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CHAPTER FOUR

Pastoral Landscapes in the Qinghai Lake Area: Current Developments and Trends

Introduction (back to top)

Although the Qinghai Lake area was well known to many geographers and explorers of the 19^th century, it has in recent times remained in relative obscurity outside China. Qinghai Lake, which means “Blue Sea” in Chinese, is also known by its Mongolian and Tibetan names with the same meaning, Kokonor and Tso Ngongpo, respectively. The larger surrounding region is known as Amdo, the name of the main Tibetan group that lives throughout much of the northeastern part of the Tibetan plateau. Amdo includes a large portion of present-day Qinghai and smaller areas of Gansu and Sichuan provinces.

This chapter – the first of several analytical chapters – begins by reviewing the physical geography and history of this little studied region of Inner Asia. It then proceeds to examine several Tibetan pastoral landscapes from a variety of geographic perspectives. Finally, the inter-related issues of power, poverty, tradition, and modernization are discussed, with an emphasis placed on the social and environmental impacts of modern development activities pursued in the Qinghai Lake area. The observations in this chapter include both the relevant literature, from Chinese and international sources and from published as well as unpublished (gray) literature, and my own experiences and observations (1994-99) of the pastoral landscapes of the Qinghai Lake area.

The primary method adopted in this chapter is landscape observation and analysis. In social geography, landscape analysis is the complex endeavor of observing and making inferences from the study of whole landscapes (Meinig 1979). Most landscape studies are descriptive in nature and focus primarily on physical or material elements (Cosgrove 1984). Furthermore, most landscape studies attempt to explain causality by linking temporal and spatial dimensions, but they rarely include any predictive component (Hägerstrand 1985).

To determine how present activities (e.g., pastoral development activities) will affect the local to regional landscape in the future remains an enormous challenge. Indeed, as Skånes (1997) clearly explains, any attempt to “predict the effects of political and socio-economic decisions on the physical landscape” must be made with extreme caution because many actions can “lead to events that [are] unforeseen, resulting in even greater complexity within the landscape.” Nonetheless, any tool or analysis that can help to better understand current trends should be welcome as it will increase the probability of making sound development decisions in the future.

As people and governments pursue specific objectives such as economic growth, state security, environmental protection, or cultural preservation, even simple models of possible future scenarios can assist in choosing more sustainable courses of action. The simplest model to envisage is the course of inaction (Davidson and Dence 1988), which assumes that past and present trends, environmental and otherwise, will continue in the future. In this chapter, landscape observation and analysis is used to examine the present social and environmental conditions in the Qinghai Lake area, and thus to explore the possible not-too-distant future of its alpine grasslands and pastoralists, both locally and in the greater Tibetan plateau region as a whole. Based on the present observations, the impact of status quo development is discussed in the context of Qinghai’s alpine grasslands (i.e., the future scenario that could result from inaction, or from a general inertia in the development trends currently being promoted in the province). Overall, the continued intensification of land use and reduction in herders’ mobility is likely, and this has many potential dire consequences for grassland quality and ecosystem integrity. In contrast, economic diversification and the promotion of activities and types of pastoral production that increase mobility and the ability of pastoralists to respond rapidly to short-term environmental changes could increase the overall long-term productivity of the grasslands. Change is occurring on the Tibetan plateau, but the future is still uncertain, and it will depend largely on whether development stays its present course or if it chooses to better adapt itself to the ecological conditions of the Tibetan plateau.

Landscape observation and analysis (back to top)

What exactly is meant by the term “landscape”? Sauer, a pioneer of landscape studies since the 1920s, has influenced the discipline perhaps more than any other person (Sauer 1924, 1931, Leighley 1962). Significantly, Sauer promoted the notion of man as separate from nature, a view that has become ensconced in the popular understanding of landscape. This can be seen, for example, in the common distinction made between natural landscapes “untouched by man,” and cultural landscapes that are the result of “various cultural factors” (Keisteri 1990). This duality has been maintained for decades and often has led to a false division into discrete social and natural realms. This division can be observed in many disciplines, and also in the clear partition made between the “social” and the “natural” sciences (Wilson 1998). Fortunately, a more integrated view of landscape has begun to emerge, an understanding, or at least an acceptance, that there really is no such thing as “a purely cultural landscape … since nature provides the foundation for human activity,” and that, simultaneously, there is “no such thing as a purely natural landscape [since] human influence has become global in its scope” (Keisteri 1990). Skånes (1997) similarly argues that “natural and cultural landscapes are not mutually exclusive. Instead, the cultural landscape is [simply] superimposed on the natural [landscape] in layers of varying transparency and degree of amalgamation, hence [both] sharing the same space without canceling each other out.” Clearly, then, we should adopt an integrated view of landscape. Understood in this way, that cultural elements in the landscape do not negate but rather build upon the natural elements, Cosgrove’s (1984) definition of landscape attains its fullest and richest meaning: “landscape is [simply] a consequence of [the] collective human transformation of nature.”

An examination of several other definitions helps us to expand even further our understanding of the notion or concept of landscape. In the context of a historical presentation of the cultural geography of China, Tuan (1970) depicts landscape as “the tangible context of man’s association with the earth.” The historical geographer Roberts (1987) explains how

“each generation inherits a landscape [and] uses [it], changing it, adapting it to new needs, new demands, so passing it through a filter of use. Thus the inherited landscape … will contain a mixture of features, some of them relatively old, some relatively new, and by adding some completely new elements and changing or wholly destroying inherited elements, each generation bequeaths the present to the future.”

Skånes (1997) draws attention to the importance of spatial scale, stating that “given a long-time perspective and a [regional] scale, the natural forms and features of landscapes might be dominant, whereas on a shorter time perspective and local scale, human impact might dominate the landscape organization.” Finally, there is also a growing interest on the part of some cultural anthropologists (Bender 1993, Hirsch and O’Hanlon 1995) and historians (Schama 1995) in symbolism and psychology in the landscape, and the underlying processes that they may reveal (Cosgrove 1984, 1985, Ley 1987, Cosgrove and Daniels 1988, Norton 1989, Barnes and Duncan 1992).

The study of psychological landscapes in particular is critical. Indeed, even the simple recognition that psychological landscapes exist helps to better understand many of the root causes and fundamental processes underlying landscape change. As Keisteri (1990) explains, “changes in values are reflected in cultural landscapes [and] the alteration in values in people’s minds will lead in the long term to changes in their activities, and in this way to more pronounced changes in the visible landscape.” Thus ideas and other psychological factors – whether it be people’s values, their mindset, or political ideology – also are a part of the whole landscape, the sum-total of what has been inherited from previous generations and will be presented to the next (Roberts 1987). Clearly, then, a variety of unseen (psychological) factors must be considered to understand the present physical landscape. These factors also are critical to predict and to help direct the future of these same physical landscapes.

Skånes (1997) is particularly helpful with the “how to” of landscape observation and analysis, especially in his discussion of the “generative forces” that have built the landscape that we now observe:

“By using time as a vertical process, an inherent chronology is attached to the landscape structure, regardless of the type of objects studied. This chronological perspective gives valuable information not only about the quantity and age, it also provides data on the qualities of elements in the present-day landscape, in terms of former functional relationships among present-day fragmented patches, vegetation successions, and continuity of land use. Hence, a retrospective time perspective is essential in the interpretation of potential biodiversity and cultural aspects of landscapes. With the focus placed on origin and evolution, a retrospective method provides the theoretical means to reconstruct the past by regressing from the relatively well-known present (Norton 1989). Only when the original functions of ecological objects in the present-day landscape are known do we have the knowledge to preserve and manage them sustainably for the future.”

Thus, in studying the landscape in order to predict and better manage the future, we can (and perhaps must) integrate both the natural and the cultural, the material and the psychological, and the past as well as the present in a holistic study of the observed (studied) landscape. In our attempt to decipher the complex generative forces that have been at work to shape the present-day landscape, we simultaneously increase our ability to recognize those factors that likely will have an important role in the shaping of the environment of tomorrow.

The emergence of a new mixed landscape (back to top)

An important premise of this chapter (and of this dissertation) is that Tibetan pastoralists do not live in isolation from and uninfluenced by their Han Chinese neighbors. Despite this fact, only “model type” Tibetans are portrayed in most socio-cultural studies of Tibetan people. There has been very little research published on the Tibetan people, on their pastoral livelihood, or on their environment that explicitly considers cultural interaction with Han Chinese as part of most Tibetans’ normal life (but see, e.g., Ekvall 1939, Clarke 1987, Goldstein and Beall 1990). This general oversight has had the effect to relegate many studies to an outdated “noble savage” genre, or at best simply to render such studies nearly irrelevant in relation to the “real world” issues discussed here. Or, put differently, there are few studies on modern Tibetan life in China – whether an examination of their culture, their environment, their livelihoods, or their hopes and aspirations for the future – particularly with reference to the present-day realities of China: its huge population and geography, its multi-ethnicity, and its need and desire to rapidly become a “more developed nation.” The two background chapters of this dissertation (chapters 2 and 3) have attempted to shed some light on these realities.

Starting with the work of the renowned explorer-ethnologist Stein (1972), three main “types” of Tibetans are identified in terms of geography, traditional culture, and livelihood. Specifically, every person in cultural Tibet is said (by Stein) to belong to one of only three possible categories: (1) pure pastoralists; (2) pure agriculturalists; and (3) semi-pastoralists or semi-agriculturalists (the latter being people who either individually practice or whose families practice a combination of pastoralism and agriculture). In Stein’s (1972) own words:

“First, and distinct from the remainder of inhabited Tibet, there are the great stretches of grassland where herdsmen with their tent-dwellings range over a given area. In the north and north-east, particularly, there are no trees, just grass and, in the way of animal life, the wild yak and [wild ass]. Domesticated animals comprise the yak, yak-and-cow hybrids, goats, sheep and Mongolian ponies. From the region north of Saka in the west as far as Koko Nor or Amdo in the east such conditions are the general rule. … Against this type, there are a few regions where there is no sign of grazing or stock-breeding, only cultivation: the Gyamda district of Kongpo, the Kyichu plain, and indeed such other plains as there are. Nearly everywhere else, inhabited places extend down valleys in zones corresponding to the altitude, with pastures [on] upper slopes and fields chiefly along the valley bed.”

While each of these categories has merit, no individual or community in present-day China can be represented accurately as living independently of or untouched by national affairs. A fourth type of landscape must therefore be considered, one that is neither purely Tibetan nor purely Chinese, namely a mixed Tibetan - Chinese landscape.

Everywhere in the Qinghai Lake area, and in most other parts of the Tibetan plateau as well, immigrants from elsewhere in China have begun to settle (Heberer 1989). And where they have not settled in person, they nonetheless still play an important (if not paramount) role in administration, decision-making, and generally guiding the future. Thus, very little if any of the Tibetan plateau remains a purely Tibetan landscape. It is this emerging, mixed cultural landscape that forms the socio-cultural focus of both this chapter and this dissertation as a whole.

