Wooden Yao minority houses near Dazhai
I have spent the last few days with my old friend Xuejingrong and her boyfriend hopping from village to village through the north of Guangxi province. Guangxi is home to the largest population of Chinese minority people in China (although not the largest number of different minorities, a title held by Yunnan.) Most of these are Zhuang minority, with the addition of some Miao, Dong, Yao, and others.
A mortise and tenon drum tower of the Dong minority, built without a single nail
The common outside conception of the Chinese as a single ethnicity is far from the truth. There are 56 recognized ethnicities in China. The largest, the Han, make up about 90 per cent of the population. The remaining 55 minorities make up a remaining approximately 10 per cent (for perspective, visible minorities made up 16 per cent of the Canadian population in 2006.) Some Chinese minorities, such as the Zhuang, are so similar to the Han as to be nearly indistinguishable. Some, like the predominantly Muslim Hui minority, have clearly different features, language, clothing and customs. The phrase "zhonghua minzu," or Chinese ethnicity, is a catch all term for the Chinese people. Whether or not a single such term is meaningful, however, depends on who you talk to.
Here in Guanxi, however, ethnicity has a different meaning altogether. It means business. The tourist trade here is propelled by Han Chinese and western tourists who come to see the ethnic mosaic on display. And the display is indeed beautiful. Within a hundred kilometre radius you can see the breathtaking rice terraces of Dragon's Backbone, carved wooden "wind and rain" bridges crisscrossing picturesque valleys, and the colourful costumes and headdresses of minority women selling vegetables in village markets.
A wind and rain bridge at Chengyang
The trouble is that indefinable, elusive substance known as "authenticity." The tourist trade here is driven by people who want to see the "real thing," minority people living in their natural environment, following their traditional customs and celebrating their own culture. The people who live here, meanwhile, are realizing that their own ethnicity is a goldmine waiting to be excavated. Towns around Dragon's Backbone are slowly turning into clusters of guesthouses as family after family realizes that taking in tourists makes more money than planting rice. After seeing the vast rice fields I asked one old woman where all the people are to plant so much ground. She told me that the men all work in the city, only coming home around planting and harvesting time. The women stay at home to tend to the real crop: people like me who want to wander around the terraces and stay in the beautiful wooden stilted Yao houses.
Yao women keep warm around a fire while waiting to porter tourist's luggage up to the village
Unfortunately, tourists don't like this kind of development of the tourist trade. You can predictably see a tourist's face fall when, in one of the guesthouses, the host quotes a price for dinner that is twice the average price in the city. Tourists are not sorry to pay so much money - rates are still quite reasonable - the disapointement is rather that this particular place has been "corrupted" by the tourist trade.
This cycle leads to a game of tourism whack-a-mole, in which tourists look for new untouched places, only to leave a new enthusiasm for the tourist trade in their wake. There is an interesting economic puzzle here. How can locals benefit from the tourist trade without upsetting the lifestyle that draws in the tourists in the first place? This place walks a thin line between poverty and opportunity, tradition and exploitation. Like so much of China, it is hard to say what the next ten years might bring here.
The Dong of this village put on a music and dance display for visitors twice a day.
Unconcerned with tourists, a bamboo worker weaves baskets for sifting rice.
RSS Feed