APPENDIX V: PLATEAU PERSPECTIVES TRIP REPORT, SUOJIA TOWNSHIP, ZHIDUO COUNTY, JULY 1998
The source area of the Yangtze River in southwest Qinghai is one of the last refuges for Tibetan wildlife. Wu (1994), Schaller (1997, 1998) and others have already described portions of the Kekexili district and adjacent areas of Tibet, but still very little is known about the local history, culture, and environment. The populated area of Suojia Township is situated east of the Golmud-Lhasa Highway in the transition zone between the vast, uninhabited Kekexili desert-steppe region to the west, and the alpine meadows to the east of the highway. The impetus for the trip described in this report was the establishment, in May 1998, of a local grassroots organization dedicated to finding ways to better integrate environmental and development concerns in this unique transitional ecological zone of the Tibetan plateau. Tibetan pastoralists still co-exist with relatively abundant wildlife in Suojia, but it is recognized that this situation will not last forever unless protective measures are taken to guard against imminent short-term external interests. I was therefore invited by Zhaduo, the government leader of Suojia township and director of the local grassroots Upper Yangtze Organization, to visit the Suojia region in July 1998 – as a friend, as conservation biologist, and as community development worker.[1]
This report provides a personal narrative of my trip to Suojia Township (July 3-23, 1998). I attempt in this way to capture and provide a small glimpse into life in this remote part of Qinghai, both past and present, and to convey to some degree at least a sense of the realities and the many challenges that are faced by local Tibetan pastoralists today as they attempt to “develop” their area as well as to preserve their unique environment and cultural heritage. This report thus provides some insight into how conservation and development may be integrated in Qinghai’s alpine grasslands, and even throughout the entire Tibetan plateau. Overall, a more integrated approach and community-based initiatives are critical components in the global endeavor to protect biodiversity.
Shiamba[3]
sits in silence, waiting patiently in the wind. His wife and daughter have
stayed behind while he, the chief’s son, has accompanied his father. He now
listens to his father speak with the leaders of several neighboring tribes.
Most tribes have fought for years, but his father is a good man and he knows
how to negotiate. His tribe, the Yala tribe,[4]
is also the poorest tribe and therefore poses no threat. As in previous years,
the chief and his tribe are finally granted permission to travel unharmed
through the other tribes’ territories to their summer hunting grounds. With
this approval, Shiamba and his father can now return to their winter home to
assemble their clan and prepare for their imminent journey.
After three long days of walking, Shiamba and his
family are exhausted. The spring winds are strong, nights are still cold, and
everybody is tired of eating dried yak meat. All of the other families are also
tired. However, when their clan halts in the late afternoon and wild yak are
spotted in the distance, excitement once again begins to mount. Tomorrow they
will arrive at their new hunting ground, an alpine valley surrounded by high
peaks, a fragrant valley with many springs and a clear mountain stream that
flows into the Dri River.[5]
That night, despite the cold and a pack of wolves that howls in the distance,
almost everybody sleeps soundly. Only Shiamba has a dream. He sees several
different spirits, but one “mountain god” stands out above the rest. Riding a
wild yak, the local deity looks directly at Shiamba, points toward the
magnificent alpine valley that they plan to reach the next day, then turns and
leaps with his wild yak over the white stone mountain. When he wakes, Shiamba
decides that he will build an altar this summer, at the mouth of the valley
where the mountain stream joins the great Dri River. It will be a reminder of
his vision, of the mountain and the yak, and most importantly of the “mountain
god” and his much needed protection. Shiamba names the mountain Yekjengo, or Wild Yak White Stone
Mountain. [6]
That summer the Yala have plenty to eat. Wild yak,
wild ass, gazelle, blue sheep, marmot and many other mammals are exceptionally
abundant, and the ubiquitous pika provides a particularly special treat when
stuffed with drolma[7] and roasted over an open fire. Shiamba’s
daughter continues to grow healthy and strong. Now that she has survived her
third year, both parents are confident that she, too, will one day bear
children of her own. But such thoughts of the future remain as occasional
daydreams, for the needs of the present remain great. A lot of hunting must
still be done before the winter. Tools must be made. Tents still need repair.
Indeed, life is never easy, and the next winter can always be one’s last.