An urgent need for environmental protection (back to top)

Finally, before turning to a more detailed description of the Qinghai Lake area, there is one more crucial backdrop to this study: the urgent need for grassland environmental protection. Many independent research programs have concluded that the current productivity of Tibetan plateau rangelands is around 30 percent less than the productivity measured only two decades ago. From 1949 to 1994, the livestock population in Qinghai increased drastically and in some areas overgrazing rates increased from around 12 to 103 percent (Long and Ma 1997). In one comprehensive study of land use which investigated both the social and ecological situation of over one hundred sample villages in Hainan prefecture, a relatively productive area of the plateau south of Qinghai Lake, Lang et al. (1997) explain in detail their findings:

“Degraded areas of temperate grassland, of alpine grassland, and of temperate desert grassland are 45.12 %, 33.56 % and 32.28 % of their respective total utilizable areas. The degradation of these types of pasture not only causes enormous loss to the prefecture’s animal husbandry, but also causes, on a large scale, the desertification of the land, finally leading to the deterioration of pasture environment. ... Pasture loss caused by desertification is the most wide-spread form of degradation and is increasing fast. ... Comparing the result of sampling on the grassland in Changmu township, Guide county, with that sampled at the same site 15 years ago, it is astonishing that the above-ground biomass decreased by 73.3 %, of which the Graminae decreased by 71.1 %, Cyperacae decreased by 79.5 %, legumes decreased by 93.6 %, whereas toxic plants and weeds increased 5.6 times. Pasture degradation increasingly threatens the human way of life and human production activity. The grazing system is getting ever more unstable and fragile. ... Overgrazing and indiscriminate reclamation means that denudation has passed the self-renovation threshold of the pasture eco-system. In many areas the pasture eco-system has collapsed and a lot of herders in some areas in this province can be described as ecological refugees. This is by no means alarmist talk.”

And, in the immediate vicinity of Qinghai Lake as well, the average forage production dropped between 20 and 35 percent from 1959 to 1983, resulting in an annual loss of around 600,000 tons of grass forage in the entire Qinghai Lake region, equivalent to the forage requirements of approximately 420,000 sheep units. Over roughly the same period, every sheep lost an average of 3-4 kg total weight, including 400 g wool, and yak lost 10-15 kg (Qinghai Census Bureau 1994).

In a world of rapid change, where the alteration, degradation, and ultimately the destruction of habitats is a leading factor in the decline of species worldwide (Ehrlich and Wilson 1991, Heywood 1995), it is essential to consider and to evaluate all possible future scenarios. Otherwise, irreversible loss of biodiversity may too easily become reality for many of the world’s unique and special habitats for a simple lack of forward thinking and planning. Clearly, the alpine grasslands of the Tibetan plateau, including the Qinghai Lake area, are facing tremendous risk of (possibly irreversible) damage. The potential to utilize these lands sustainably for the benefit of local pastoralists, both now and in the future, may soon disappear. In search of the main causal factors of current social and environmental trends in Qinghai, the pastoral landscapes of the Qinghai Lake area are examined in this chapter. A clearer idea of the potential costs of inaction (i.e., the status quo of development priorities, plans, and projects) also is necessary to help decipher what change or changes would be most advantageous to make now, for the sake of long-term ecological, social, and cultural sustainability.

General Description of the Qinghai Lake Area (back to top)

Physical geography (back to top)

Qinghai Lake is located in the northeastern part of the Tibetan plateau. The lake’s drainage basin covers around 30,000 km² (around 4 percent of the provincial area), with elevations ranging from around 3,200 m to 5,174 m above sea level (Figure 11). The Qinghai Lake area is typical of many parts of the province, over two-thirds of which is comprised of grasslands situated over 4000 m above sea level (Zhu 1989).

Figure 11. Qinghai Lake drainage area (adapted from ‘Map of Qinghai’ 1995)

According to Wittke (1996), Qinghai Lake “developed in the Early Pleistocene when [the] tectonic movements [which formed the Tibetan plateau] blocked the course of the through-going ancestral Buh He [Pu River] which now enters the northwest side of the lake. [The lake’s] water is now brackish [since it] has been shrinking for at least the last 8000 years.” Qinghai Lake’s decreasing volume, and hence its decreasing depth and surface area, are caused by a combination of a changing climate and of an overuse of water resources (Western Resources and Environment Research Center 1994, Wittke 1996, ‘Water slowly disappears…’ 1998).

According to the Western Resources and Environment Research Center (1994), the ecological history of the Qinghai Lake area can be divided into several main periods based on pollen analysis:

“After the Ice Age around 10,000 years ago, the global climate became warmer and the vegetation in the Qinghai Lake area was comprised mainly of Artemesia and grasses… Around 9,000 years ago, the area comprised of needle-leaf [coniferous] trees and broad-leaf trees expanded, covering most hills and mountains around the lake, but then decreased again, probably because of a dry climate. … Then, about 8,000 years ago, the forest area expanded again…

From 8,000 to 3,500 years ago, the climate in the Qinghai Lake area was relatively moist, and this influenced the vegetation [such that] the forests and grasslands thrived. … Then, starting around 3,500 years ago, the area of needle-leaf trees began to decrease [and] shrub and grass pollen increased continually from then until 1,500 years ago. At that time, the tree pollen content had dropped to less than 20 percent, but the grass and shrub pollen content had increased to 75 percent.

Finally, from 1,500 years ago to the present, forests in the lake area decreased even more. The warm-moist forest vegetation environment thus changed into a high-cold [alpine] shrubland and high-cold [alpine] meadow grassland environment…. The decrease of the forest area around the lake was probably caused by a combination of the natural environment [climate change] and human activities. That is, historic human behavior such as tree cutting, war, livestock herding and vegetation burning were the main factors that destroyed the forest.”

At the present time, the Qinghai Lake drainage basin includes portions of four counties in three different prefectures. As discussed in the previous chapter, the human population distribution in Qinghai is extremely unbalanced with an average population density in the lake area less than 5 people per square kilometer, and even lower in the alpine grasslands. The total human population, total geographic area, grassland area, and the amount of cultivated land in the four counties are provided in Table 5.

Table 5. Summary information for the four counties in the Qinghai Lake drainage basin (Qinghai Census Bureau 1992, Wei 1993)

County Prefecture County Grassland Cultivated Proportion Number of Total

Name Name Area (km²) Area (km²) Area (km²) in Basin Households Population

Gonghe Hainan 14,364 12,878.8 278.8 approx. 1/4 26,114 130,773

Tianjun Haixi 25,953 15,378.3 -- approx. 3/4 3,146 14,794

Gangcha Haibei 9,110 6,906.4 143.2 approx. 3/4 8,795 41,853

Haiyan Haibei 4,173 3,049.2 29.9 approx. 1/2 7,097 34,978

Note: Hainan, Haixi, and Haibei mean south, west, and north of Qinghai Lake, respectively.

Two images, both taken from the Space Shuttle, provide an overview of the region. The first of these images was obtained from the Office of Earth Sciences at the NASA - Johnson Space Center website (URL: http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov) (Figure 12). The image has been digitally enhanced to increase the overall ease of visual interpretation and main towns, roads, and railways have been added to facilitate cross-referencing with administrative maps. The most obvious elements in this image are Qinghai Lake in the center, Caka Lake (southwest Qinghai Lake), and the Longyang Reservoir on the Yellow River (southeast of Qinghai Lake). The Datong Mountains are seen to the north, the Riyue Mountains to the east, and the Nanshan Mountains immediately to the south and west of Qinghai Lake. Further to the south are the foothills of the Amnyemaqen Mountains. The Qinghai-Tibet highway traverses the narrow strip of relatively flat land between the lake’s southern shore and the Nanshan Mountains, while the Xining-Golmud railway transects the plains that extend northward from the lake. The Pu River is the largest inflowing river and enters Qinghai Lake near “Bird Island” on its central western shore. A sandy desert is situated northeast of the lake. Finally, the main road to Yushu and Sichuan extends south and southwest of Qinghai Lake.

Figure 12. Space Shuttle photograph of the Qinghai Lake area (adapted from the Office of Earth Sciences, NASA - Johnson Space Center 1998)

The second image, found on Wittke’s (1996) webpage (URL: http://vishnu.glg.nau.edu/ people/jhw/Tibet/Qinghai.html), gives a closer view of Qinghai Lake (Figure 13). Clearly visible are the sand dunes northeast of the lake, and the cultivated fields in Gangcha (especially in Ha’ergai, Shaliuhe, and Quanji townships; also see Figure 14). Cultivated fields are also seen in the vicinity of the Pu River and Bird Island in the west, and in the eastern half of Qinghai Lake’s southern shore. Together, the broad spatial overview provided by these figures helps to situate geographically much of the following discussion on the Qinghai Lake area.

Figure 13. Space Shuttle photograph of Qinghai Lake (Wittke 1996)

Figure 14. Cultivation on the northern shore of Qinghai Lake (north is to the left; adapted from Western Resources and Environment Research Center 1994)

From tribal history to modern politics (back to top)

Based on cultural remains and ancient art forms found on the Tibetan plateau, from the discovery of lithic and microlithic industries to the discovery of bronze ware and pottery, Hare (1998) has suggested recently that Neolithic agricultural communities inhabited the Tibetan plateau as early as 5,500 years before present, but the sedentary farmers were replaced by steppe nomads (pastoralists) with a bronze culture sometime between 2,000 and 3,000 before present. The nomads that replaced the incipient agriculturists came from the Qinghai region where pastoralism has remained constant into contemporary times (Zhao 1992, Hare 1998).

Many myths also abound about the origin of Qinghai Lake. One well-known Tibetan story explains how the rebellious Monkey King took power in heaven and drove the defeated god, Erlangshen, to a miraculous spring in Amdo. On seeing the spring, the hungry and thirsty Erlangshen hurriedly began to cook a meal and ordered his servant to collect some water from the spring. However, the spring had to be covered with a lid or else water would pour out from it endlessly. The servant was so hungry, though, that he forgot to replace the lid after collecting water. No sooner had he put salt into the pot that the magic spring quickly became a swelling current, then a terrible flood. It further happened that at this moment the Monkey King also appeared. Erlangshen was so alarmed that he instantly jumped to his feet, kicking the pot over, and immediately fled for his life scrambling up into the clouds. Qinghai Lake is thus said to have come into existence, and it remains a large saline lake to this day (Combe 1989). Other stories also include references to subterranean passages from Lhasa (Rockhill 1891, Huc and Gabet 1928), a rock thrown from Mt. Kailash to stem a regional flood in which 10,000 families drowned (Combe 1989), the impression of Pedma Sambhava’s hand holding down an evil spirit which he had cast into the lake (Combe 1989), the tears of the Chinese Princess Wencheng as she traveled to Lhasa to marry the Tibetan King Songtsen Gampo (Stein 1972, Shi 1991), and even the simple creativity of the youngest son of the Dragon King of the East China Sea (Stein 1972).

The Qinghai Lake area is of significant historic importance in Inner Asia as well, for it is here that Genghis Khan’s grandsons, Guyug and Godan, held their headquarters in 1244 when they invited the great scholar Sakya Panchen to help them purge religious heretics from greater Mongolia. It also is on the shore of Qinghai Lake that the Mongol ruler Altun Khan bestowed in 1575 the title Dalai Lama on the Tibetan leader of the time (Geoffrey 1993).

Much earlier, in 121 BC, the Han Chinese had made their first inroads into the area when the General Huo Qubing of the Western Han Dynasty set up a stronghold, Xipingting, in the location of present-day Xining. Two important prefectures, Xihai and Heyuan, were established by the time of the Sui Dynasty (518-618 AD) and another prefecture, Xining, in the Song Dynasty (960-1279 AD). Present-day Xining, however, only became the provincial capital when Qinghai’s present boundaries were formally established in 1929 (Wang 1994). Furthermore, although a large part of present-day Qinghai has in theory been under Han Chinese rule for many centuries, real or effective control remained almost exclusively in the hands of local tribal leaders, both Mongol and Tibetan, at least until the 1720s (Geoffrey 1993, Smith 1996).

One of the most significant episodes in the tumultuous history of ethnic relations in Qinghai is the great revolt of 1723 (Schram 1958, Smith 1996). Though quickly suppressed by the Qing Dynasty, one consequence of this revolt was the cultural and geographic remaking or reconfiguration of the province. First, the entire region then known as Kokonor (the Mongol name of the greater Qinghai Lake area) was formally made into a Chinese province in 1724 (Stein 1972). Then, as explained by Smith (1996), over the next few years the government

“reorganized the administration of Kokonor and made clear [its] intention to exercise more direct control there. The Tibetan and Mongol tribes ... were reorganized into units responsible only to the [Qing Dynasty] administration ... and were allotted fixed territories and were forbidden to infringe upon the territories of others.”

