Adventure Stories > Feature Articles > Siberia in China

SIBERIA IN CHINA

The article below, researched and written by Victor Paul Borg, was originally published in Geographical Magazine, the magazine of the British Royal Geographic Society, one of the oldest and most respected learned organisations in the area of geography in the world.

At Hemu, one of the remotest villages on earth, a spike of marriages has been registered in the past two years. These unions were clinched between outsiders and native Tuwa - a tiny ethnic group that has until recently been cut off from the rest of the world - but it’s not the Tuwa themselves who have attracted the outsiders’ infatuation. Rather, the attraction is the chance to secure property rights in Hemu itself, a picturesque village that’s set to become a hot tourist destination after it was encompassed in Kanas National Park, a sprawling park recently carved out at western China’s northernmost tip.

“As soon as they heard that the area would open for tourism, outside developers moved in and found local girlfriends or boyfriends, or married locals, in order to gain legitimacy to live and do business in Hemu,” told me Hongjiang Chen, the director of Aletai Tourism Administration. “Fifty-seven families of outsiders moved in the past year and a half, building tourist lodgings amounting to 1103 new beds.”

That’s a large influx for a village of 700 native Tuwa, and when I visited Hemu I saw several new lodgings nearing completion. Owners of the guesthouse-style rooms, constructed in the rustic style to blend in, were counting the days to riches. For although tourism in Hemu still amounts to a trickle, growth is a matter of time given the beguiling qualities of the village and larger setting.

The village is set alongside the fast-flowing Hemu River in a cusp among mountains stitched with birch and pine trees. The vistas are quaint and pastoral, and Tuwa homes are charmingly constructed of unpeeled and unpolished logs, with the seams between logs sealed with mud and moss, and pitched roofs made of uneven roughly-sawed planks. Hemu is the kind of place where you can sit contentedly and soak up the atmosphere: herders on horseback ambling through the dusty streets, cows tearing out grass at the road verges, kites wheeling in the air, and men sitting outdoors and whiling the time in friendly banter.

Equally alluring is the larger setting, where the Altay Mountains bring Siberia to the northernmost tip of China’s Xinjiang province. The Altay Mountains come down from Russia, through Mongolia and Kazakhstan, and then peter out at Kanas. These rugged ranges are eclectic in scenery and culture: taiga forests dominated by birch and fir; grasslands peppered with flowers; distinctly Eurasian birds, including tits, thrushes, warblers, woodpeckers, owls, and a delightful variety of colorful ducks; the bleak glacier of Friendship Peak, highest mountain in the region at 4,374-meter, straddling four countries; fast-flowing rivers with greenish translucent water; nomadic Mongol and Kazakh herders encamped in yurts; and of course the local Tuwa inhabitants. Now all of this is enshrined in the newly-designated Kanas National Park, the world’s largest national park at 10,030 square kilometres – that’s an area larger than Cyprus.

In terms of management, Kanas is divided into three zones. Humans are barred from the 1,700-square-kilometre “core zone”, and limited human activity such as research or exploratory tourism is allowed in the 7,830-square-kilometre “experimental zone”. General tourism is permitted in the area that’s already disturbed, the 500-square-kilometre “buffer zone” where Tuwa live, herders are densest, and tourism made inroads before the park was designated.  

“By limiting tourism to the buffer zone, we will reduce or eliminate the pressure on the core wilderness,” explained Hongjiang, the Kazakh-Chinese tourism director who’s responsible for overseeing the management plan. “Moreover, according to the carrying capacity study, the buffer zone can support 1 million tourists annually without cumulative environmental degradation. In 2007 we got 657,000 tourists, so there is still room for expansion.” 

Capping visitors at 1 million is an ambitious goal, and it’s a challenge in China, with its huge population, to restrict tourist numbers without enforcing elitist policies. Yet Chinese tourism is malleably easy to contain. Chinese employees don’t have a flexible allocation of annual leave, only fixed public holidays, longest of which are the cluster of days off at New Year and May’s Labour Week. This situation limits travel to a few days each time, something that in turn forces holiday-makers to join speedily organized tours. Hence the tourists are conducive to shepherding, and the management plan of Kanas is tailored to these conditions by working out a mechanism that conveys large volumes of visitors with the least-possible impact. 