In a two-room house in Suojia town, a 72-year old Tibetan man recalls his past. He remembers the snowstorm of 1985, the most severe in living memory. He reminisces about the changes that have taken place in the landscape, of deteriorating grasslands and diminishing wildlife populations. He also recalls the arrival of the first pure pastoralists in the early 1970s, and even earlier times when the local tribes practiced only hunting. Similar to the life of Shiamba (see above), this old man’s own grandparents were hunters who lived solely on the direct provisions of the land, not on livestock. Indeed, this is how most people lived in the Drito region until quite recently. Furthermore, seeing Zhaduo’s growing interest in the local (indigenous) knowledge available right in his own home area was also very rewarding for me. Too often, local colleagues and friends assumed (wrongly) that as a scientist I had instant, ready answers. But now, he, too, is learning to ask questions – and we now both expect the “answers” to our conservation and development dilemmas to come from a variety of sources, including all the stakeholders, and that “solutions” also will be refined continuously through practical, iterative real-life experience.[9]
In early July 1998, I had left Xining, the provincial capital, with my friend and colleague, Zhaduo, on a three-week, 3,000 km long journey. Because of my training as biologist and connections to several international conservation and development organizations, Zhaduo wanted me to learn first-hand about the economic and environmental conditions of his home area, Suojia Township.[10] For many months Zhaduo and I had discussed how to integrate environmental protection and development in the alpine grasslands of the Tibetan plateau, particularly within the current social, economic, and cultural contexts of Qinghai. He felt that a trip to the high altitude rangelands where he spent much of his childhood would be particularly helpful at this time for us to pursue our discussions. He hoped that one day, in the next few years, we would be able to build a model demonstration area that would promote basic education, literacy, community health and environmental protection in an integrated fashion among the local pastoralists, and that eventually we would replicate this approach to even larger areas of the Tibetan plateau.[11] So it is that we set off, first on the 830 km road to Yushu, and then on the 200 km road to Zhiduo.
After arriving in Zhiduo, our first job is to find several of Zhaduo’s close friends – Trashi, the school headmaster; Yazhou, the banker; Wenzha, the township leader of Suojia; and a few other friends and colleagues. During the two days we spent in Zhiduo looking for (and then repairing) our onward transportation, an old Beijing Jeep, I am inundated with new information, some of it useful, some of it apparently trivial, but all of it definitely very interesting. Trashi explains that there are so many tribes in the source areas of the Mekong, Yangtze and Yellow rivers (in Zaduo, Zhiduo and Qumalai counties, respectively) because travel in the region has always been difficult, and people from different valleys were almost totally isolated from each another. This isolation led to local variations in dialect and eventually to local territoriality and tribal affiliations. Another factor that contributed to the process of isolation was a concomitant lack of formal education. In fact, before Liberation, monasteries numbered only three in the whole county.[12]
Yazhou also gives some insight into more modern activities in Zhiduo, such as the development of small enterprises and modern banking structures. But he equally takes the time to explain an important fact from local history, particularly that the name Yushu was wrongly applied to the prefecture capital. Before Liberation, the region of present-day Zhiduo was known as Yushu, the name of the local tribe that inhabited the valley. However, when the Chinese arrived, they first came through present-day Zhiduo and learned about the Yushu tribe, but they wrongly assumed that all the tribes were unified. Therefore, when they later established their base in (present-day) Yushu, they named it after a tribe that lived 200 km to the northwest (instead of giving their new base a more local name such as Gilong or Hashil[13]). Several people have expressed to me their regret that some of their unique history is being lost.[14]
More than anyone else, however, it is Zhaduo and Wenzha, the closest of this tight-knit group of friends, who provide the most detailed information on this trip. Although Wenzha grew up in one of Zhiduo’s eastern townships, he has been Suojia’s government leader for nearly three years. It is clear that he knows the land and its people well. And Zhaduo himself grew up in Suojia, and he also spent two years in the early 1990s working closely with Suonan Dorje, the founding director of Zhiduo’s Western Development Committee. Suonan Dorje became has become an “environmental martyr” in China after poachers murdered him in 1993.[15] A memorial monument now stands near the county town.
Our second assignment in Zhiduo is to hold a board meeting for the Upper Yangtze Integrated Conservation and Development Organization.[16] The meeting is held in Chinese rather than Tibetan for my benefit, and I am welcomed to take notes and even to participate. Four of the six board members are present: Zhaduo (chairman), Yazhou (secretary), Trashi, and Wenzha. The two other members, Lobsang Nyima and Shiamba Chumpel, are herding their sheep and yak some 200 km to the west, in Muqu Village[17] of Suojia Township. We will meet them in less than one week’s time. The most exciting aspect of this fledgling non-governmental organization is its unique local character (all of its leaders are Tibetan), and its desire to work with local herders as opposed to simply telling them what should be done to improve the economic and ecological situation in the source area of the Yangtze River. Most important, however, is the respect that each leading member of the UYO has within the local community, both in the county center (Zhiduo town) and among the pastoralists (throughout Suojia Township and its four villages), ensuring that the local people will more readily accept their words. In terms of their planned approach for future initiatives, it is also a major achievement of the first board meeting that everybody present expressed a clear preference for, or at least a recognition of the value of, participatory learning and multiplicative approaches to development.