The amban – the highest representative of the Chinese government resident in Xining – thus entered into Chinese legal history many new tribal names and geographic boundaries. And, by this simple act of “mapping” the rebel tribes, the amban greatly increased his power and control over them (see Stone 1998). Although before the revolt it had been tribal leaders who made all major decisions pertaining to such activities as seasonal migrations between summer and winter pastures, the power structures were now so altered that, by the middle of the eighteenth century, official permission was needed from the Chinese authorities in Xining even for such traditional activities as pasture use and management.

Combe (1989) also describes this important period:

“[It was a] troublous period in the first half of the eighteenth century, when the Chinese were threatened by a combination of Tibetans [and] the Oelöt [Mongol] tribes of Ili, over the identity of the seventh Dalai Lama. The Chinese were obliged to acquiesce in the Tibetan choice, although Yo Chung-chi’s expedition against Tibet met with little difficulty. That was in 1720. Subsequently, in 1732, when the tribes south of Koko Nor [Qinghai Lake] were reorganised, 39 clans, [comprising] 4,889 families, were placed under the jurisdiction of the Sining [Xining] amban, to whom they [now] paid an annual tax….”

Many of the tribal names and administrative divisions that were first penned into history in the 1720s and 1730s are still repeated today in numerous local (county), provincial, and national history books, usually with no reference to any earlier state of tribal (Tibetan) affairs.

Another political strategy of the Qing Dynasty was to move whole tribes to new areas. For example, Chen (1990) specifically describes the origin of the Tibetan pastoralists now living in the Qinghai Lake area:

“The Guide district [south of Xining] controlled more than 80 Tibetan tribes of various sizes. Their pastures were not sufficient while the Mongols north of the Yellow River [in the Qinghai Lake area], now in decline, had an abundance of land. [Therefore, in 1858,] a Qing official redrew the Mongol pasture boundaries and allowed the Tibetan tribes to go north of the river and graze around the lake, thus creating the ‘Eight Tribes Around the Lake.’ In addition, other Tibetan tribes from the Tongren, Xunhua and Hualong districts have also moved into [the lake area] over the last hundred years.”

But despite all the political maneuvering of the Qing Dynasty and subsequent administrations, most simple or routine affairs were conducted in traditional ways and largely independent of the government. For the most part, in practice, the tribal system of governance continued “up until the democratic reforms of 1958 when the system was formally eliminated” as part of a broad socialist reorganization of society (Chen 1990). According to Li (1992), the “Eight Tribes” of the greater Qinghai Lake area were comprised of 47 clans and 16,100 families in the late 1800s, and almost every tribe and clan practiced pure pastoralism (Table 6).

Table 6. Population of the “Eight Qinghai Lake Tribes,” circa late 1800s (Li 1992)

Tribal No. of No of. Region Main

Name Clans Families Inhabited Livelihood

Wangshidaihai 8 3,000 Tianjun county pure pastoralism

Rian 2 600 Hainan prefecture pure pastoralism

Dawuyu 4 2,000 Haibei prefecture pure pastoralism

Gangcha 8 3,000 Haibei prefecture pure pastoralism

Qianbulu 6 1,500 Hainan prefecture pure pastoralism

Arike 4 2,000 Qilian county pure pastoralism

Duxiu 7 1,000 Hainan prefecture pure pastoralism

Acuohu 8 3,000 Hainan prefecture agro-pastoralism

Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, there are several key events that stand out in both local and national history (Wozencraft 2000). In a first instance, most areas of the Tibetan plateau were “liberated” in the late 1950s. This action was then followed closely by a severe famine associated in part with grave, ideologically driven mistakes made during the Great Leap Forward (1958-62). Some physical evidence of that period remains to this day (e.g., abandoned plowed land, which can take decades to recover; Environment Science and Technology 1998b). The misguided policies of that period also led to several local revolts (Becker 1996) that have left some indelible psychological scars as well. Then, shortly after the end of the Great Leap Forward, the chaos of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) began. Frolic (1980) provides an insightful first-person account of Chinese life in a frontier town in Qinghai, Gonghe, in the early 1970s. Finally, most recently of all, the agricultural reforms that began elsewhere in China (in 1978) also came to Qinghai. Although at first glance the latter reforms do not appear quite as dramatic as the other events or periods described, they may in fact have the deepest and longest-lasting impact of all, particularly on the traditional Tibetan pastoral way of life. Indeed, the agricultural reforms of the last two decades, as currently implemented through the Household Responsibility System and other official development schemes, are paving the way for a whole new, culturally bound land ethic (sensu Leopold 1949).

Writing about land tenure in China’s pastoral areas, with particular reference to “risk management” (coping strategies) of individual herders, Liu and Wang (1998) provide the following broad historical overview for pastoral areas in Qinghai:

“(1) Private land tenure and livestock ownership before 1956

Before 1956, the tribal chiefs were owners of 80-90 % of pasture and livestock in the remote pastoral areas, like Qinghai and Tibet. There were no community and governmental organizations dealing with the risk management. Poor herders who didn’t own any pasture and livestock, were hired by rich tribal chiefs and pasture lords. In such a slave system, the social and income disparity between rich pasture lords were extremely large. Herders were living in an absolute poverty and [were] the first victims of the natural risks;

(2) Collective pastoral land tenure and livestock ownership from 1958 to 1983

[Because of] the political status of the minority area like Qinghai and Tibet, after the [liberation] in 1950 and 1951 the private pastoral and livestock ownership was continuously kept until 1958. In late 1956, the collective movement was spreading [throughout] rural areas of the country. Two years [later], in 1958, following national movement the pastoral areas also started the collectivization process. Herders had to put all animals together and merged the grassland by the three levels ownership, namely, people’s commune [present-day township], production brigade [the dadui] and production team [the xiaodui]. In this period, all production and natural risks were collectively planned and managed by these organizations. In late time of this period heavy grassland degradation occurred due to the political mis-leading toward high number of livestock.

(3) Household-based pastoral land tenure and livestock production system since 1983

Following China’s rural reform in 1982, the pastoral reform was initiated in 1983. The core measure of the pastoral reform was to contract the collective livestock (1983) and pasture (1994) to herders’ households. Although the position of village leaders and production team leaders were still kept till now, the management and co-ordination functions of the community organizations are very weak. Generally speaking, the risks after 1983 were mainly managed by herders themselves under the assistance and co-ordination of governmental organizations and village leaders.”

It is within the above context, with tribal histories and modern politics both still in living memory, as well as within the very specific geographical context of the alpine grasslands, that China today continues to define and to implement its pastoral development strategy.

Different values, different visions of the world (back to top)

The above overview of the geography and the cultural history of the Qinghai Lake area should help, in concert with the previous background chapters, to grasp better some of the key differences between Tibetan and Chinese value systems and worldviews. Many differences – from the people themselves with their varied affinities, cultural preferences, and beliefs, to their vastly different modes of production, environmental conditions, and natural risk factors – all these differences have given rise to very a variety of views or conceptions of the world. And these views of the world almost invariably translate to different understandings of development and the desired outcomes of development. Thus culture and many historical and geographical factors play a critical role in guiding the future, and specifically in creating or modifying physical landscapes.

When comparing Chinese and Tibetan people, it becomes clear that the very meaning and value of land is different. To the Chinese, land is both a place of belonging (e.g., ancestral homes) and a resource or raw material to be exploited. To Tibetans, however, land is first and foremost the home of a variety of spirits that must be propitiated, and only in second place is it also seen as a resource (or source of sustenance). How do such mindsets affect regional development in practice? An overview of Qinghai’s recent history of cultivating (or attempting to cultivate) its alpine grasslands helps to illustrate this point.

Although the extensive conversion of Qinghai’s alpine grasslands in the 1950s and 1960s was decried by a few discerning voices (Qinghai People’s Government 1951, ‘Open up…’ 1956), the majority of leaders and immigrant-colonists from China’s eastern provinces have maintained to this day a relatively narrow, utilitarian view of the value of natural resources. To most people in China, then as well as now, natural resources are only raw materials to be exploited as rapidly as possible to meet national (but not necessarily local or regional) goals and objectives. One could call this socialist utilitarian view China’s “land ethic.” Fortunately, however, a somewhat less ideologically based (i.e., more pragmatic) approach to development now is also gaining wider acceptance in China (see, e.g., Biodiversity Working Group 1999, China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development 1999b). The latter approach, the predominant approach adopted internationally, considers “safeguarding the environment” as a fundamental guiding principle of sustainable development, an essential component of poverty eradication, and even as one of the necessary foundations for peace (United Nations Foundation 2000). Both these views – a purely utilitarian view of resources, and a more integrated view of environment and development – also can be contrasted to the more parochial view common to the majority of Tibetan pastoralists. (This is only a reflection on the limited means and opportunities available to most pastoralists worldwide to consider regional patterns and trends of natural resource use and resource conditions; most pastoralists know their own grasslands well, sometimes very well, but they may not be so familiar with more distant regions). Each of these views of the environment (or of land, or resources) has a variety of implications for the way in which development is understood, planned, implemented, and evaluated. Clearly, then, resource use (and hence sustainability) is affected by peoples’ views of nature, as well as their vision or hopes for the future (Bernard and Young 1997).

Also, regarding Tibetan views of nature, it is Vigoda’s (1989) contention that “socio-cultural and religious factors have strongly influenced the Tibetan mode of interaction with their environment.” This much can be agreed to. However, the oft repeated argument that religious factors have necessarily “fostered an ethos of environmental protection,” even to the degree that Tibetans would supposedly never kill wildlife or misuse the land, is inappropriate (see Ekvall 1968, Huber 1990). Nonetheless, it remains true that where animism is practiced, such as in Tibetan areas, “it is not likely that the believers will indiscriminately destroy objects of nature because such activity would incur the danger of spiritual and social sanctions” (Moncrief 1970). As Combe (1989) explains, almost all Tibetans believe that “on every mountain in Tibet lives a spirit who is either good or bad. They have lived there from time immemorial and no one knows their origin… [If] regularly worshipped [bad spirits] will be beneficent; if neglected [these spirits] will send snowstorms to ruin the fields and destroy the yak.”

The main point is simple. As emphasized by White (1967), “What people do about their ecology [really does depend] on what they think about themselves [and] human ecology is deeply conditioned by beliefs about our nature and destiny.” (However, for a more accurate presentation of the Judeo-Christian perspective of nature, see Schaeffer 1972 and Granberg-Michaelson 1988).

Landscape Observation and Analysis (back to top)

Overland tour of the Qinghai Lake area (back to top)

To begin this chapter’s analytical section per se, an overland tour around Qinghai Lake is described. Starting in Xining, the provincial capital, we first follow the railway westward to Huangyuan, an old trading town on the road to Tibet. Huangyuan is now a county administrative center with an even mix of Tibetan, Hui, and Han Chinese people. Still below 3,000 m, the only way from here to the Tibetan plateau is upward, either west toward Gangcha (on the north shore of Qinghai Lake) or south over Riyue Pass (which means “Sun-Moon Pass” in Chinese) to Daotanghe. We opt for the latter route, and thus we will tour the lake in a clockwise direction.

Still on the north side of Riyue Pass, there are several agricultural villages typical of the plateau’s borderlands, particularly in the Amdo region of Qinghai and Gansu provinces. Mud brick walls enclose individual courtyards and houses. Communal threshing floors are scattered around the villages. Cultivated barley fields are found on nearby valley floors and on the lower hillsides. And livestock are seen as they are herded up and down the steep mountain slopes to the high alpine pastures in the summer, or in the plowed fields as they forage on the harvest stubble in autumn. Livestock generally are kept nearer to the village in winter and spring when they are fed supplementary hay fodder to maintain their energy reserves during the long, harsh cold season.

