Qiunatong | China’s Fragile Paradise

IN AND AROUND THE MOUNTAINS and gorges that surround Bingzhongluo, a town in the UNESCO Three Parallel Rivers Protected Areas in western China’s Yunnan province, a fog has set in. The fields outside town are fallow, with sporadic sections of yellow rapeseed that contrast brilliantly with the winter greys and browns around us. It’s the eve of Chinese New Year, and as we hike down into the valley, preparations for a week of celebrations are underway. Chickens are bled, pigs butchered, and farmers hang red and gold signs on their doors, offering blessings for the coming year.

Above us, snow-capped mountaintops break through the fog. Below, the Nu River, its waters made turquoise from silt flowing down from the Himalayas, roars. In Chinese, the name means ‘angry,’ after the river’s spring surge. It’s a name well earned.

My travel companion, photographer James Wasserman, and I are on our way to Qiunatong, a village 13 kilometres upriver. Qiunatong is home to some 200 people from the Nu ethnic group, almost all of whom are Catholic. It’s the last stop before Tibet and the starting point of our week-long journey in the Nu River Valley—one of China’s last frontiers.

Flowing from the Tibetan highlands through western Yunnan, the Nu River cuts between two mountain ranges before rushing through Burma into the Andaman Sea. It’s home to a third of the country’s ethnic groups, and it was here that Christian missionaries from Burma first entered China. Today, communities of ethnic Nu, Tibetans and Lisu remain passionately Catholic. The Nu River Valley features unrivalled scenery and a diverse ecosystem of 7,000 species of plants and 80 rare or endangered animals and fish.

It’s also one of only two major rivers in China yet to be dammed. But that may not last.

In 2003, power companies proposed building 13 dams along the Nu, a project that would produce more electricity than the Three Gorges Dam. The move brought together China’s fledgling environmental movement, which launched a vocal campaign to keep the Nu free-flowing. National and international press picked up the story, and in 2004, Premier Wen Jiabao ordered a halt to the project and a full environmental assessment, which was never released to the public. Because the Nu is an international river—known outside China as the Salween—development plans fell under state secrecy law.

The project was scaled down from 13 dams to four, and preliminary work went ahead despite Wen’s edict. Today, the construction of a small dam on a tributary of the Nu is nearly complete. Last May, Premier Wen again stopped the project until a full environmental assessment is completed. But observers say that when the 67-year-old premier steps down in 2012, full-scale construction will resume.

We’d arrived in Bingzhongluo after a 24-hour journey from Kunming, Yunnan’s capital. We rode a packed night bus that smelled of feet and farts and cigarette smoke, ferrying young people returning home for the holidays, followed by eight hours in a van along a winding road carved into the wall of a gorge. We pulled into town on a warm, sunny afternoon and plotted our journey while enjoying the crisp mountain air.

This morning, however, we’re met with fog, rain and cold. From the town’s main street we can see mist creeping though the mountains and down the valley walls to the river below. After breakfast we grab our packs and begin the hike to Qiunatong. As we trudge through farmers fields we marvel at the wooden homes and small farm plots that cling to the valley walls.

A few hours later we arrive in Qiunatong. Jim and I wander down the town’s sole street and soon we’re invited into the house of a family of Nu farmers. The earth-walled home, at the edge of a cornfield, belongs to He Bao Shang, a 32-year-old father of two with dishevelled hair and blackened teeth. Inside, Bao Shang and his brother, He Bao Rang, sit around a fire pit. Children with filthy cheeks and runny noses chase frightened chickens though the kitchen-slash-living room.

“Something to drink?” asks Bao Rang, 30, dressed in an oversized brown suit with a cross around his neck. “Here. Drink.”

He pours us shots of potent corn-based liquor and passes around cigarettes that we light with embers of the fire. Soon we’re joined by friends and family. For lunch we eat a stew of mushrooms, yam, pork, and ingredients unknown. The shots start coming at a pace so feverish that, later, we forget to eat dinner.

Afternoon becomes evening and the singing begins; we dance in a circle around the fire pit. The constant plume of cigarette smoke combines with a single bare light bulb to give the room a distinct speakeasy vibe.

“Drink!” a drunk Boa Shang cries. “At midnight we’ll go up into the hills and drink water from a spring. Not this water,” he says, pointing to a barrel in the corner of the room. “Fresh water. New Year’s water.”

“We Nu people like to drink spring water at the New Year,” his brother interjects. “We don’t know why we do it. We just do.”

At ten o’clock, He’s family and friends stumble down the street to a dilapidated church, where this village of Nu Catholics has gathered to pray and chant, knelt on benches—men on one side, women on the other—under fading pictures of Jesus and the Virgin Mary.

If the dams go ahead, much of the Nu region’s rich culture could be lost. Huge reservoirs will force many people to larger centres up and downstream. Whole villages will be swept away. “I worry about how we’re going to keep these villages alive,” one village leader told me. Wang Yongcheng, co-founder of the Beijing-based NGO Green Earth Volunteers, a group that was actively involved in the initial fight to save the Nu, put it more bluntly: “If you dam the river, their culture, their tradition, disappears.”

For now though, the Nu remains free-flowing, and in Qiunatong, the party goes on. After church, the drinking continues. Booze, however: We never do drink the New Year’s water.