One of China’s smallest, most isolated ethnic minorities welcomes the outside world

By Southern Weekly-Agencies Source:Global Times-Agencies Published: 2015-4-1 19:38:01

The Derung are one of several ethnic groups in China with a population smaller than 10,000. Living in high mountains in Southwest China's Yunnan Province along the border with Myanmar, they were the last minority to be linked to China's highway network after a road was completed to their township at the end of last year. As the township steps into modern civilization, its tradition and culture are fading quickly. To keep the past alive, the government and experts are busy collecting objects and artwork, recording customs and language, and encouraging residents to pass on their heritage.

A Derung woman with tattooed faces. Photo: CFP


As the border areas of Southwest China's Yunnan Province are disturbed by the sounds of gunfire and bombs from Myanmar's war-torn northern regions, an old town 450 kilometers to the north, the traditional home of a tiny ethnic minority, is peacefully embracing substantial reforms and the fruits of modernization.

Dulongjiang township, home to the country's Derung ethnic minority people, lies in the Derung River valley in Gongshan Derung and Nu Autonomous county in the northwestern part of Yunnan Province, along the border with Myanmar.

Long-term geographic isolation has kept the Derungs far from modern civilization. But at the end of last year, an 80-kilometer long road, including a 6.68-kilometer long tunnel through the mountains, was opened to traffic, helping make their enclave much more accessible to the outside world.

Previously, the town spent half of each year blockaded by snow. Even during the summer, a man had to walk for several days just to reach the nearest town of any size. The newly completed road, whose construction cost 1 billion yuan ($160 million) and lasted four years, has shortened the journey to three hours.

One of the county's poorest towns, the Derungs' average income per capita is only one -tenth the country's average.

Through the new road, countless trucks carrying workers, cement, steel bars and other materials, head for the town deep in mountains. The local government is working to help the town shake off poverty and build a tourism industry around the area's stunning scenery.

Blast from the past

The Derungs have long lived a traditional lifestyle of farming, hunting and fruit picking. Every spring, they plant corn and wheat using slash and burn methods. Children and women pick fruits and dig up wild yams, while the men go hunting, reciting prayers asking the god of the mountains to bring them fat prey.

They do not have a written language, having traditionally kept records and transmitted messages by engraving notches in wood and tying knots.

In 1950, a troop of soldiers from the People's Liberation Army arrived. The soldiers built a sentry post at the border and brought the Derungs clothes. Before, they wrapped themselves in a striped linen fastened with straw ropes or bamboo needles. Poorer ones even wore a skirt of leaves.

Four years later, to answer the call for "great leap forward development," some cadres and skilled farmers entered into the town, bring along with them iron plows, shovels, chemical fertilizer and a corn thresher. The Derungs were told to raise livestock, build terraced fields and grow rice. A township with six administrative villages was established.

Classes began at a school, and the Derung were taught to speak Chinese and given Chinese names.

Soon the Derungs, especially the children, began to yearn for the outside world. In 1979, Li Jinming became one of first batch of Derung students who studied at the junior high school in the nearest town.

Now 48, Li is an ethnic literature expert with the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences and has settled down in Kunming. But he still remembers learning as a child how to set traps in the forest and how to make toxic arrows with plants.

But many Derungs have chosen to stay in the village. The geographic barriers they face mean their lifestyle has lagged those who left.

In 1990, after a week-long trek through the mountains, botanist Li Heng arrived at the town and was stunned by what she saw. "I purchased two chicken from a family and paid the hostess 20 yuan. When the chicken was cooked, the family ate with us. During dinner, I saw the woman use the banknotes I gave to her to wipe her child's nose," Li Heng recalled.

Li Jinming said Derungs used to barter for goods, and had no idea how to use money.

By the end of 2009, only 29 percent households were electrified, and the town was still extremely poor.

Transportation was the major obstacle. Some wondered why not move the Derungs out of the valley?

An unidentified official gave the reason that, absent the Derungs' firm station in the border area, the 2,000 square kilometers around the village would have long been a no-man's land.