Taking to the road again, we travel only 15 km to our first stop, Gonsar Monastery. We not only tour the monastery and examine the building of a new, 27 m high statue of the Buddha,[18] but also have an audience with Rinpoche Gonsar Chujie, who proves to be favorable to our overall objective to integrate conservation and development in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. After showing the Rinpoche respect by presenting him with white ceremonial silk scarves, several monks serve milk tea and dried yak meat for us to eat as we talk. A dozen or more small Lhasa dogs lie near the Rinpoche’s feet or follow him around as he paces the floor. And deep, low chanting is heard in a dark back room of the hall. The Rinpoche says that he presently teaches around 100 monks in his monastery, but plans to have over 200 students by the time of the official opening and dedication ceremony for the Buddha statue.[19] Local Tibetans and pilgrims from around the Tibetan plateau describe the entire monastic complex as an eagle with outspread wings, nestled at the foot of the rocky Red Head Mountain, the traditional home of the wife of mythical King Gesar.[20]
From the monastery, the drive through Doucai and Zhahe townships proceeds slowly as the road is still in quite bad repair, and the early summer rains have done nothing to improve its overall condition. While we negotiated the 260 km road from Zhiduo to Suojia in only 3 days, it is not uncommon for this trip to take 7 or 8 days, or even several weeks.[21] As long as our motor keeps working, though, we don’t expect that kind of trouble. Indeed, I can’t afford such delays since my advisor is coming all the way from Arizona to visit me, now arriving in Xining in less than 10 days’ time! So we definitely feel fortunate when we arrive in Suojia nearly on time, a few minutes after sunrise on the morning of 11 July 1998, even though we did get stuck in a quagmire in the middle of the night and had to walk the last 15 km.
From Suojia onwards, our travels become more challenging day by day. In the late afternoon, after a truck returns with our recently extracted jeep in tow, we drive even closer to the Dri (Yangtze) River. Soon we hope to reach our final destination, a large 150 km2 of land donated by the government to the Upper Yangtze Organization (UYO) for them to develop as a demonstration site for ecologically sound and sustainable development in the grasslands of Suojia Township. A few kilometers from Suojia, we spot several Tibetan gazelle and Tibetan wild ass. Here, unlike the hills and mountains we encountered earlier, we are on the very edge of the Chang Tang, the great Northern Plains that extend for hundreds of kilometers to the west. We have entered the heartland of the Tibetan plateau where Tibetan antelope, wild yak and all the other native fauna of the plateau still live. From the plains, at 4,400 m above sea level, mountains rise hundreds of meters above us in all directions. Almost nowhere else on Earth is so rugged and of such stark beauty, nor so remote, as where we now stand. Even more amazing, local pastoralists have here learned how to rely on and to live successfully from the land’s resources, despite some of the harshest environmental conditions in the world. Part of the UYO’s mandate, in fact, is to document these practices as well as the local tribal histories, at the same time as protecting the local natural resources.
An hour later, we attempt to ford the Muqu River but promptly get stuck in the middle for nearly an hour. After a lot of digging, pushing, and pulling, we finally succeed to reach the other side and drive rapidly, in high gear, the rest of the way across the sand and gravel riverbed. However, soon after this heavy strain on the vehicle, much to our dismay we hear a new “twang” in the motor. With little daylight left, though, we have no choice but to continue the last 10 km to the home of Lobsang Nyima, the ‘Second leader’ of Muqu village. In the morning, we find our jeep is quite dead and will not move any further. The remainder of our trip is therefore spent first on horseback, then hitching rides back to Suojia, Zhiduo and Yushu, and finally taking a local bus from Yushu to Xining.