Riyue Pass is the definitive geographical and socio-cultural transition point between the Han Chinese lowlands to the north and the Tibetan plateau grasslands to the south. The pass is most famous as the locality where the Princess Wencheng cried as she left her native Chinese homeland behind, and began her journey across the vast Tibetan plateau to marry the Tibetan King, Songtsen Gampo, in Lhasa. It is said that the Princess’ tears flowed down from the mountain pass, westward, eventually filling a large depression and thus creating Qinghai Lake. Since most rivers in China flow eastward, this unusual phenomenon is at the origin of the name Daotanghe (which means “Backward-flowing River”). Two large pagodas have been rebuilt at Riyue Pass, testimonial to the socio-cultural significance of this place. And, as on all mountain passes in the Tibetan region, many prayer flags flutter in the wind, and colorful “wind horse” paper offerings speckle the ground. These are all tangible reminders of the many other, lesser known stories that also are continually recounted in Tibetan areas, most notably stories of the multitudinous spirits that are known by all Tibetans to abound in the plateau’s remote high places.

Leaving Riyue Pass behind us, we now drive onto the Tibetan plateau proper. The Swedish explorer Sven Hedin, who traveled extensively in the northern parts of the plateau a century ago, describes well its great beauty and the tremendous awe that it still can inspire today (Lhalungpa 1983):

“Roads! There are no other paths there than those beaten out by wild yaks, wild asses and antelopes. We made, literally made, our way, while I charted the country and captured for the pages of my sketch-book as many views as possible of glorious mountain giants with snow-capped peaks and labyrinths of winding valleys. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the unknown, putting one mountain chain after the other behind us. And from every pass a new landscape unfolded its wild, desolate vistas towards a new and mysterious horizon, a new outline of rounded or pyramidal snow-capped peaks. Those who imagine that such a journey in vast solitude and desolation is tedious and trying are mistaken. No spectacle can be more sublime. Every day’s march, every league brings discoveries of unimagined beauty.”

The alpine grasslands of the Tibetan plateau are comprised of many different vegetation formations, some of them extensive and others spatially restricted. The Kobresia humilis sedge meadow formation, typical of the “high cold” zones of the plateau, is common in the vicinity of Riyue Pass. The dominant sedge is complemented by at least twenty other species. Descending toward Daotanghe, salt flats also are scattered across the semi-arid valley floor. Tall grass tussocks characterize this area, in particular Achnatherum splendens and some Stipa breviflora. Pastoralists use the low-lying areas (i.e., the valley floors) here and throughout the Tibetan plateau mainly as winter pasture land. Walls of turf and barbed wire fences, some of them new, others in disrepair, more or less delineate the boundaries between household and village pastures.

The main center of activity southeast of Qinghai Lake is Daotanghe town, a sub-county (township) administrative center. Here, pastoralists, farmers, merchants, and government workers all interact closely as they trade products, technologies, news, and ideas.

Agricultural fields in this area are planted mainly with barley (Hordeum vulgare var. nudum) or rapeseed (Brassica compestris). Until recently cultivation was found only near village in the lower valleys and never was found in the nomadic pastoral areas. This situation has begun to change, however, starting in earnest in the early 1990s. The introduction of limited irrigation has allowed cultivation of spring wheat (Triticum aestivum), potato (Solanum tuberosum), and pea (Pisum sativum) in some sites, too, but only near larger towns like Gonghe. Gonghe is both the county’s and the prefecture’s administrative center, located around 40 km southwest of Daotanghe. It is situated south of the Qinghai Nanshan mountains in the arid Gonghe basin.

From the southeast shore of the lake, the edge of another desert area can be seen to the north. This desert extends from the foothills of the Riyue Mountains and continues around the east and northeast shore of Qinghai Lake. This desert area is home to Przewalski’s gazelle (Procapra przewalskii). The Hudong (“East of the Lake”) Agricultural State Farm, a former labor camp, is situated in the grasslands just south of the aforementioned desert area, also between the Riyue Mountains and the lake. In the vicinity of the State Farm, as in Jiayi village (see below) and all the way back to Daotanghe, crop fields and mud brick houses are scattered across the landscape. The entire Daotanghe township has a population of 8,780 people, around three-quarters of whom are Tibetan, and the annual per capita income in 1996 was $ 170 USD (Meng et al. 1999). The Qinghai-Tibet Highway that extends from Xining to Lhasa services the whole area south of Qinghai Lake.

As is the case with many “villages” in Qinghai’s pastoral areas, Jiayi is not so much a concentration of dwellings as it is a relatively abstract administrative area. Yet at the same time this abstraction pertains only to the physical or material understanding of “village,” not to its cultural or relational foundations. For the most part, households in Jiayi (or tentholds, as the case may be) are distributed widely across the land. However there is one small concentration of buildings centered around a small store and near a local monastery and primary school. The monastery is one of only two official religious edifices in Daotanghe township, which together are home to around 80 monks. The Jiayi boarding school now has over one hundred students. In total, the village has a population of around 1,300 people in 200 families.

Continuing westward along the south shore of Qinghai Lake, a state-owned “fish factory” enterprise stands in clear silhouette against the deep blue and green hues of the lake. At night, a dozen or more points of light reveal the presence of large trawlers on the lake that continue to harvest its aquatic resources. However, only a small fraction of earlier catches are now realized, and only relatively small fish are caught. Another nearby waterfront structure also catches the eye, the well-known tent-hotel situated at kilometer marker “151.” This tourist destination attracts mainly Chinese tourists (and a few foreign tourists) who come to visit the lake. A platform lying several hundred meters offshore also is noteworthy as the remnants of a former torpedo testing site built during an earlier era of political isolationism and containment when national defense activities were of paramount importance to China. Qinghai was seen as the heartland of the country, and hence the center of much military presence and military activities (Wittke 1996, Spence 1999).

The Qinghai-Tibet Highway continues westward, passing more tents and houses, several road construction stations and a few more “village” centers. Fences are seen frequently dissecting the land, most evident where livestock trampling causes severe grassland denudation along the fixed herding routes up to the summer pastures. These fenced routes at least help to contain some of the more deleterious effects of livestock trampling.

And, as with the wholesale fencing of winter pastures, the conversion of the alpine grassland to fields of barley also expands further westward each year (but see ‘China to reduce…’ 2000, ‘NPC deputies…’ 2000). Over half of the southern shore of Qinghai Lake now has been cultivated to some degree, destroying much of the former productive grassland between the lake and the foothills of the Qinghai Nanshan.

Where the land has not been tilled, many pastoralists move to near the roadside in the spring, when winds blow the strongest. Here, away from the natural protection of the hills to the south, roadside depressions and low mud walls are used to provide some additional protection from the elements. Even sturdy yak hair tents provide little shelter on these open windswept plains near the shores of Qinghai Lake. Yet herders continue to bring their animals to these shoreline pastures because the wind helps to remove the snow in winter, thus providing ready access to the increasingly sparse vegetation. On the whole, fewer houses have been built here, quite possibly related to the longer distance to the county center (Gonghe). Yet even while most people continue to live more traditional lifestyles, the increasingly common dust storms that every spring afternoon reach high into the sky are but one of several key indicators that tractors and houses and many other new developments are approaching rapidly. Here, too, times are changing fast.

At Heimahe (“Black Horse River”), the Qinghai-Tibet Highway veers away from Qinghai Lake. A smaller road leads north from town, past the Pu River and Bird Island Nature Reserve, and on to the rolling plains of Gangcha on the northern shore of Qinghai Lake.

Livestock in the vicinity of Heimahe are grazed high in the Qinghai Nanshan in summer, at around 3,600 m and higher. In autumn, livestock are grazed by the lake shore, and in agricultural fields where these are present. Then, in winter and spring, livestock are grazed in closer vicinity to the permanent dwellings, which may be either close or far from the lake depending on local topography. Roughly the same seasonal pattern is still practiced elsewhere around Qinghai Lake as well, but with much greater distances involved north of the lake. To the east, south, and southwest of the lake, seasonal migration distances range between only a few hundred meters to around 20 km at most, while to the northwest and north of the lake, migration distances can be as much as 100 km or more (i.e., from Qinghai Lake’s shore all the way to the Datong River valley far to the north; this route takes 3 to 5 days to travel with livestock herds).

In the middle of the northern shore of Qinghai Lake is Gangcha, the main administrative center in the region. The town’s local name, Shaliuhe (“Sandy Willow River”), reflects the town’s location on the banks of one of the county’s larger streams as well as the specific (former) presence of riparian vegetation. The town is comprised of Han Chinese, Tibetan, Hui, and several other ethnic groups. About twenty kilometers to the north is a smaller town by the same name (Shaliuhe), the seat of the county’s main monastery.

To the east of Gangcha town is the Sanjiaocheng (“Strategic”) State Sheep Farm. According to Yang (1997), the farm was originally established by Wang Mang, an Emperor of the Western Han Dynasty, then managed by the warlord Ma Bufeng from 1940 until it was “liberated” and set up as a communal People’s Farm in 1953. The farm is said to provide 13,000 sheep each year for market. It is best known, however, for the high quality “noble sheep” fine wool that it produces, reportedly the result of breeding management that dates back to 1956.

Another unique feature of the northern shore of Qinghai Lake is the Xining-Ge’ermu (Golmud) railway, perhaps the most important transport link between China and Tibet. Civilians, military personnel, and abundant subsidized goods are transported to Tibet by this major artery. A secondary rail line also extends 50 km to the north, to a coal mine situated near Reshui (“Hot Springs”) town. Almost all workers in this town are Han Chinese immigrants, the roads are covered in coal dust, buildings are rundown, old trucks regularly ply the bumpy road – in sum, a rather remote and rowdy frontier town.

Finally, after driving along the north side of the sand dunes noted earlier (i.e., the desert area located behind the Hudong Agricultural State Farm), a barely perceptible mountain pass is crossed. A little further on, the steep descent toward the Chinese lowlands begins. A reservoir and hydroelectric power station are first seen, similar to (but much smaller than) the famous Longyang reservoir on the Yellow River southeast of the lake. Another noteworthy town is then bypassed, the new capital of Haibei prefecture, Haiyan, where China developed its first atomic and hydrogen bombs in the now-famous “Factory 221.” According to Wittke (1996b),

“The facility [Factory 221] includes 560,000 sq. m of buildings inside plant premises, 330,000 sq. m of production buildings, more than 40 km of special railway lines which converge with the Qinghai- Tibet Railway Line, nearly 80 km of standard highways, 1,000 six-digit computer-controlled telephones, and one thermal power plant with an annual generating capacity of 110 million kwh.

“In 1987 the State Council approved the closure of the facility, and personnel were gradually shifted to other facilities. The former facility has [now] become the seat of the Haibei [Tibetan] Autonomous Prefecture Government of Qinghai Province. In June 1994 [the] Prefecture Government designated the site as a ‘small zone for national economy development.’”

From Haiyan, it is then a relatively quick drive back to Huangyuan, and hence all the way back to Xining. Following this brief overland tour, we now turn to three more localized settings: the pastoral landscapes near Jiayi village; the fields and pasturelands of Gangcha county; and the nationally renowned Bird Island Nature Reserve, which was designated as China’s first of six Ramsar sites in 1992 (Carey 1996).

Village scenes (Jiayi village) (back to top)

In contrast to the previous broad overview of the Qinghai Lake area, the following observations will allow us to focus not only on general impressions of the region – the Qinghai Lake area – but also on some of its more local and unique facets as well. However, how should the main features or elements of the landscape be organized for study? Every element, though interwoven tightly in space and time, will be examined first sequentially, in their order of appearance in the landscape, and secondly, by main type. The first method is called a historic or retrospective landscape analysis, while the second is the basis for a more traditional “elemental” landscape analysis (Skånes 1997).