Adapting to change

In 1999, a simple earth road winding through high mountains was built to Dulongjiang, but it was frequently blocked by storms. In 2010, a proposal to build a tunnel crossing the mountains was approved. Armed police were dispatched for the task. And in April last year, the tunnel was finished.

On the day the tunnel was completed, a girl who suffered severe burns was saved after she was rushed to the county hospital through the tunnel. Before, even helicopters could have had trouble reaching her.

Dulongjiang township now has small hydroelectric power stations, primary and junior high schools, a garbage depot, and radio and TV towers. Networking and mobile phones signals cover the whole town.

A total of 1,068 houses have been built, all with the same design. The government has purchased each household a television, a wash machine and a disinfection cabinet for dishes. Toilet were slated to be installed in every house. But residents weren't used to having toilets at home, so the design was canceled. The government then built public toilets in the town.

The Derungs are struggling to adapt to their new lifestyles. They used to wake up at 11 am. But now, the villages' loudspeakers sound at 9 am. Many people don't know how to tidy up their new houses. Officials have been sent to teach them how to clean.

The officials have also helped them to build vegetable greenhouses. But due to lack of business experience, at the beginning they weren't able to find any customers.

The story of one woman from the village was typical. "She went out with a full basket of vegetables on her back in the morning, but came back with all the vegetables in the afternoon," said Li Falian, an official who was sent to the town to help with poverty reduction. "She didn't display the vegetables, nor did she try to hawk them to anyone," Li Falian was quoted as saying by Southern Weekly.

Still, through government-led efforts, the Derungs have seen substantial changes in past four years. The villagers have started to sell pepper and walnuts, and the township's per capita income exceeded 2,500 yuan last year, according to Xinhua News Agency.

Retaining traditions

While modernizing the Derungs, the government has tried to retain the township's distinct culture.

Feng Weixiang, an official with a political advisory body in Gongshan county, has spent the past four years doing one thing - searching for the remaining women with tattooed faces and taking their picture.

As part of a unique Derung tradition, girls get their faces tattooed at age of 12 or 13. The dye is made of ashes wiped from the bottom of a pan, while the tools used for the tattoo are bamboo sticks and sharp thorns on spiny vines. The patterns vary according to the clan.

There is no fixed explanation for the reasons behind the tattoos. The answers offered by old Derung women are diverse.

Du Na, 70, said the tattoo helps to tell women from men easier. Sixty-eight-year old Bing Xiufang said women with tattooed faces are prettier. Another woman Si Rong said that only tattooed women are able to guide their souls back to their hometowns after death.

Some said the tattoos can help ward off evil, while others said the tattoos are used to keep Tibetan chieftains from northern tribes from taking Derung girls by force.

Feng has found 68 tattooed women. As they age, the tradition is dying out, as younger generations no longer accept the painful ceremony.

Slash and burn cultivation and hunting were banned in 2003, and at the same time the government started to encourage the Derungs to return their grain plots to forestry. The government offered them assistance in growing rice and cash crops.

Before, Derungs bartered. Now 35 percent of the labor force in Dulongjiang township works in the service sector, including small businesses, transportation and tourism.

Niu Tao, a poverty relief official who works in the area, admits that with an influx of tourists, local traditions are likely to disappear. Li Jinming is also conflicted. "We need to develop, but we also want to keep the culture of our own. Just like tea, it will keep a distinct flavor," Li said.

Li has recorded the Derung language of on 40 separate tapes. Now he uses his spare time to listen to the tapes, trying to organize the Derung language before the tapes demagnetize.

"How to judge backward or advanced [lifestyles], I don't know, nor do I know whether the 'advancement' means technology or [different] lifestyles. I just know that we survived with one lifestyle, while the inland people survived with another," Li said.

In spring of this year, a 10-year-old Derung girl introduced herself to a reporter as a Gemini, and a fan of TFBOYS, a pop band popular with teenagers around China.

What cheers Li is that she also said she likes reading the legends of her people, and that books about the Derung are always welcome in her library.

This simple earth road was the only access to Dulongjiang township before the new road was constructed. Photo: CFP



 


Newspaper headline: Long road to modernity


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