Chinese Modernization Comes to an Isolated People

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/25/world/asia/chinese-modernization-comes-to-an-isolated-people.html

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DULONG, China — The narrow valley is one of the most remote and pristine in China. Monkeys, Asian black bears and the rare goatlike takin roam through rain-soaked forests above a river the color of jade. In spring, hillsides are splashed with pink rhododendron blossoms. Until two years ago, snowfall on a mountain pass blocked vehicle access for many months each year.­

Now, in this sliver of land on the eastern rim of the Himalayas, the government is building new roads, expanding telecommunications and encouraging commercial ventures to alleviate poverty. Li Yingchun, who used to hike five days over a snowcapped mountain range from a village here to attend a boarding school, said a new paved road that runs through a seven-kilometer tunnel slicing into the mountains had made life easier.

But he worries about the impact on both the environment and society from the explosion of activity. Already, a state-owned enterprise has built at least two hydropower stations along the Dulong River. Hotels are springing up.

“Where there is a road, there are cars,” said Mr. Li, 29, an ecologist who earned a master’s degree at a provincial university. “There is too much human activity.”

Opened in 2014, the serpentine road has sheer drops, dizzying turns and rubble from rockslides. It has also cut travel time to the county seat — now a mere three hours rather than a full day’s rough drive along a 15-year-old dirt road, which was impassable in winter.

The changes that have transformed so many parts of China are unfolding at warp speed in the Dulong River Valley. It is home to almost all of the country’s 7,000 ethnic Dulong, or Drung, one of the smallest of the 56 official national ethnic groups. The lifeline of this northwest corner of Yunnan Province is the Dulong River, which begins on the Tibetan plateau and flows through this valley into Myanmar, where it merges into the Irrawaddy. In Yunnan, the river runs 90 kilometers, or 56 miles.

The Gaoligong mountain range has kept the Dulong valley secluded, separating it from the wider valley of the Nu River, where a mosaic of ethnic groups live.

The ramparts of the Gaoligong challenged World War II pilots who flew over the Hump, transporting military goods from Indian bases used by the United States and its allies to Chinese forces battling the Japanese. Planes crashed in the region — the remnants of one are in a museum to the south.

Those peaks no longer cut off this valley, where the Dulong have lived for centuries in hillside villages. It is not just the new road and tunnel that now connect residents here to the outside world. China Mobile has set up 4G cellular data service across much of the valley, and is not shy about advertising this on billboards. One sign on the approach from the mountains to the main administrative village, Kongdang, says, “Take a photo of the beautiful scenery, transmit it to the world.”

By the words are images of the jade river and of a local woman with intricate indigo tattoos on her face, once a common sight here.

The buildings in Kongdang are concrete blocks, and many were built or renovated a few years ago. They are painted orange and have a silhouette of a horned cow’s head, a Dulong totem. A cow statue sits at the town entrance.

“The changes have been tremendous,” said Yang Yi, an ethnic Han man living in the Nu Valley who has been driving a passenger minivan between the two valleys for a decade.

“Transportation, clothes, daily life — it has all been transformed,” he said. “If you came here a decade ago, you would recognize the Dulong from their colorful clothes. Around three to five years ago, they began wearing modern clothes.”

Even President Xi Jinping noted the changes. In January 2015, Mr. Xi met with seven representatives of the Dulong in Kunming, the provincial capital, and spoke of “getting rid of poverty” and “building a moderately well-off society,” according to an official news report.

The valley is still quiet, except for occasional bursts of construction. One paved road runs north from Dulong Town toward the Tibetan border, ending near Mr. Li’s hometown. Another goes to the border with Myanmar and no farther. In the last village is a red church; some Dulong are Christians, though most are animists.

There is no frontier checkpoint. Along a dirt trail into Myanmar, the border is demarcated by nothing more than a small stone.

With no paved roads leading out of the nearby villages in Myanmar’s Kachin State, ethnic Dulong there walk into this valley to sell herbs and vegetables.

It is tourism that provincial and county officials want to sell to the outside world. Word of the valley’s beauty is trickling out, and international agencies have recognized the Gaoligong Mountains National Nature Reserve as a crucial biosphere. The new road has made visiting easier, even if the nearest airport is a long day’s drive away.

One recent afternoon, three ethnic Han backpackers from central China sat in the last village by the Myanmar border. People from outside the valley, many from other Yunnan towns, have come to work in restaurants and other service businesses that are counting on a tourist boom.

In the village of Pukawang, just south of the government town, a group of tourists from Shanghai drove up to a boutique riverside hotel, Green Cottage, opened in October by a Beijing entrepreneur — a poverty alleviation project supported by local officials.

On a slope behind the hotel is the old village. The few remaining residents there sit in wooden homes with fire pits, sometimes drinking homemade corn whiskey.

The hotel occupies half the new village. The village homes and hotel villas were all designed and built together around 2012.

Officials gave families in Pukawang two new homes, one to live in and one to rent to the hotel company for use as guest villas. To each family, the hotel pays 5,000 renminbi per year, under $800. The hotel charges guests $25 to $75 per night for each of the 13 villas.

“Living here is much better than where we were before,” Kong Mingqing, 21, said as he stood by the porch of his new family home behind the hotel.

Few ethnic Dulong have lived outside the valley, but Mr. Kong is an exception. He left to study vehicle maintenance in Hunan Province, he said, but returned in 2013 because of financial problems.

“When I came back, it had already been transformed,” he said. “I don’t think too much about the changes coming. Of course, there will be changes.”

In Pukawang, the hotel has tried to employ villagers — part of the official plan to help raise local incomes — but has found that hard to do, said a manager, Yang Yubiao, an ethnic Bai from the Dali area.

“The villagers said they were tired of the work,” he said. “They left after two to three days.”

Three of the hotel’s nine employees are ethnic Dulong from elsewhere in the valley, and the rest are outsiders, Mr. Yang said.

“Has the poverty alleviation plan succeeded?” he asked. “We’ve raised the awareness of the Dulong people here — how to communicate with outsiders, how to make money, how to live a better life.”

But Mr. Yang also said he had heard that a couple of women in Pukawang had committed suicide a few years ago by drinking pesticide. He has a theory: “This was a primitive society,” he said. “Now the leap is happening too fast. Some of them cannot adapt.”