As noted earlier, Jiayi is a village located on the southeast shore of Qinghai Lake, in Gonghe county, the largest of Hainan’s five counties (see Figure 9).

Retrospective landscape analysis

There are four main periods that can be seen in the Jiayi landscape:

· the “early period” before people inhabited the area (the so-called natural environment);

· the “traditional period” when only pastoralists and hunters lived in the area;

· the “transitional period” of the past several decades under greater Chinese influence; and

· the “modern period” of the 1990s, an integration of all previous periods to date.

Every one of these periods has seen the introduction of new landscape elements, yet no element is static or stationary. The following descriptions therefore neither intend to describe life or material culture as they existed in the past, nor to describe their past form or spatial pattern, but they rather simply intend to help organize the landscape elements of today according to their historic development in the overall landscape.

Early period: The natural environment

Several natural elements stand out very evidently in the vicinity of Jiayi village. Within the few kilometers between the shore of Qinghai Lake (circa 3,200 m) and the ridge of the Qinghai Nanshan (circa 4,400 m) are several distinct vegetation zones. The main vegetation formations include the shoreline vegetation and some areas of localized sand dunes; the Daotanghe wetland area; a large expanse of productive sedge meadow on the slope between the lake and the base of the Qinghai Nanshan; areas of shrub land on steep north-facing slopes; the diverse (species-rich) alpine meadows that extend to the vegetation line at around 4,200 m; and the rock and scree summit areas where there is almost no vegetation at all. Many animal species also dwell in these varied vegetation zones. Woolly hares, Himalayan marmots, and plateau pika are the most common mammals. Birds of prey (Himalayan griffon, lammergeyer, golden eagle, upland buzzard, black kite), Hume’s ground jay, and several species of larks, buntings, redstarts, rosefinches, and snowfinches also are quite abundant. Furthermore, many migratory shore birds are seasonally present in the warmer season when they rest or breed by the lake shore or in the Daotanghe wetlands. China’s most endangered ungulate species, Przewalski’s gazelle, lives almost exclusively in the sand dunes beyond the Hudong Agricultural State Farm seen in the distance to the north (Jiang et al. 1994, 1995). And while the Tibetan gazelle, Tibetan wild ass, blue sheep, and several other large mammals are virtually extinct in the immediate locality, until just several decades ago they used to be very abundant, along with foxes, wolves, several wild cats, and even the Tibetan brown bear. However, the mere presence of pastoralists and cultivators, whose populations have increased dramatically in recent times, and the introduction of new land use practices have both had serious deleterious effect on wildlife populations, particularly in the past four to five decades.

Traditional period: Pastoralists and livestock

Of the cultural elements observed in Jiayi village, the first element to have arrived on the scene obviously had to be the people themselves (Figure 15). Although other people had lived in the Qinghai Lake area before, or at least had resided temporarily by the lake, the ancestors of present-day pastoralists arrived for the most part beginning in the late 1850s (Chen 1990, Li 1992). With them, of course, came their livestock and other items directly related to their traditional pastoral livelihood and culture. Today many herders still dress in traditional Tibetan clothes, though some also dress in Chinese-style or western-style clothes, and still others in a combination of the two. It is common, too, especially on festive occasions such as the annual horse race, archery, and tug-of-war contests that are held every summer in Jiayi, that Tibetan women will dress in their finest clothes and braid their hair with silver ornaments, turquoise, and amber (Figure 16). On such occasions, young Tibetan men wear western suits or studded leather jackets almost as much as local styles of clothing.

Figure 15. Young nomad boy wearing several amulets, yak-hair tent in the background

Figure 16. Headdress of nomad woman standing on the alpine grassland

The main activities of pastoralists also entail the use of some specific tools. For example, men commonly carry sling shots made from yak hair, long knives, and small leather pouches with flint and tinder, all part of their basic tool kit. And women, who do more of the household chores and milk the animals several times a day, carry with them sewing kits, ornamental silver “milk pail” hooks, and often a child strapped to their back.

The livestock is comprised of local breeds of yak and sheep. The pastoralists’ tents are made of tightly woven yak hair, each long cloth strip sewn tightly to the next. Yak also are used to transport supplies or people from one seasonal pasture to another (Figure 17), and are the pastoralists’ principal source of food (i.e., dairy products and meat) along with barley flour. Though less versatile than the yak, sheep also produce some milk and meat for the pastoralists. One advantage of sheep in the present socio-economic context is that they have significantly higher reproductive rates, and hence more sheep can be sold to market each year. However, yak remain better suited to local ecological conditions and can more easily survive the harsh winters.

Figure 17. Yak transporting nomads and their supplies by the Yellow River

Another essential “tool” in the pastoral economy is the somewhat more abstract knowledge that pastoralists have of their environment, a clear understanding of their domestic animals and of the cycles and rhythms of the seasons. This specialized knowledge of local vegetation ecology (of the emergence, growth, maturation, and senescence of plants), though itself an intangible or non-physical component of the landscape, can be observed in the way that pastoralists move their herds from pasture to pasture through the year, year after year. Pastoralists have known much about ecology since long before the introduction of “modern science.” This knowledge is itself a cultural phenomenon and has led to the long-term sustainable utilization of natural resources in the Qinghai Lake area, particularly through the local pattern of seasonal migrations between pastures. Such movements have allowed livestock, and hence the pastoralists, to utilize the land optimally. Other physical evidence of these seasonal movements includes the various improvements seen in the summer camping sites situated high in the Qinghai Nanshan, at around 3,800 m, such as low mud walls, earthen stoves, shallow irrigation ditches, elevated sleeping areas, and livestock corrals. Associated with these physical improvements are obvious localized changes in vegetation structure and species compositions caused by the intense livestock grazing around these summer camps.

Finally there also are many reminders of the pastoralists’ almost ubiquitous belief in the supernatural. This, too, is a real part of their lives and the whole landscape. A small monastery, numerous prayer flags, and stone altars in the vicinity of Jiayi (Figure 18) all draw attention to the herders’ dependence on the “unseen” to help explain the complex and unpredictable natural phenomena that sometimes so forcibly affect their lives – for example, the periodic snowstorm (Figure 19), hail, drought, or insect infestation that can contribute to sudden, drastic changes from a life of relative abundance to a life of poverty for the unprepared or unfortunate pastoralist. It is in these catastrophic situations more than in any other that Tibetans look to the supernatural for help to find a way forward, toward a better future, whether that future is in their present life or in their hoped-for next life.

Figure 18. Incense offering on a mountain altar, with “wind horse” offerings (prayers) on the ground

Figure 19. Herders and yak herd in search of uncovered range after snowstorm (Suojia, October 1999)

Transitional period: Land use practices in flux

There has been a relative uniformity in the principal livelihoods practiced by the inhabitants of the Qinghai Lake region for several centuries. Pastoralism, and to a lesser degree hunting and some trade of livestock and wildlife products, has long been the main economic activity. Since the 1950s, though, there have been major changes in local power structures and systems of governance, from traditional tribal organization to ideologically led external decision-making processes. In other words, the responsibility for decisions once made by tribal leaders, whose main concern was the welfare of their extended family and close neighbors, shifted in a short period of time to new leaders who served different interests. Above all else, these new leaders served the “greater good” of the new nation, the People’s Republic of China, a nation whose broader interests generally lay much farther to the east. To bridge this gap between local (Tibetan) and national interests, as already has been explained, the modern education system was introduced as a key means to reconcile differing interests by training ethnic minority government cadres (Meng et al. 1999).

The arrival en masse of Chinese immigrants in the 1950s and through to the 1970s, whether voluntary immigration or not, has most definitively anchored the majority of these changes into the modern pastoral landscape. Now, de facto, no longer are “local” interests solely Tibetan but to some degree Han Chinese as well. And the government must consider the latter people’s real aspirations and needs as well. Jiayi village and its surrounding areas thus have undergone drastic changes, particularly in relation to the ethnic composition of its population and the present system of governance. In both these respects, the entire region has been altered irreversibly. In fact, change has been pursued so actively over the past four or five decades that virtually every cultural element in the landscape now bears to some degree or other the mark of these recent historic events. Now, almost everywhere, roads are seen in the landscape – some literal roads but also many figurative in-roads of change, namely, modernization (e.g., building new livestock shelters; see Figure 20).

Figure 20. Traditional yak-hair tent with prayer flag, and a supply of logs to build a livestock shelter

The first large-scale external influence seen near Jiayi was the establishment of the (former) labor camp, the Hudong Agricultural State Farm. The construction of transport routes along the southern shore of Qinghai Lake and the wide-spread conversion (plowing) of grassland for agricultural development equally has impacted the local landscape immensely. But perhaps more than all other recent introductions to the area, whether of immigrants or roads or agricultural practices, it is the simple contact between different cultures that has led to and will continue to lead to the greatest long-term changes, for it is such contact that sparks new ideas and brings with it new ways to an area. And the physical evidence of these new ideas and new ways includes, beyond what already has been described, power lines and phone lines, veterinary and health care centers, research stations, boarding schools, and a whole array of modern goods and services.

Modern period: The present-day landscape

The most recent changes in Jiayi and its surrounding area are the result of such government policies as the Four-in-one Scheme. Following this plan, for example, permanent winter houses and livestock shelters are being built, forage crops are being planted, and fences are being raised around cultivated fields and winter pastures (Figures 21 and 22). And an increasing amount of grassland was being tilled and sown until Premier Zhu Rongji’s visit to Qinghai in fall 1999. Furthermore, not only has considerable land been degraded by some of these ongoing activities, but there also are growing disparities in wealth and health. All of these features, from the “natural” environment to the present, combine to create the overall, present-day landscape of Jiayi village.

Figure 21. Winter house and small corral (built with Kobresia sod) for livestock

Figure 22. Winter house and livestock shelter

Each individual element now will be examined separately, in greater detail, in an attempt to gain yet more insight into the socio-environmental situation in the Qinghai Lake area today.

Main landscape elements

According to Skånes (1997), a landscape element is simply “the relatively homogeneous units or spatial elements recognized in a mosaic on any scale.” Several broad categories are readily observed in the vicinity of Jiayi village, including a variety of elements pertaining to the themes of nature, ecology, and biodiversity; culture, sociology, and economy; and politics and modernization.

Nature, ecology, and biodiversity

Water, land, and sky are constants in the Jiayi landscape. Qinghai Lake is a constant backdrop (or foreground) to village life in Jiayi, and it is symbolically both source of life and death. Tibetans usually observe the lake with both a recognition for its immense beauty and some fear for the spirits that are known to inhabit its waters. The Chinese also consider Qinghai Lake to be an important natural resource to be exploited as well as a national scenic treasure. The lake is most famous as the largest salt-water lake in China and for the seasonal presence of many migratory birds. Everywhere, the sky is large, and numerous mountain ranges rim every horizon.

