting with “Farming”?

Shen Xiaobao, the clever and endearing leopard spirit in the 2025 Spring Festival release Ne Zha 2: The Demon Child Churns the Sea, captured the hearts of countless audiences.

Yet in the film, he is gravely wounded and his fate hangs in the balance, a sight that evokes the endangered North China leopard (Panthera pardus japonensis) in the real world. This leopard subspecies, found only in China, faces severe survival threats, including habitat fragmentation, poaching, and declining prey populations.

To protect the North China leopard, Cat Alliance – a conservation organisation dedicated to China’s wild felines – has put down roots in rural communities in Heshun County, Shanxi Province, for ten years. Over the past couple of years, the Cat Alliance team has launched the Leopard Village Farm project, practising ecological agriculture in the village without chemical fertilisers or pesticides and without plastic mulch, exploring entirely new approaches to conservation.

Last year, Foodthink colleagues enjoyed waxy maize, roasted naked oats, and an assortment of mixed grains produced by Leopard Village Farm. In this episode of Food Talk, we sit down with Hannah, project lead of Leopard Village Farm, to explore what protecting the North China leopard has to do with farming – and how ecological agriculture can safeguard leopard habitat while fostering coexistence with local communities.

As Hannah shares her story, we discover that a single cornfield has become a bond connecting the leopard population, villagers, and urban audiences alike. From the comical misunderstanding over stolen corn, to wild boar and roe deer sharing the farmland, to providing coal subsidies to villagers to reduce deforestation, this experiment weaving together conservation, ecological agriculture, and community co-building is both a model of “Other Effective area-based Conservation Measures” (OECM) and a fresh approach to biodiversity conservation in China.

This Episode’s Guests

Hannah

Hannah, project lead of Cat Alliance’s Leopard Village Farm, also known as Ergou, Weibo @天才少女哈亚纳, has two cats.

Ze’en

Editor at Foodthink, a novice in nature observation hoping to rediscover the “sense of wonder”, and a Cat Alliance monthly donor.

Timeline

01:32 When Cat Alliance first came to Heshun, Shanxi in 2008 to search for the North China leopard, what did they find?

03:12 What does ecological agriculture have to do with wildlife conservation? Why is Cat Alliance running the Leopard Village Farm project?

04:46 In the North China region, home to 170 million people, how do humans and leopards share the same land?

06:44 Is it hard for a conservation organisation to start ecological agriculture from scratch?

18:00 How do villagers view Leopard Village Farm? Are they willing to take part in ecological agriculture?

21:25 From the comical corn-stealing mix-up to villagers helping with the harvest – what happened? How have the stories between people and animals shaped Leopard Village Farm into what kind of experimental ground?

29:47 Can ecological agriculture balance the tension between conservation and development? How is Cat Alliance working with villagers to find solutions?

31:50 The villagers’ change of heart, starting with not killing this snake

38:24 How will the Leopard Village Farm project achieve financial sustainability in the future?

50:53 In the future, will we see more Leopard Village Farms? Can this model be replicated in other regions?

51:44 If you visit Leopard Village Farm, will you be able to see leopards?

72:49 If we want to do something for the North China leopard, where should we start?