The tantalizing peach and the cave-dwelling bat would seem to be hard things to link together. In Chinese tradition, however, the peach as a symbol of longevity, with the addition of five lucky bats, makes a very auspicious symbol. Of course, in an age of empiricism, such things tend to be seen as a link with an unenlightened age and bumpkin mentality. Moreover, for those who have seen a lot of Western films, the sight of bats flying at dusk still causes some alarm.

But there is another view in the West. According to the journal of the American Bat Conservation International, the putting together of the peach and the bat by the Chinese implies a knowledge of the ecological relationship between the two. Five thousand years ago, the Chinese first began to cultivate the peach tree, the wild variety of which depends on the bat as a medium for spreading its seeds. Compared with the centuries-old tarnishing of the bat in the West, were the early Chinese in possession of rather more foresight?

There were ceaseless arguments at the Earth Summit between the developed and developing countries over the conservation of the tropical rain forests. One zoologist insisted that the first step in conserving the forests should be to save the bat, which is facing a daily depletion in numbers. Why? And why has the bat had such an evil image in the West, compared to its auspicious significance in China? Is this just a matter of playing on Chinese puns, or is it based on ecological awareness? And what is the situation for the bat in Taiwan?

In compiling their special report on the bat, associate senior editor Chang chin-ju and photographer Huang Li-li went to all corners to gather information and pictures. It is interesting that there was quite an outcry when the editorial group saw people in Southeast Asia cooking bats and drinking wine, and found it even harder to accept the barbecuing of large fruit bats by Malaysian forest dwellers.

These were not Chinese people in the photographs, so famous for "eating everything with four legs except the table," and among whom there are those who unabashedly indulge in such delicacies as snake soup and turtle flesh. Moreover, how many "civilized" scenes are there in Western films showing handsome and elegant ladies and gentlemen setting out on horseback into the woods as shots ring out and their dogs rush off to retrieve the bloody carcasses of fowl and fox?

If it is said that the bat has been landed with an evil stereotype due to its unique habits, then could it not be said that the pejorative image of the Chinese as people who "eat anything" might also be considered to be a rather "unscientific" phenomenon.

In looking at traditional Chinese farming society, with its precepts of "leaving a little food for the mice and not lighting the lamp out of pity for the moth," there can be found a philosophy of coexistence with animals. In the film The Scarecrow a group of children on a hill happily barbecue a small bird, but do not forget to take some home for their old grandmother to taste. And when an old woman kills a chicken in Taiwan, she will never forget to chant: "The life of the bird is short, you will be reborn as a good child with a good home." How would such an old woman feel at the sadistic spectacle of a Spanish bullfight?

In fact, the view of animals in the West is undergoing constant change. The most obvious example of late has been the 166-year-old London Zoo, which has found itself in financial difficulties with falling numbers of visitors. Unable to muster public support it has announced that it will close this September.

One pained columnist in the London Times wondered how the zoo, which in the past represented people's love of animals, had come to be seen as an unacceptable "animal prison?" He pointed out that in the urban culture of the 1950s animals ceased to be seen as troublesome pests but came to be perceived as the lovable beasts of television documentaries. It was thus that the battles over hunting and vivisection began, amid which the zoo became a sacrificial offering. The columnist finally exclaimed that children will not forgive the pompous adult world for closing the zoo, and that the empty and silent cages will stand as "a melancholy monument to the vanity of human benevolence."

Will empty cages represent the stealing away by adults of the opportunity for children to live alongside animals? Or perhaps there is some educational significance? Again, this is something that earlier Chinese had an opinion about: The Ching dynasty writer, Cheng Pan-chiao, when writing on the education of children, remarked that they should not tie up dragonflies and especially forbade the keeping of birds in cages, asking, "What feeling and what reason is there in pleasure from imprisonment, and why corrupt the nature of animals just to fit our own nature?"

The relationship between the peach and the bat is in fact very simple. If people appreciate the bat, the bat will act as medium for the seeds of the fruit trees and tropical rain forests, allowing nature's myriad creatures to bring forth great wealth and fortune for humanity. It is just unfortunate that, in the balance between conservation of the rain forests on the one hand and rising unemployment in the developed countries and the economic advancement of the developing countries on the other, who can afford the "vanity of human benevolence?"

Humanitarianism and vanity, love and cruelty, civilization and barbarism; in this turbulent here-today-gone-tomorrow age, all are ceaselessly being defined and redefined. But our ignorance must far outweigh our knowledge, and the wisdom of the ancients is not necessarily inferior to our own; the contributions of industrialization to the human environment are evidently not less than the destruction it has wreaked. The final measure of our search for truth must surely remain that "natural compassion" which is part of the human spirit.