Mountains, grasslands, wetlands, and desert landscapes are all observed near Jiayi. Alpine grasslands can be divided into several main sub-types, from vegetation communities comprised of lichens, cushion plants, and other low-lying plants, to Kobresia sedge meadows, to taller steppe vegetation, and even to arid tussock grassland (Bian 1987). The local topography, altitude, slope, and aspect all play important ecological roles in determining which plant species grow where. Around Jiayi, only northern slopes are covered by shrubs or stunted trees. This feature may be due to micro-climatic differences related to solar radiation, temperature, and air moisture. However, according to Winkler (1995), the presence of trees and other woody plants almost exclusively on north-facing slopes also may be due, at least in part, to ancient deforestation by Tibetan pastoralists aimed to increase the availability of warmer south-facing pastures. Valley bottoms where moisture is available early in spring due to snow melt, as well as more permanent wetland areas, have a more vibrant plant life than on the steeper drier slopes of the Qinghai Nanshan (Riley and Young 1968). Pastoralists usually bring their flocks to these places first because, after each long winter, the growing season starts earlier here (Cincotta et al. 1991). One unique wetland area near Jiayi is located near the 6 km marker on the Jiayi-Hudong gravel road. This small wetland area is situated where the Daotang River enters a small lake immediately adjacent to (although once joined with) Qinghai Lake. And a few kilometers further north, shortly beyond the Hudong Agricultural State Farm, many large sand dunes extend across a vast area around the northeast shore of Qinghai Lake. Virtually no vegetation grows in the center of the desert, only near its edges and around a few oases, yet it is inhabited by several large mammals including, most notably, the Przewalski’s gazelle. This gazelle is currently restricted (excluded) from the more productive surrounding grasslands by the rapid expansion of fences, an aspect of modernization that is encouraged and often subsidized by various levels of government. With fewer than 200 individuals surviving in the wild and none in captivity, this native species of the Tibetan plateau is probably the most endangered ungulate species alive today – sadly, tomorrow it might become extinct, gone forever (Jiang et al. 1994, 1995).

The Tibetan plateau’s biodiversity in general has received relatively little attention in favor of the richer (more diverse) ecosystems of the world such as tropical rain forests. Yet the mountain and grassland ecosystems of the Tibetan plateau are among the most unique in the world. The natural history of the Qinghai Lake region itself is also unique. The lake itself is home to an endemic carp (Gymnocypris prezewalskii). The lake’s shores and its several islands are the home for several tens of thousands of migratory birds every breeding season, including the bar-headed goose, great cormorant, and black-necked crane. In the surrounding region, birds of prey include eagles, upland buzzards, hawks, kites, vultures, Himalayan griffons, and lammergeyers. Historically, mammals were also abundant and included most significantly the Tibetan wild ass, Tibetan gazelle, blue sheep, argali, wolves, foxes, brown bears, snow leopards, polecats, marmots, zokors, hares, and pikas. Last century, Prejevalsky (1876) wrote about Tibetan wild ass ranging throughout “Koko-nor, Tsaidam, and Northern Tibet [and] found in the greatest numbers in the first-named country,” and about steppe-foxes [Tibetan sand foxes] “distributed over the whole of Mongolia, Kan-su, Koko-nor, and Tsaidam [but similarly] most numerous on the plains round Koko-nor.” A few years later, Rockhill (1891) wrote about hillsides in some areas of Amdo being “literally black with yak, they could be seen by the thousands.” More recently, Migot (1957) recalls “a tremendous lot of wildlife [near the source of the Yellow River with wild] herds of yaks, wild asses and gazelles … all quite easy to get near.” Clearly, wildlife was abundant and diverse in the greater Qinghai Lake area, up until the not-too-distant past, and although many species are still present, now they occur only in small numbers.

Culture, sociology, and economy

Most inhabitants of Jiayi are Tibetan, and most are nomads (pastoralists), though some pastoralists also started to cultivate small parcels of land in the early 1990s. Several teachers at the village boarding school are Chinese, but most are Tibetan. Likewise, the sole shop owner in Jiayi is Tibetan, and the few monks in the village monastery are Tibetan.

The village monastery is located several hundred meters away from the village, nearer to the foot of the mountains. It has its own fenced land and its own herd of yak and sheep. Though a small monastery, it is a clear reminder of the worldview of most of the local population, influenced both by Buddhist teachings and earlier animistic beliefs. Perhaps as important as the monastery, however, are the numerous other concrete reminders of the great importance attached to religion in Jiayi: the turning of prayer wheels, daily offerings to the kitchen gods, the repetition of mantras, unending clockwise circumambulations around a variety of religious edifices, and many other practices as well. Folk religion also is very much alive, seen, for example, in the presence of numerous sacred sites that were not originally a part of Buddhism. Every hill or mountain top is thought to be the home of both good and evil spirits, thus a multitude of prayer flags are raised, wind horse paper offerings are thrown in the air, wooden spears and arrows are thrust into the ground, and offerings are burnt on alters to propitiate (appease) the local mountain gods. Inasmuch as water also is a home for spirits, Qinghai Lake is sacred and feared. One local informant, who had traveled to India and thus had a broader education than most, still expressed his doubt about whether or not thunder was indeed the roar of a dragon and lightening its flames. Clearly, there is a very specific “geography of spirits” recognized and accepted as real by the people of Jiayi and elsewhere on the Tibetan plateau (Ekvall 1968).

Although only a small village, it sometimes happens that travelers, traders, or pilgrims stop for the night in Jiayi en route to more distant destinations. And, sometimes, local Tibetans travel on foot or on horse to the county town across the Qinghai Nanshan, about 40 km away. However, it is only at the annual horse race in Jiayi that outsiders, including Hui and Han Chinese (and now some foreigners, too), come in large numbers to watch the festivities. Han Chinese and foreigners usually come to observe the minority cultures, Hui merchants set up temporary restaurants and shops, and some Tibetans conduct trade. Although archery, horse races, and tug-of-war games are all played, most Tibetans are said to come just for the fun atmosphere, and perhaps also to search for a husband or wife. Most Tibetans therefore come dressed in their finest clothes, some from places as far away as the distant western shore of Qinghai Lake.

Perhaps the most striking cultural element seen in the pastoral landscape is the black tent, the definitive mark of Tibetan nomads. The tent is made of long strips of woven yak hair (Figure 23), which is enlarged year by year lengthwise from in the center of the tent where a flap can be opened to allow smoke to escape. As the seasons come and go, the cloth strips age and their edges become tattered. Thus, if a family’s herd of yak is large, the tent will grow, but if the herd is too small to produce sufficient yak hair, it will shrink in size. The greatest contribution of the tent to the pastoralist lifestyle is its mobility: it can be packed and transported to new pastures as often as necessary. However, the tent is but the most obvious of human ecological adaptations to the Tibetan plateau environment. Even the yak itself, apart from its own physiological adaptation to the altitude and other aspects of the local environment, is, as a domesticated animal, also part of human adaptation to exploit the local natural resources. Furthermore, the yak not only serves to convert inedible plant material to meat and milk for human consumption, it also serves to transport people and baggage, it can even be used as a living plow to help traverse snow-covered mountain passes in winter, it provides indispensable fuel (yak dung), and it also is the source of strong hair fibers. Yak hair is used to make ropes, slingshots, and saddlebags as well as tents.

Figure 23. Nomad woman weaving yak hair into a long strip to enlarge her family’s tent

A variety of knives, milk pails, and some ornaments also appear on the pastoral scene, along with wooden saddles, butter churns, and sheep stomachs used to make and preserve yak butter. Other tools present include aluminum kettles, copper butter lamps, steel needles, and iron “dog whips,” each component being part of the material culture that helps the pastoralists to meet the needs of their livelihood in a high alpine grassland environment.

Perhaps the most important “tool,” though, is the pastoralist’s knowledge – his ecological knowledge of which livestock grazes what, when, and where, and consequently when and where to move his family or his satellite tents. Strategic decisions are made each day, but the most crucial decisions are made in the summer and autumn when, according to the success or failure of the family to adequately prepare its livestock for the next onslaught of winter, the herds’ (and hence the family’s) fate is largely determined. Indeed, the oft-repeated Tibetan proverb rings all too true even today: “animals gain strength in summer, fatten in autumn, lose weight in winter, and die in spring.” If the first two propositions of this proverb are not met, then the latter two will certainly take place.

Pastoralists’ ecological knowledge, whether explicit or implicit in their decision-making, leads to individual and communal active management of their herds and grasslands (Figure 24). Tibetan herders manage the ratios of male and female animals, the age structure of their herds, and the ratio of livestock types, including hybrids. Choices of summer and winter pastures and herd movements within these pastures also need to be made, but these are increasingly being removed from the hands of local pastoralists as local and regional governments strengthen the Household Responsibility System, effectively privatizing the land. Reading the climate, especially with a view to deciding when to make longer-distance seasonal movements, also is very important. In the case of Jiayi, however, summer and winter pastures are no more than 20 km distant, so the impacts of such decisions are not as significant. (Equivalent movements can reach 100 km north of Qinghai Lake, taking families and their herds up to 5 days to move between summer and winter pastures).

Figure 24. Household leaders meeting on the grassland to make communal decisions

Politics and modernization

Livestock (and grassland) management obviously has direct implications for grassland quality. Without arguing the different mechanisms that might lead to land degradation, for example whether resource overuse or climate change is most important (see Goldstein et al. 1990, Miller 1995, Miller and Craig 1997), it already has been shown that much grassland in Qinghai is degraded and that the area of degraded land continues to grow. In degraded pastures, a clear indicator of overgrazing is the prevalence of poisonous weed species such as Stellera chamaejasme (Figure 25). Such plants are most abundant in the winter and spring pastures near the increasingly settled pastoralists’ winter houses (Figure 26), versus the higher summer pastures, in part because the so-called “winter” pastures are increasingly being grazed in the summer and autumn seasons as well. Year-round grazing can lead to the local extirpation of some plant species preferred by livestock, and concomitantly to the competitive release and increasing abundance of “weedy” plant species (plants that generally are not eaten by livestock). With a decrease in the overall amount of forage available in the Qinghai Lake area and a changing plant species composition unfavorable to the improvement of livestock conditions, human wealth is likely to be affected negatively. In a cycle of positive feedback loops, poverty in turn is likely to lead people toward shorter-term land management perspectives that could worsen their environmental and social conditions even further. Tightly linked with poverty are health, education, and economic opportunities. Thus, in Jiayi as elsewhere, environment, poverty, health, and education are all inextricably woven together.

Figure 25. Weed species, Stellera chamaejasme, near cultivated field in the Tibetan plateau borderlands

Figure 26. Winter home with small fenced field (for winter forage crop) in foreground

Before the arrival of Chinese administration in the 1950s, no cultivated fields were found around Qinghai Lake and virtually no fishing was practiced in it. However, this has changed (Figures 27 and 28). In late summer, the most striking vegetation in Jiayi is the flowering rape plant. Whole fields are covered at this time with bright yellow rape flowers, with fields extending over half the length of the south shore of Qinghai Lake, an area that in recent years has increased annually. Chinese immigrants opened many of the early fields, but a few Tibetans started to cultivate the land in the early 1990s when the government began in earnest to encourage a transition from pastoralism to sedentary cultivation. Though not all, many Tibetans now practice a combination of crop cultivation and pastoralism in the vicinity of Qinghai Lake. Concomitant with this agricultural development is the transition toward an increasingly sedentary form of animal husbandry. This type of pastoral development promotes the construction of livestock shelters, winter homes, supplemental winter fodder, and grassland fencing around fields and winter pastures – all part of the Four-in-one Scheme. Each of these items now is visible, and common, in the Jiayi landscape.

Figure 27. Cultivated fields in valley surrounding Gangcha’s main town

Figure 28. Sheep herder with flock, cultivated fields and the Qinghai Nanshan in background

New roads, harmless in themselves and even associated with many potential benefits for the local population, also portray a continued shift in the overall balance of power. Even more dramatic, though, are the changes that the government is seeking to make through primary education. In many ways, the primary schools that dot the pastoral landscape, most of them boarding schools, are central to the future of the pastoral way of life throughout the province, since it is here that the next generation of educated pastoralists are being trained. Although some schools overtly aim to promote ethnic integration and to mold and train local “ethnic minority” leaders for the future (Meng et al. 1999), education at least can help to increase the number of Tibetans that are qualified in various practical technical fields. Currently, such positions are not being filled for a lack of trained people willing to live and work in the remoter parts of the Tibetan plateau. Local graduates, though, are on the whole more likely to return to their home villages. Thus primary schools, such as the boarding school observed in Jiayi, can have a very positive role to play in the lives of Tibetan pastoralists.