This is already being done. Initially, after area opened for tourism in 1998, hotels sprouted up near Kanas Lake’s shore – a slender lake, 24km long by 2km wide, which emerged as the focal attraction. Then three years ago the government spent £500 million to relocate the hotels (which have 7000 beds) 30km south to a place called Jiadengyu where the environmental impact could be contained in a spot away from the pristine lake. Now tourists can only drive in their private vehicles or tour buses as far as Jiadengyu – where sewage is treated and rubbish is separated – and any further they have to travel on the 130 mini-buses that run on clean fuel and shuttle along the single road in the park. The road winds to Kanas Lake, where there is the largest Tuwa village (called “Tuwa”), and the Fish Viewing Pavillion – a 2,200-metre-high peak above the lake – and then on to Hai Baba, another Tuwa village. (Hemu has a different approach road that begins from a point south of Jiadengyu.)

Most Chinese are content with this arrangement, hopping from one viewpoint to the next, as most don’t like to walk. Most don’t even get off the road. I only met a handful of other walkers along the 5km specially-built boardwalk that skirts the shore of Kanas Lake, and I didn’t encounter any other walkers on the slate-built 3,000-plus steps to Fish Viewing Pavilion (I walked instead of taking the road that approaches from the other side of the slope). For trekkers this is a boon, as it’s possible to find lonesome landscapes just a few kilometres off the road. The downside, however, is the pressure to build more roads so that bus-bound tourists can see more of the park’s landscapes, and on the lake itself tour boats take people for a spin. One idea being mooted is a new road between Hemu and Kanas Lake, something that would degrade the ecological integrity of what’s at present a high pristine wilderness.

That 35km route, from Kanas Lake to Hemu, is an old horse path that connects the two largest Tuwa villages, and now it’s used by adventurous tourists who make the run on horseback or foot. We did that trek, starting from Kanas Lake and winding up the mountains, first through monumental pine forests, then windswept grasslands and high mountain peaks. The highlight of the route is a lake of bluish-dark and opaque water called Black Lake. The lake nestles at the bottom of a wide valley, surrounded by slopes smothered with golden flowers and, higher up, a girdle of darkish summits patched with ribbons of snow. Herds of semi-wild horses were browsing among the grass or galloping across the grassland. Another old Tuwa route that trekkers can do stretches from Hemu to Jiadengyu, also 35km long.

Instead of staying in Jiadengyu, adventurers can lodge in Tuwa homes – whether in Tuwa, Hemu or Hai Baba villages – and be closer to some of the best landscapes. It’s what we did, and one afternoon, starting out from our base in Tuwa village, we walked 5km west to the grassland called Dongxi Nieke, where jin lian flowers fragrance the air and turn the ground bright orange. At the edge of the grassland sit a cluster of Tuwa log farmhouses, partially abandoned as a result of Kanas administration’s policy of moving Tuwa currently scattered in the mountains to the central Tuwa village. Once again, the point of relocation is containment of the environmental impact. 

“We are already seeing some positive results thanks to the management we carried out in the past five years,” told me Hongjiang. “Swans have now returned to Kanas Lake and other rare animals have also returned to the buffer zone – these include brown bears, snow leopards, snow owls, red deer, and pheasants. Overall, however, key species are still decreasing due to general habitat degradation.” 

Environmental degradation is largely driven by herders, Tuwa as well as nomadic Kazakhs and Mongols who take their herds to pastures inside Kanas in the summers. These pastoralists in their yurt encampments make an exotic sight, and it’s easy to fall into romanticisms about their harmonious way of life. But look closer, and you’ll see that the grasslands where their animals graze have been reduced to tufted lawns and muddy puddles, while untouched grasslands have hip-high grasses profuse with flowers and insects and birds, especially a variety of meadow pipits. The herders also cut trees for firewood, and leave behind heaps of rubbish. 

“Five years ago, there were 5,000 herders and 300,000 animals in the park,” elaborated Hongjiang. “Now we are developing pastures near the herders’ winter settlements, which are outside the park. We are doing this by siphoning water to nurture grasslands amounting to 150,000 square kilometres – this is feasible as the rivers are abundant in water – and as a result the herders in Kanas have been decreasing by 3-5% yearly over the past five years. Then, as the herders move out, we reconstruct the grasslands and forests they vacate – every year, we treat 8,000-10,000 square metres of grasslands, and plant up to 50,000 trees."

Under the rolling plan, only native Tuwa inhabitants would be left in the park, and they’ll give up herding for tourism. They are permitted to build extensions to their homes to take in lodgers, to open restaurants and shops, and to take tourists horse-riding. “Already,” Hongjiang said, “we employ 150 Tuwa as drivers, cleaners, guards, and so on. Another 150 are now licensed to take tourists horse-riding, and 57 households are licensed to take in overnight lodgers. Inhabitants that are unemployable, such as the old, receive a pension.”