During the first evening in Lobsang Nyima’s tent, and until 6 o’clock the next evening (when our host’s son finally returns with four horses, and we ride off toward Shiamba Chumpel’s tent 20 km away), Wenzha and all the others fill me in on the recent history and present status of Suojia Township. As we sit eating fresh boiled mutton, drinking milk tea, and licking yogurt from our bowls, we discuss, for example, how where we are now sitting used to be part of the old Tangbo Road, the former thoroughfare between Tibet and China. And as in all our talks, my hosts discuss among themselves in Tibetan while I ask (and answer) many questions in Chinese, which is our only common trade language. Many centuries ago, even when the Fifth Dalai Lama, Gamsong Gyamtso, traveled the great Tangbo Road, hunters already lived on these plains and in the surrounding hills. Although a few people did graze some livestock in the more productive pastures, everybody’s primary livelihood was to hunt the abundant wildlife. This traditional livelihood lasted well into the 20th century, even up until 1958 or shortly thereafter, when the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) arrived and ordered most people to move east to the new county town, Zhiduo. Over the following two decades, much of Suojia’s wildlife was killed by the army for food and sometimes just for sport. Suojia Commune was formally established in 1966 with its administrative center located in Yaqu village, which now is sometimes called “Old Suojia.” Most of the present population, however, arrived here only after the township administrative center was moved to its present location in 1972. Thus, from 1958 to 1972, very few if any people lived in the area where we are now talking. Thus animal husbandry is very new to this part of the Tibetan plateau, with only around a quarter century of history.[22]
The official total population of Suojia Township is 4,377 people in 856 households. However 142 families are known to have moved elsewhere since the 1985 snowstorms. Some people left to find new jobs, but most left because they were made destitute by the catastrophic snowstorm and became beggars. Many of these families now live on the outskirts of the county town. The actual population in Suojia is therefore significantly lower than official figures indicate. Livestock, on the other hand, now amount to 81,450 head, mostly sheep and yak, but this is generally considered an underestimate of actual numbers. In the small town itself,[23] there are a few buildings for government administration, several private homes, and a small health center, a veterinarian station, a primary school, and a government store. The town population is guessed at between 120 and 150 people. The two health workers treat up to 20 patients per day in winter, and they helped deliver 31 babies in 1997. They use a combination of both western and Tibetan medicines, but have very little training and minimal medical facilities. The veterinarians likewise are limited in the work they can accomplish, mostly because vaccines (and all other medicines) are no longer provided free of charge, yet local pastoralists lack the financial means to purchase medicines, and they also feel that it is still the government’s responsibility to meet most of their needs. Thus the two township veterinarians who once rode regularly from tent to tent providing vaccines and other forms of assistance for the herds now sit in town with very little to do, and many out-of-date vials sitting on the shelves. Without new community income, they remain helpless to change the situation. At this juncture Zhaduo suggests eco-tourism as a possible source of income, and Wenzha readily concurs with him. Both of them are even very eager to pioneer this kind of venture. I cautiously agree that the idea has merit, that we should weigh its potential costs and benefits, but also that economic, ecological, cultural, and social aspects should all be considered carefully. Everybody agrees, but only time will tell what is truly possible. Back to Suojia town, the primary school has 4 teachers and 25 students, only a negligible proportion of the township’s 760 school-age children (i.e., between 7 - 12 years old). The government store is almost permanently closed since no one has any need to purchase supplies – each person provides for himself, making or importing what is needed to live in this remote outpost on the Tibetan plateau. The most recent innovation of Suojia is the greenhouse that was built recently by the local government. The greenhouse is located in the ruins of the township fort, a mud-brick fortification with two high guard towers from which the early Chinese immigrants planned to defend themselves in the case Tibetan attacks. Once again the fort is used for protection, but this time for cabbage, onions, carrots and other vegetables, none of which can grow above 4,000 m without the extra warmth provided by the greenhouse! Finally, regarding ethnic relations in Suojia, there appears to be no animosity between Tibetan and Han (Chinese), perhaps because there are only three Chinese in the township, all of whom have adapted quite well to the local conditions.
Back to Lobsang Nyima’s tent… When his son returns with four horses, we all saddle up and ride off as the sun begins to set on the horizon. Assuring Zhaduo, Wenzha and Lobsang Nyima that I have some experience riding horses, they decide to head off at a trot across the wide plain before us. We later turn up a small valley and work our way to a 4,700 m mountain pass. Again we see Tibetan gazelle, Himalayan marmot, and many pika burrows. Riding along, Zhaduo and I talk and dream of the future, and we even take turns singing for each other and for the wind. What a wonderful way to spend a late summer’s evening! Quickly, though, the sun begins to disappear, we cross the windy pass, and begin our steep descent into the darkening valley. Here, we are nearing the foot of those mountains pointed out to me several days earlier, from the distant other side, a rugged range where no outsider and very few locals have ever set foot – a mountain range somewhat feared by the pastoralists, even a bit by Zhaduo himself, but also a mountain range reported to have exceptionally abundant wildlife.[24] Three-quarters of an hour later, and three hours after leaving the previous tents, we arrive at Shiamba Chumpel’s[25] home, welcomed with open arms by our new hosts and by several madly barking dogs.
