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Tourism helps Lhoba tribe preserve unique culture
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Wearing beaded necklaces and traditional wool costumes, members of the Lhoba people dance around the yin-yang tree, a real-life version of the Tree of Souls from the movie “Avatar.”
Unlike the Na’Vis, the Lhoba people, with a total population of more than 3,100, are performing a traditional sword dance to entertain visitors at the forest-concealed area in the southeast of the Tibet Autonomous Region.
“The costume has been listed as the nation’s intangible cultural heritage,” said Dawa Chodron, a 31-year-old local tour guide who has returned to her hometown after graduating from a high school in a second-tier city in southwest China.
The sword dance is a Lhoba tradition celebrating harvest, hunting or the practice of becoming sworn brothers, according to Chodron. “Visitors from home and abroad are also attracted by our ancestral customs and religious practices,” she said.
The Lhoba, one of China’s smallest ethnic minorities in terms of population, live mainly in Mainling County of Tibet.
Located near the Brahmaputra River, Chodron’s hometown of Qionglin Village is the largest inhabitation for the ethnic group.
Chodron’s ancestors were the first cultivators in the Himalaya mountains, but they led a primitive life even as late as 1950.
The Lhoba have their own spoken language, but no written form. They once kept records by carving notches in wood or tying knots, and most speak Tibetan.
To avoid attacks by bigger clans, the Lhoba lived a sequestered life of hunting and planting highland barley and buckwheat. They also cut trees, processed timber and collected herbal medicines to trade for food occasionally.
Tourists have been coming to the Lhoba’s secret world since the 1990s, and completion of Mainling Airport in 2005 has freed visitors from troubled transport. To protect the environment, Mainling County receives at most 2,000 visitors per day, and visitors are not allowed to drive vehicles in the villages, leaving them at the tourist center instead.
A two-story white building with log cabins beside it is the home of villager Penba. As basic as it looks from the outside, the well-decorated rooms are full of modern household devices, including a television, washing machine and refrigerator.
Though the natural conditions are unfavorable, the Lhoba people have managed to glimpse the outside world through the magic of Weibo and WeChat, China’s most popular messaging and social networking platforms.
“Now we are no longer labeled barbarians, as eco-tourism has transformed hunters and loggers into cultural entertainers,” said the 50-year-old Penba.
All 176 villagers in Qionglin Village are covered by the national medical care system. For serious illnesses, reimbursements can reach as high as 80,000 yuan (US$13,064).
Gesang, chief of the county publicity office and the first Lhoba university graduate, believes that tourism has aroused the Lhoba people’s awareness of passing on their culture and preserving the ecological environment. “It’s our responsibility to carry on the Lhoba civilization as we try to keep pace with the times,” he said.
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