Grassland development (Gangcha county) (back to top)

Turning our attention now to the grasslands north of Qinghai Lake, we again find the same vegetation formations and similar pastoralists, but because the mountains and summer alpine pastures are situated much farther away from the lake, these pastoralists have maintained a more nomadic lifestyle. The five townships in Gangcha run along a north-south axis, thus enabling every village to have summer pastures on the slopes of the Datong Mountains in the north and winter pastures near Qinghai Lake in the south (Su 1993). These traditional patterns of grazing can be followed only because the modern administrative layout of the townships was patterned after the older, traditional tribal patterns. Such grazing patterns, however, are being challenged by relatively new land use policies that now are promoted in Qinghai and everywhere in China’s grassland regions, particularly by a parceling of the land through the Household Responsibility System.

Potential (historic) biodiversity

Past and present development activities have impacted seriously the local biodiversity in the Qinghai Lake area. The grasslands between the Datong Mountains and Qinghai Lake are gently rolling plains, dissected by small valleys and streams that are bordered by wetland vegetation (Figure 29). However, many riparian areas have dried out considerably in recent years, largely due to unsustainable harvest of shrubs for cooking fuel (Western Resources and Environment Research Center 1994) (Figure 30). Until recently, these riparian habitats comprised one of the few areas of the Tibetan plateau where shrubs comprised a significant part of the greater grassland ecosystem. Loss of wetland habitat has affected the avifauna in particular, including such species as the rare and internationally endangered black-necked crane. The Datong Mountains, on the other hand, are typical of many areas of the plateau, with valleys comprised of Kobresia sedge meadow and high barren peaks. And further north, in the Datong River valley, an extensive marshy grassland type serves as the primary summer pastures for local pastoralists. In the gently rolling hills both north and south of the Datong Mountains, some mammals can still be seen, but their present-day distribution and abundance hardly can compare with that of only a few decades ago. Past intensive poaching of wildlife, increasing physical disturbance by pastoralists (that is, the presence of more and more herders), the dissection of the grassland with modern fencing, and an overstocking of pastures in some parts of the county are the main causes of these drastic declines. As one village leader explained in March 1997:

“In 1955-56, we had herds of tens of thousands of wild yak and huge herds of Tibetan wild ass … and a lot of other wildlife. But now most are dead, killed by the [early] Chinese. … We still see a few wild ass … and Tibetan gazelle in the summer and spring pastures … but the wild yak are gone.”

Some wild yak may still be found in north-central Qinghai, in Tianjun (see Schaller and Liu 1996), but it is evident that all wildlife species have undergone extreme pressures and that some species have been nearly decimated since the 1950s. Now only remnants can be found.

Figure 29. Flock of birds (pochards, Aythya spp.) flying over wetland area near Qinghai Lake

Figure 30. Shrubland recently harvested (destroyed) for cooking fuel

During wildlife surveys conducted in the vicinity of the Datong Mountains between 1996 and 1998 (for a total of 18 survey-days comprising several long-distance excursions on foot), the following mammals were observed: Tibetan wild ass, Tibetan gazelle, gray wolf, Tibetan sand fox, red fox, Himalayan marmot, and plateau pika (see Figures 31 and 32). Other mammals known to occur in or near the Datong Mountains (but only sighted elsewhere in the province) include the blue sheep, desert cat, Pallas’ cat, woolly hare, zokor, and weasel. Regarding the avifauna, the following species were observed in grassland, shrubland, montane, and riverside habitats near Qinghai Lake in summer 1997 (this short list excludes the numerous bird species observed only on the shore of Qinghai Lake): bar-headed goose, ruddy shelduck, goosander, black stork, great black-headed gull, common tern, Eurasian tree sparrow, Oriental skylark, common rose finch, several redstarts, several snow finches, gray-backed shrike, horned lark, Tibetan snowcock, Hodgson’s stonechat, Tickell’s leaf warbler, robin accentor, Hume’s ground jay, red-billed chough, long-billed calandra lark, hoopoe, crag martin, sand martin, Himalayan griffon, golden eagle, Eurasian kestrel, lammergeyer, and upland buzzard (also see Table 20). Obviously, the alpine grasslands of the Tibetan plateau obviously are a special ecosystem with a unique wildlife assemblage. However, much basic biological research still needs to be done to better understand the conservation needs of individual species or groups of species. Given the grave risks facing these ecosystems, the present broad study – with its landscape-based and multi-disciplinary perspectives – is a necessary first step to elaborate a sound conservation strategy for these grassland ecosystems.

Figure 31. Plateau pika, Ochotona curzoniae, a keystone species of the Tibetan plateau

Figure 32. Tibetan wild ass, Equus kiang, a near endemic ungulate of the Tibetan plateau

Development priorities and land use

As shown earlier in this chapter, agriculture already is widespread in the vicinity of Qinghai Lake. To date, most cultivation has occurred in Gangcha. However, according to one local informant, the government only began to encourage – actually, to require – that local families plow the land in the early 1990s. But already, only a decade later, the high winds of winter and spring have blown tons of nutrient-rich topsoil away, oftentimes in huge dust storms that shroud the landscape in darkness, sometimes with visibility so low that vehicles must stop on the road. In the fall of 1999, though, national recognition of the long-term environmental damage caused by inappropriate large-scale plowing of these fragile grasslands was brought home to Qinghai when Premier Zhu Rongji decreed that around one-third of the province’s farmland was unsuited for agriculture and therefore should be restored to its original state. Thus it finally has been seen that such land would be more productive by contributing to animal husbandry.

There are nonetheless many other activities that continue to mark and change the pastoral landscape of Gangcha. On the plains and hills between Qinghai Lake and the Datong Mountains, for example, more modern extensive fencing is erected every year. In fact, many aspects of modernization, such as building livestock shelters, small fields of supplemental winter forage (fenced pastures, sometimes artificially-seeded grassland), mud-brick winter homes, even some artificial water sources (wells and irrigation), continue to be promoted.

Regarding seasonal migration patterns, pastoralists in Gangcha continue to move from winter to spring pastures around 5 June, and from spring to summer pastures around 15 July every year. They return to their fall pastures (the same as their spring pastures) around 5 September, and from there back to their winter pastures around 25 September. Thus pastoralists reside approximately 250 days each year (70 percent of the year) in their winter pastures, while they spend only 110 days (30 percent of the year) in their combined spring-summer-fall pastures. Winter grasslands (pastures), like livestock, are contracted separately to each family under the official Household Responsibility System. Not every family, though, has the financial resources necessary to fence their winter land, leading to increasing risk of becoming victims of the cheating behavior of other people. In one sense, once private management of the land has begun, an arms race begins – or rather a “fencing race” – with rich pastoralists protecting more and more of their land from cheaters, thus ensuring winter forage for their livestock, but poorer pastoralists suffering the additional burden of losing some of their winter forage to others. Summer pastures, on the other hand, are managed in common, village by village, with land allocated to each family by the village leader or a village committee. Although individual cheating is less likely to occur in the summer pastures where the entire community grazes its livestock together, between-village cheating is not uncommon if the opportunity allows (interview with a local village leader, Spring 1997).

Back in the south of the county’s five townships, in the lower altitudes near Qinghai Lake, more land has been plowed year by year. Although the total area of plowed land remains relatively small, the rate of conversion has been rapid in recent years. For example, Gangcha set a target of 467 ha to be plowed in 1996, representing a single-year increase of 3 percent in the area of cultivated land (Wei 1993, Gangcha County People’s Government 1997). The amount of financial investment poured into such kinds of development has of course been disproportionately high. Soft development, on the other hand, such as investment in adult training, extension services, basic education, or micro-credit programs, has received relatively little attention in Gangcha and elsewhere in Qinghai’s pastoral regions. All too often, technological quick-fixes are still being sought to increase the overall productive capacity of the Tibetan plateau grasslands. Recent planning documents in Gangcha reported that “to strengthen basic construction of the animal husbandry sector, emphasis will be placed on improving (reseeding) grassland, building livestock shelters, and constructing irrigation works” (Gangcha County People’s Government 1997). Furthermore, in the previous year (1996), the county government had already “built 200 livestock shelters (in addition to the 300 shelters built by the prefecture government), poisoned 34,680 ha of grassland to eradicate small mammals [most likely the plateau pika], reseeded 667 ha of grassland from airplanes, and … constructed new irrigation works” (Gangcha County People’s Government 1997). Obviously, all such development priorities have left clear marks in the landscape. More importantly, though, these marks are the confirmation that official rhetoric spoken by local, provincial, and national leaders actually does translate into concrete reality. Thus policy, whether provincial or national in origin, does indeed affect pastoralists in even the most remote regions of the Tibetan plateau, as well as the grassland ecosystems themselves. And, considering China’s clear stance on the extreme importance of biodiversity conservation in general and on the value of Qinghai’s grasslands to the nation, there is grounds for optimism that, soon, more sustainable development approaches will be adopted.

A final landscape in Gangcha, this one a landscape of “power,” is the county administrative center. All major decisions pass through this center, from economic and political decisions to decisions pertaining to education, disaster relief, health care, and any other bureau as may be present. Virtually all non-pastoral activities in the county – telecommunication services, transportation, business and trade, cultural centers – are centered in this, its sole town, known both as Gangcha (which is the county name, itself based on the name of a local Tibetan tribe) and as Shaliuhe (“Sand Willow River,” the name of the largest stream in the county). Even at lower levels, power still tends to be spatially bound since it is almost always from township centers that extension workers head out over the vast grassland to find and reach local pastoral families, one family at a time. Thus, although Tibetan pastoralism is largely extensive in nature, power tends to be more confined in space. A crucial question, then, is whether traditional Tibetan land use (extensive pastoralism) and the present centralized system of governance are compatible with one another in the long-term, or whether it will be necessary for one of these two systems to adapt in order to accommodate the other. This question is very important since it has many socio-cultural, economic, and ecological ramifications, and it is reflected most clearly in the ongoing debate about household-based (versus communal) land management and the related process of sedentarization.

Nature tourism (Bird Island Nature Reserve) (back to top)

Finally, an examination of the landscapes surrounding Bird Island Nature Reserve also provides some insight into culture, society, and environment in Qinghai today. The biodiversity and potential for ecosystem restoration in the region are discussed briefly, followed by a short discussion of the possible role of tourism in integrated conservation and development in the Qinghai Lake area. In this as in all previous sections, the past and present (and to some degree, even the future) are discussed together, intertwined as they are in the present-day landscape.

Biodiversity and ecological restoration

Although “Bird Island” was once a real island, the receding waters of Qinghai Lake in combination with upstream soil erosion and siltation in the Pu River have created an isthmus that now joins the “island” to the mainland. Qinghai Lake’s water level has in fact dropped over 10 meters since the 1920s (Western Resources and Environment Research Center 1994). Soil erosion in particular has increased dramatically over the past several decades as human and livestock populations have increased exponentially, leading in some places to severe land degradation.

On and around Bird Island itself, there are numerous flocks of birds, many migratory. Most common are the bar-headed goose, great black-headed gull, brown-headed gull, and great cormorant. Several kilometers away from the public viewing area are also several black-necked crane. Many migratory bird species from across Central Asia can be observed at the reserve, some for breeding and others in transit to or from their winter ranges. Many birds also nest on several rocky outcrops in the lake and on Haixin, a rugged island in the center of the lake.