Tired, I would rather go to sleep immediately, but others’ customs prevail. We sit and drink tea, we talk, we eat tsampa, but still several times I start to fade into a world of my own, tired both physically and also by the added mental effort of speaking an unfamiliar tongue in a very unfamiliar environment. Past midnight I am offered the only bed, and Shiamba Chumpel, his wife, his mother, his four children, and his three other guests all make themselves relatively comfortable on the earthen floor. I sleep well for most of the night, but start gasping in the early morning hours as only very stale air remains, all the fresh air having been consumed by 11 people (and several cats) and by the dung fire that is slowly burning in the hearth. Once in the night, the eldest son steps outside the tent and yells at the top of his voice, attempting to scare away the wolves that are frightening their livestock and exciting the guard dogs.
Zhaduo wakes me before dawn and urges me out of bed. He reminds me that I had agreed last night to get up early, and though I don’t remember such a plan (a memory further repressed by the warmth of the bed), I roll over and dress for a cool summer morning. Once outside, though, I quickly decide that it’s already winter and I return inside to get my hat, scarf, and gloves. “This is the middle of the Tibetan plateau,” I tell myself, “and it’s a privilege to be here, right?” But to no avail… “It’s just too cold, it’s below freezing in the middle of summer!”
The reason we are up so early is to look at the livestock before they are herded away at sunrise to graze the higher pastures for the day. In fact, we are looking for a one particular yak, supposedly a hybrid, but not a normal hybrid either… It is supposedly a hybrid yak sired by an undocumented bovine species that lives in the Yekjengo Mountains, and present in several other mountain ranges of Suojia as well. Most pastoralists seem to know of its existence since it occasionally mates with domestic yak and produces hybrids with little hair and different teeth than regular yak. One of the added challenges of finding either the “real” animal or one of its hybrid offspring, though, is the taboo nature of talking about its presence in one’s herd, at the risk of it dying and hence of the pastoralists’ losing this very unique “blessing.” But as I’m Zhaduo’s friend, and as he is a close friend of Shiamba Chumpel, we are allowed to examine the special yak. Unfortunately, this one doesn’t have any of the extra teeth that I had been told about… So, disappointed, we return to the warmth of the tent. The animal clearly was special, but more like an albino than a cross with a new, undocumented species. However, stories about local sightings of a “lake-yak” and of the more famous “snow-lion,” also reported by local herders, do little to increase my confidence in the existence of any of these animals… One government cadre in Zhahe (east of Suojia) also has reported seeing an old white-haired man with a long beard riding a musk deer. At least these stories add to the uniqueness of this trip, and indeed to the special character of the entire region!
Over a breakfast of tsampa and fresh yogurt, Shiamba Chumpel’s mother tells me her story. I quote here from my field notes (taken on 13 July 1998), only slightly modified here for the sake of clarity:
“I was born in Doucai. I’m now 78 years old. When I was around 2 or 3 years old, my father came here with me to hunt wildlife because our family was so poor. We weren’t nomads but hunters. I don’t remember exactly where we lived, but we joined a group of 20 people and we lived and hunted together. We didn’t have yak hair tents because we didn’t keep any yak or sheep as livestock. Instead, we lived in leather houses made from wild yak skins. The people in these mountains, those that we joined, they’re from the Yora tribe. They’re not Buddhist like the others in the east. I remember my father shooting wild yak right from the door of our house. Wild yak were everywhere, we never had to go far to shoot them, and there were many other wild animals, too. We used wild yak skulls to hold down the corners of our house since we didn’t have any wooden stakes. No one had metal knives and there were very few sewing needles, maybe only one in the group. Some stones were used as knives. People in the group almost never cried, so if someone did cry it was because his or her mother had died, or because a needle broke. Since my father was from the east he knew how to make things and he was the group’s technician. After Liberation my father and I moved back east, to Gonsar Monastery, in the middle or late 1950s. When we left everybody was crying, but not because we would never see each other again. They cried because they still couldn’t make knives by themselves – my father had made all our knives for over three decades. Many years later I moved back to this same place, this time with my own family. That was when Suojia was established, around 1973. We now live in the fourth brigade (xiaodui), in Muqu village (dadui), the last one that was established. Nobody wanted to move here because it’s much too cold, but we didn’t have any choice. Now this is my home again.”