Other special arrangements are planned for Hemu as the situation there is different – it’s got its own access road and it’s still largely off the circuit of most tour operators. "Soon we will start working on the local plan for Hemu,” told me Zhang Yongshu, an official who works in Hemu. “Roads will be paved, and overhead wiring will be removed and run underground. We want the exteriors of all buildings here to look rustically traditional, but then the interiors can be comfortable and modern hotel rooms. The key is to retain the traditional ambience here, and in the future cars would not be allowed to drive into the village – visitors would have to park outside, and then walk into the village.”

Zhang bemoans the unscrupulous outsiders who exploited the Tuwa in familial arrangements to gain legitimacy to do businesses in Hemu, and so does Hongjiang. “Before the new developments,” Hongjiang told me, “houses were spaced out at 30-50 metres for openness and a precaution against fire. Now the former ambience and openness of the village has been ruined, but not for long: local people will not be touched, but new structures built by the outsiders will be knocked down.”

The plan is to allow the hotels that outsiders built to be redeveloped 2km outside the village in an arrangement that’s similar to what has been done in Jiadengyu. Although this legitimizes the foothold that the outsiders have gained, it’s an inferior arrangement to staying in the village itself. That’s because tourists would naturally prefer to lodge in an atmosphere of authenticity that the village offers rather than guesthouses run by non-Tuwa. In that sense, the outsiders might be counting their riches prematurely, and their hasty marriages or relationships with native Tuwa might turn out to be fraught with complications. 

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The Tuwa People

The Tuwa people, limited to the area within Kanas National Park, are one of the world’s smallest ethnic minorities, numbering just 1,500 individuals. Although there is some debate about their origins, the dominant theory is that their ancestors migrated south to the southern fringes of Siberia about 500 years ago (they could have come from the area of today’s Tuwa republic in Russia’s Siberia). Their ethnic body characteristics are superficially different than those of other peoples who inhabit the region – Kazakhs, Han, Mongols, and Caucasians. They’re nominally Muslims, and their faith is expressed outwardly only in simple décor such as prints of Mecca found in private homes (there are no mosques, no Muslim celebrations – the only temple in Kanas is a Buddhist temple in the Mongol style, and all the festivals are Mongol festivals). The Tuwa’s most distinctive ethnic trait is a unique ‘Tuwa’ language that is related to Kazakh. 

“Before this place opened for tourism in 1998, these people were completely isolated,” told me Zhang Yongshu, a government official in Hemu. “No one had a TV in 1998, now virtually everyone has a TV. So these people are developing and learning fast.”

One result is that the Tuwa language is withering. Since the language never developed a written form, it’s not taught at school – as are Mandarin, Kazakh, and Mongol. “We only speak Tuwa at home,” told me Yang Xue Yi, owner of a guesthouse in Hemu. “And increasingly the children speak a mixture of Mandarin and Tuwa.”

One thing that hasn’t changed is the diet – heavy in meat and cheese, perhaps accounting for their chubbiness – and the penchant for guzzling the potent vernacular whiskey distilled from sheep’s milk. 

The most visible change is a newfound lust for money. Overcharging tourists is the norm – the few restaurants in Hemu charge tourists 60-80 percent more than locals pay. And cheating is widespread: many times we would agree to a service and a price, such as horse-riding, and then we would get less of what we agreed but still expected to pay the same money.

“As soon as that the Tuwa started seeing tourists with money, they also wanted to get rich,” told me Shun Rong Hua, an official with Altay district’s Information Office. “We sit down with them, and tell them that tourism is a long-term prospect, and that satisfaction and value for money would ensure more tourists will come. But then they leave the room and think, ‘How can we make some money today?’ It will take time for this mentality to change.”

Materially, the Tuwa never had it so good – the elders now get a handout of £50 monthly (for the same amount, millions in China work seven days a week). Many Tuwa are now also employed by the national park administration. But all I heard were complaints. “The government places more and more restrictions on what we can do all the time, so how are we supposed to make money?” one guesthouse owner told us. “Now the government only allows us to have hotel signs etched in wooden planks, as in the old way, but I want to put a neon sign to attract more business. Why does the government have to dictate what sign I put up?”  

Article © Victor Paul Borg