Less than a hundred years ago, even only fifty years ago, significant mammalian wildlife was abundant in the vicinity of Bird Island Nature Reserve and the Pu River valley as well. Prejevalsky’s (1876) account of the abundance of the Tibetan wild ass, Tibetan sand fox, and other animals in the area has been cited already. Also present in this area are remnants of a once large and widespread population of Przewalski’s gazelle. (The other current location of this species is the sand dunes on the northeast shore of Qinghai Lake). Today, however, mammalian wildlife is much scarcer than a century ago, mostly because of hunting by outsiders, particularly by the Chinese military in the 1950s and 1960s. I interviewed several herders in 1997, including one village leader, and they all agreed that the reintroduction of the Tibetan wild ass, for example, would be an endeavor that would receive the support of most local pastoralists. In their opinion, poaching would not pose any problem, but the availability of sufficient forage (to share with livestock) was still uncertain. While their short-term economic condition is obviously extremely important to them, pastoralists nonetheless also value overall grassland quality (ecosystem integrity) as well as its native wildlife. This perspective gives some solid ground for hope for the successful protection, and possibly the restoration, of grassland ecosystems on the entire Tibetan plateau.

Nature-based tourism in China today

The most memorable landscape in the Bird Island area, however, may in fact be the numerous busloads of national (Chinese) tourists that come every spring and autumn to see the nesting birds at this premier natural site. In China, though, nature-based tourism does not necessarily imply a peaceful appreciation of natural landscapes, but rather may refer to mass tourism to famous land formations or natural phenomenon. The authorities in charge of such tourist sites apparently hope to generate as much income as possible, often with as little investment, planning, or effort as possible. Most visitors to Bird Island Nature Reserve come on day-trips only, totaling around 10 hours in rented vehicles or buses from the provincial capital, Xining. Unfortunately, apart from the entrance fee to the reserve, almost all economic benefits return to the travel companies with their headquarters in Xining, Beijing, or even abroad. Furthermore, with little local supervision and a general lack of environmental awareness, it is not uncommon for visitors to actively disturb the nesting birds, even throwing rocks, at the cormorant colony. Thus visitors usually do not contribute significantly to, and may even detract from, efforts to preserve the habitat and to promote long-term sustainability in the area. Until natural resources are attributed greater intrinsic value, whether specific wildlife species or biodiversity as a whole, true sustainability (and hence the protection of biodiversity) may remain elusive and perhaps even unachievable. In the case of Bird Island Nature Reserve, as with all the grassland resources of Jiayi and Gangcha and elsewhere in the Qinghai Lake area, if environmental awareness does not increase both among local residents and outsiders (whether they be new immigrants to the area, or distant legislators and decision-makers), then harm may continue to occur and natural resources will become increasingly depleted and degraded, to the detriment of the entire nation.

Power, Poverty, Tradition, and Modernization (back to top)

Still more questions (back to top)

It is true that more questions than answers stem from the present landscape analysis. Yet almost invariably it is simple questions that can do most to set new directions for the future. As noted in the sub-title of this chapter, Current Developments and Trends, the changes currently taking place in Qinghai’s pastoral regions, including the Qinghai Lake area, have a direct bearing on the future of both natural and human environments in these regions. Or in other words, chosen development priorities (and de facto priorities, that is, all sanctioned development activities) can and do impact the landscape in a large variety of ways, thus setting a trajectory for future environmental trends today. Ultimately, sustainability is simply a matter of long-term environmental trends. Therefore the question we should ask first is, Are current developments in the Qinghai Lake area sustainable? And secondly, equally as important, Which framework or perspective should we adopt to assess sustainability (both from the perspective of local pastoralists and of the nation)? These are two very difficult questions that raise many more questions! But they are the necessary starting point.

A reformulation of the second question is, What is the end-goal of development in China? The answer to this question – that the end-goal of development in China is to attain the greatest improvement in “quality of life” for the greatest number of people, and thus to maximize social stability in the country – at least helps to better understand, if not to entirely agree with, why the needs or desires of local people sometimes appear to be ignored in favor of the needs or desires of people from the more populous eastern parts of China. Although Tibetan pastoralists are real stakeholders in all new developments pertaining to land use in the Qinghai Lake area, they generally have not been consulted in the decision-making process. This perspective has been confirmed by the repeated statement of several Tibetans from the lake area that agriculture was introduced only very recently (for example, in 1993 in parts of Gangcha) and was accepted and implemented simply because it had already been decided by higher levels of government that agriculture should be expanded in the area. Yet now it is increasingly recognized in China, even in Qinghai, that in order to achieve ecological sustainability local conditions must be heeded, and that local people should be heard and respected. In the future, indigenous knowledge of local environments and their tried-and-true (tested) land use practices should be considered in concert with new development ideas. Furthermore, participation is likely to increase pastoralists’ sense of ownership of new ventures and therefore is also likely to promote acceptance and assistance, as opposed to resistance, for new development activities introduced to the area.

One of the main ideological stumbling blocks for the Chinese government to accept to sit at the same table as pastoralists has been that, from a Marxist socialist perspective, neither grasslands nor pastoralism have been attributed much value since “grass grows on its own” and “pastoralists just let their animals graze.” Land and livelihood in socialist China generally are perceived as valuable only when labor is added. Thus, since traditional animal husbandry does not require a total transformation of the land and is (wrongly) assumed to require little labor, it rarely has been considered as worthwhile or equally as valuable as agriculture. This view is the main reason why so much grassland was destroyed (plowed) in the past, with no regard for local pastoral traditions or even for the harsh ecological realities of the Tibetan plateau.

While it is evident that ecological sustainability is fundamental, a second aspect of sustainability is critical as well. Assuming that sustainability must be measured at least in equal part from the Tibetan pastoralists’ perspective, not solely from a national perspective (e.g., development must be culturally acceptable), a key question becomes, Can extensive pastoralism and its associated traditional forms of decision-making survive within a centralized, spatially-bound system of governance such as present in China, or must one form ultimately be subsumed by the other? For a development activity to be truly sustainable, then, not only must it be ecologically and economically sound or viable, but it must be socially and cultural acceptable as well. The sole alternative viewpoint is to accept as inevitable the disappearance of some pastoral cultures in the name of progress and development. If the latter premise is untenable, as many would agree, then sustainability requires that systems of governance worldwide begin to adopt more flexible policies that adapt in part to pastoral livelihoods as well as the converse. Some significant examples would be to attempt to provide education, health care, veterinary services, and even financial credit in ways that are relevant and accessible to a (semi-)mobile population and in accordance with their seasonal (temporal) needs.

The modern pastoral landscape in review (back to top)

What kind of development is being implemented in the Qinghai Lake area? Land use intensification is noted in the construction of livestock shelters, fields for supplemental winter forage, grassland fencing, grassland reseeding projects, and even irrigation projects. Technological fixes, not education or changed attitudes, are expected to promote economic growth by increasing livestock production or converting the grassland to fields of barley. Furthermore, most pastoralists now live in fixed abodes for at least part of the year. The implications of all these changes are staggering. Crop cultivation has now been recognized as unsustainable and therefore inappropriate for most of the province’s alpine grasslands. Winter houses and fences tend to encourage pastoralists to follow less and less flexible land use patterns, with some pastures now being grazed during every season. New livestock shelters, increased availability of winter forage, and improved veterinary services contribute to higher livestock survival rates, particularly of young calves and lambs. However, without a concomitant increase in autumn livestock sales, as the government (wrongly) assumed would happen naturally based on economic maximization theories, increased survival rates have translated for the most part into more, but not into better quality, animals. In fact, livestock quality has decreased drastically over the last few decades (Western Resources and Environment Research Center 1994). While most hardships do indeed occur in winter, particularly livestock starvation and death, the almost exclusive focus of current pastoral development efforts on the winter crunch season may be inappropriate. As the present trading habits of most pastoralists stand, however, any increase in herd sizes due to attempts to improve livestock conditions is not matched by an equivalent number of animals being sold to market in the fall (as planned or hoped by most government planners; Cincotta et al. 1991). Thus, if successful, although livestock improvements may assist the pastoralists in the short term, even this “success” can lead to increased stocking rates and concomitant overgrazing in some pastures. Warm season pastures in particular become overstocked and in some instances seriously overgrazed (Lang et al. 1997). Clearly, technological “solutions” alone are not sufficient to address the real environmental problems in the Qinghai Lake area. Social development, or participatory community development, is also needed.

The way forward (back to top)

With the demand for livestock products on the increase (because of the increasing human population), there will be more and more incentive for pastoralists to increase their herd size. A new approach to development therefore must be sought. Not only should the present winter focus of development be redirected to a more even division between cold- and warm-season grasslands, but the corollary of this shift is also important: there should similarly be a move away from a population-driven development focus toward a more land- or resource-driven focus. That is, on the whole, development should be planned more according to the availability of natural resources than according to (often unrealistic) desired outputs. Only by focusing on the grassland itself as well as on people and livestock, and on the summer as well as on winter pastures, does ecological sustainability have a chance to be achieved.

In considering the grassland, however, it is local pastoralists that may be in the best position to assist in determining how it should be managed. To prescribe how this resource should be used, pastoralists have many centuries of valuable cultural knowledge (indigenous knowledge) which should not be ignored. This knowledge base is but one of the many benefits gained by adopting a participatory approach to development. The most striking features of the grassland, of its climatic extremes and high variability, have led Tibetan pastoralists to adopt highly flexible grazing strategies. Translated into the language of modern rangeland science, pastoralists have long sought to find and to match as closely as possible the grassland’s “dynamic carrying capacity” (Miller 1995). Tibetan pastoralists can also be said to seek to minimize risk (Galaty and Johnson 1990) and to maximize reliability (Roe et al. 1999).

In contrast to traditional grazing strategies, however, the Chinese government has contracted virtually all the land in the Qinghai Lake area to individual households (through the Household Responsibility System) over the past two decades. However, privatization and grassland fencing both limit grazing flexibility in an ecosystem where fast and flexible strategic responses can make the difference between prosperity and poverty, or worse, between life and death of livestock. Sedentarization of pastoralists likewise has a very poor track record worldwide (Bennett 1988). Where resources are already being used at or near their carrying capacity (for sustainable utilization), such as is the case for most grasslands in China, any land use intensification – whether privatization, sedentarization, or fencing schemes – carries with it an inherently high risk of increasing the rate of grassland degradation (Williams 1996). After all, there still remains, minimally, the same number of livestock trying to survive on the same finite grasslands.

Alternate less resource-intensive types of development that could be pursued include, for example, the promotion of value-adding enterprises (processing livestock products, as opposed to selling raw materials only), further development of the commercial sector (such as transportation, marketing, and sales), and the development of a nature-based tourism (ecotourism) industry with the returns remaining in the region. Equally important for pastoralists is the promotion of basic education and literacy as well as the provision of health care services. With any of these kinds of development, however, whether resource development (including animal husbandry) or the provision of basic services, long-term sustainability is only possible if all stakeholders, particularly the pastoralists themselves, are involved in the overall process of change. Participation and ownership, not ideologically correct or policy-driven development plans, are essential for the best likelihood of long-term social, economic, and environmental sustainability on the Tibetan plateau’s alpine grasslands.

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Table of Contents

Chapter Four

Pastoral Landscapes in the Qinghai Lake Area: Current Developments and Trends

4.1. Introduction

4.1.1. Landscape observation and analysis

4.1.2. The emergence of a new mixed landscape

4.1.2. An urgent need for environmental protection

4.2. General Description of the Qinghai Lake Area

4.2.1. Physical geography

4.2.2. From tribal history to modern politics

4.2.3. Different values, different visions of the world

4.3. Landscape Observation and Analysis

4.3.1. Overland tour of the Qinghai Lake area

4.3.2. Village scenes (Jiayi village)

4.3.3. Grassland development (Gangcha county)

4.3.4. Nature tourism (Bird Island Nature Reserve)

4.4. Power, Poverty, Tradition, and Modernization

4.4.1. Still more questions

4.4.2. The modern pastoral landscape in review

4.4.3. The way forward

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