Now, a quarter century after Shiamba Chumpel’s mother returned to Muqu in the early 1970s, and three-quarters of a century after her first arrival here, she still lives close to the land. Every day, it is her job to collect water, while her daughter-in-law and her granddaughters milk the yak and do many other herding chores. Her grandsons herd the yak, and her son oversees all of the heavier chores around the tent. Even now, wild yak horns are still used as milk pails, Tibetan antelope horns are sometimes used to soften leather, and Tibetan gazelle horns are regularly used to pull yak hair, instead of cutting the hair, so that it can be used to make rope. However, despite the similarities of yesterday and today, livelihoods and, perhaps more fundamentally, the local ecology are clearly changing. The stream that used to run right next to Shiamba Chumpel’s tent dried up around eight or nine years ago, and the spring finally dried up three years ago. The grandmother now has to walk up a steep hillside to another, smaller spring to collect water for the family. Similar changes have occurred around Lobsang Nyima’s home as well: a spring and large water hole where his livestock used to drink water have dried up very recently, and one local valley which reportedly used to support up to 2,000 head of livestock now can support only 500 head because of the increasing abundance of poisonous weeds. Clearly, through changing hydrological regimes, possibly compounded by heavy grazing pressures, the whole land is changing,[26] a land that was once covered, as Zhaduo explains, “by grass so tall that you couldn’t see the dips and hollows or the water holes of the land, a land with such abundant plant life, especially in the hills, that a lot of dead plant matter remained and accumulated each year.” Today, however, changes in the local plant species composition and local vegetation structure, and also the increasing desertification near the Dri River, are everyday topics of conversation, a genuine worry for virtually all the pastoralists of Drito (Suojia).
Shiamba Chumpel joins us as we ride northward to the Yangtze River in mid-morning, increasing our ranks to five. He points high above to a Blue sheep, he indicates where he saw a snow leopard up close last winter, less than 10 m away, he tells us when the stream bed we are riding along last held water, he shows us and talks about different plant species. About the large mammals found in these mountains, he says that “the snow leopard are too abundant, they kill around 20 sheep or yak each year. There are maybe 11 or 12 in the next valley alone, and there are many mountain valleys in the area.” We also watch pika on the hillside. When I ask for more detail on whether or not pika eat roots (as many pastoralists report), Zhaduo elaborates that in fact “pika eat only the freshest part of the plant, above the ground but as near as possible to the earth.” Shiamba Chumpel further enumerates the abundant wildlife in the mountains and valleys near his home: there are many Tibetan sand foxes, some musk deer, a few wild yak that migrate here each year from a larger population that lives across the Yangtze, numerous blue sheep, several gray wolf families, a black bear family, and also several species wild cat.
When we reach the Yangtze several hours later, we spot three white-lipped deer and a Tibetan wild ass. After lunch, we examine an old man-made structure, a circle of rocks with a pile of rocks in the middle. It’s an old site of some spiritual significance, but no one knows the exact origin, neither who built this site nor when it may have been built. As we ride along the river westward, we encounter a herd of five Tibetan wild ass that, curious, first examine us for a while before moving to a safer distance. Later, as our group of five spreads out in the valley, now heading southward, I find myself alone when the same Tibetan wild ass now approach me to within 200 m – and what a delight it is to gallop alongside these magnificent and inquisitive animals for about a minute before they decide to turn away and thunder off further to the west.
In the evening light Shiamba Chumpel finally bids us farewell as he rides back to his family while we continue south for another two hours, back to Lobsang Nyima’s home. Zhaduo, Wenzha and I talk about the future of the pastoral livelihood and the wildlife of Suojia, and of how we might be able to improve the living conditions of people here, as well as of how to preserve the natural heritage of this wonderful place. It is Wenzha, the current township leader, who first suggests that we might establish three protected areas[27] within the framework of a larger regional land use plan: one area for snow leopard in the mountains behind Shiamba Chumpel’s home, one for a growing resident population of Tibetan antelope in the plains west of Suojia town, and another one for black-necked crane in a wetland south of Suojia town next to a local sacred mountain. I gladly accept the challenge of working with them in these exciting and worthwhile endeavors.
At Lobsang Nyima’s home we find our jeep still effectively dead, so we spend one last night in a tent. In the morning, we eat fresh mutton for breakfast (instead the routine tsampa and yogurt) because a wolf killed a sheep in the night, but only carried away the sheep’s head. It probably was one of the wolves from the family with 6 cubs that lives nearby. In mid-morning, a neighbor finally shows up in his truck and attempts to fix our Beijing Jeep. He and his three friends work for several hours but don’t have the necessary spare parts. So at noon we finally tie the jeep behind the truck and are towed toward Suojia. With only a seven-hour ordeal to cross the Muqu river, we reach Suojia town at around 11 o’clock in the evening. Although I’m tired and want to find a bed, instead I must wait for a meal to be prepared. This time, however, although I had eaten almost everything offered to me to date, the three sheep heads, with eyes glaring at me, just prove to be a bit too much… I admit that I’m still but a visitor in this place and ask for some good and plain boiled mutton!
Even here in Suojia town the jeep can’t be fixed. We discuss riding to the Golmud-Lhasa Highway, but this is deemed too far and too difficult. A shorter route is possible in winter, but now the Yangtze is much too high. So all we can do is wait for two more days and join a group of township people, around 100 people, who are going to attend the annual horse race festival in Yushu. This is their first year to attend the festivities, and so they practice their dances each day to the rhythm of large drums, they sing traditional songs, and they invariably play basketball in the afternoon. The only downside in all this is that my advisor will now arrive in Xining in less than three days’ time, and I’m still over 1,200 km away!
During these two days of waiting I walk in the hills, sit by the river, and on one very special occasion, listen at length as Zhaduo interviews a knowledgeable old man who’s story is so fascinating and insightful that our resolve to learn as much as possible from the older generation is greatly strengthened. The old 72-year-old man reminisces:
“Before Liberation the wildlife was very abundant, but a lot was killed in those early years. However a lot of wildlife came back with government protection, or at least until they were reduced greatly by the 1985 snowstorm. Snows never used to be as heavy as in recent years, yet at the same time the land is drying up. The wildlife has never rebounded since 1985. During that winter, Tibetan antelope were literally at my tent door trying to come in. I had to scare them away so that I could come out of my tent. In the past, there were annual Tibetan antelope migrations. In March each year, females would disappear to their birthing grounds. I don’t know where their birthing takes place, but I’ve heard of a lake where antelope milk flows so abundantly that a lot falls to the ground and is lapped up by migratory birds who’s droppings the antelope like to eat – it’s a good connection, a symbiotic relationship. The hills right around Suojia and all the plains in this area also used to be black, covered everywhere with wild yak, but that’s no more. However there is one place that hasn’t changed too much, an area near Spirit Mountain where black-necked crane, snow leopard and other animals still live. That place at least hasn’t changed for as long as I can remember.”
The 72-year-old man also speaks on many other topics, for at least two hours. Zhaduo and I both agree that we must act soon to record their knowledge because so much valuable insight risks disappearing forever.
Zhaduo and the others later elaborate on the local wildlife. In 1990, the nearby plains only had around 20 Tibetan antelope, but now there are at least 100 animals in the local, resident population. Slowly they are returning after the devastating effect of snowstorm in 1985. Wenzha also attributes their increase to the poaching further to the northwest, in the Kekexili, and he feels that local Tibetan antelope here are probably “refugees” from the Kekexili district. One local herder also recalls seeing 100,000s of Tibetan antelope at their birthing grounds in 1975, somewhere between the Yangtze and Dangqu rivers. The black-necked cranes reported near Suojia town are said to breed around a small lake behind the local holy mountain. They are also said to be too numerous to count, and that the grass (reeds) in the wetlands around the lake is one meter high. One of the reasons this wetland area has remained unchanged over the last several decades is the spiritual significance of the adjacent mountain. On one hike I counted between 45 and 50 blue sheep on the local sacred mountain, and they were not even 300 m from a herd of domestic yak. Wolves, foxes, bears, and even snow leopard are still reported to be relatively abundant here as well because of the respect the local pastoralists hold for the mountain. They also are very protective of it and instantly turn away any would-be hunters, a far cry from their own hunting origins of not even half a century ago. Some herders who have killed animals on the mountain have fallen ill in recent years, and it is believed that only appropriate offerings made to the “mountain gods” can lead to their full recovery. Local rules that promote environmental protection have thus evolved in this and in many other areas of the Tibetan plateau.[28]
Other elements of the human landscape in Suojia are also changing. Fences are being raised rapidly throughout the province, and fencing is moving westward each year in Suojia. Winter homes and livestock shelters, harmless in themselves but indicative of changing land use patterns, are also being built. However, attempts to introduce an intensive ranching system in this fragile environment are wrought with challenges and even serious risks.[29] The local government’s development goals, as well as those of the local Upper Yangtze Organization, are clearly worthwhile, but a lot of hard work lies ahead to integrate them with the ecological realities of the Tibetan plateau. Resource protection and conservation simply cannot be ignored. Though a daunting challenge, it is a privilege for me to be asked to participate with the people of Suojia and Zhiduo to help find long-term solutions to integrate conservation and development in this very special ecosystem of the world. Perhaps a model will even emerge that can be replicated elsewhere on the Tibetan plateau to improve living conditions and promote conservation more widely, for the long-term benefit of future generations of local pastoralists as well as the benefit of the entire nation.
[1] I have returned to Suojia twice since that time (in March and October 1999), and Dr. M. Torrance, a Plateau Perspectives colleague, also has worked closely with the UYO leaders since October 1999.
[2] This section is a reconstruction of tribal life in the Suojia area in the early 1900s, based on interviews with two old people and many discussions with several of the leaders of the Upper Yangtze Organization. Also see Namkhai Norbu’s (1997) general account of the Tibetan nomad regions based on observations made in 1951, Dorje Zödba’s account (in Combe 1989) of Tibetan nomad life in the Zhiduo area based on his travels undertaken in the early 1900s, and a more modern account by Aukatsang (1994); Appendix VI.
[3] Shiamba is a fictional character. His story is a composite of several oral histories gathered in July 1998.
[4] The Yala were a small, poor tribe of hunters who lived in the vicinity of present-day Suojia township.
[5] Dri is the local name of the Yangtze River. Drito (= Upper Dri River) has been transliterated in Chinese as Zhiduo, the name of the present-day county.
[6] This story was recounted while staying in a nomad tent near the base of the rugged Yekjengo Mountains.
[7] Drolma is a sweet root. Now it is sometimes mixed with tsampa, or roasted barley flour, for a treat.
[8] The following narrative is an account of my 20-day trip to Suojia in July 1998.
[9] See Miller (1978), Guyette (1996), Jatulan and Davis (1997), Wu N. (1997), Stevens (1997), Department for International Development Cooperation (1998).
[10] Suojia Township (xiang) comprises around three-quarters of Zhiduo County’s total land area, mostly in the Kekexili region. The populated area area is divided into 4 ‘villages’ (dadui) and 16 ‘teams’ (xiaodui).
[11] Since this trip in July 1998, an environment bureau with 16 field staff has been established, four nature reserves have been created, a tent-school has opened in Yaqu village, and plans for a ‘demonstration area’ in Muqu village are now being finalized (including a tent-school that will open in the summer of 2000).
[12] The Chinese Army, known as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), reached Yushu in the late 1950s. Monasteries traditionally were the only source of formal education.
[13] Gilong and Hashil are two large Tibetan tribes that inhabit present-day Yushu.
[14] One of the projects of the Upper Yangtze Organization (see below) is to document such local history from a local, Tibetan perspective.
[15] See Shi (1997). A movie was also made in 1995 about Suonan Dorje’s fight to protect the Kekexili region in western Zhiduo. (Also see Appendix VII).
[16] The full name is Changjiangyuantou Shengtai Jingji Cujinghui, which literally translates to “Yangtze River Headwaters Ecology Economy Organization.”
[17] The four villages (dadui) of Suojia are: Muqu, Yaqu, Dangqu, and Jiongqu villages.
[18] This Buddha statue is said to be the tallest in the world, even taller than the 23 m high statue in the Tashilhumpo Monastery in Shigatse, Tibet.
[19] The official opening ceremony of the new Buddha statue is scheduled for August 2000.
[20] King Gesar is a very important figure in Tibetan history. He is said to have defeated many evil spirits and unified numerous local tribes. Many places in Zhiduo are known in relation to Gesar (Norbu 1997).
[21] In October 1999, we never even reached Suojia because of a heavy snowstorm! We were stranded for six days, but fortunately found warmth and food with the ‘Second leader’ of Yaqu village. And Wenzha was even less fortunate in December 1997 when he had to dig his jeep out of snowdrifts almost the whole way, taking nearly four weeks to make the journey!
[22] Schaller (1998) notes a similar history for many pastoralists in the southern part of the Chang Tang.
[23] Suojia is both the name of the entire administrative unit known as the township (xiang), and also of the small town (pop. between 120-150 people) built as an administrative center for the vast township.
[24] These are the mountains known as Yekjengo, or Wild Yak White Stone Mountains.
[25] Shiamba Chumpel is the ‘First leader’ of Muqu village.
[26] Miller and Schaller (1997) note that “recent research indicates a general climatic trend of desiccation and warming in Central Asia [and that some] other researchers have noted changes in vegetation in Tibet due to desiccation, especially the transformation of alpine, Cyperaceae mat vegetation to alpine steppe.”
[27] These three protected areas were formally established at the township-level in Spring 1999. A fourth area targeting Tibetan wild ass was also created. Simultaneously, the Suojia Environment Bureau was founded with 16 “team” (xiaodui) leaders working as core field staff.
[28] Also see the section “On traditional environmental law” in Appendix I.
[29] Also see Attwood et al. (1988), Galaty and Johnson (1990), Longworth and Williamson (1993), and Humphrey and Sneath (1996).