{"id":220,"date":"2011-11-15T21:33:42","date_gmt":"2011-11-15T13:33:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gcbcn.org\/en\/?p=220"},"modified":"2011-11-15T21:33:42","modified_gmt":"2011-11-15T13:33:42","slug":"environmental-and-linguistic-adventures-in-gansu-grasslands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gcbcn.org\/en\/environmental-and-linguistic-adventures-in-gansu-grasslands\/","title":{"rendered":"Environmental and linguistic adventures in Gansu Grasslands"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maqu, Gannan, \u0f62\u0fa8\u0f0b\u0f46\u0f74\u0f0b\u0f62\u0fab\u0f7c\u0f44, \u739b\u66f2<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

8 hours via bus from Lanzhou lies Maqu in Gannan prefecture, a Tibetan area known
\nfor its rolling grasslands through which the Yellow River snakes. Green Camel Bell
\nhas been working in this community for the past year and a half, aiming to improve
\ndegraded grasslands and engage in social development and environmental education
\nprojects.<\/p>\n

Specifically the purpose of the trip is to collect stories from older Tibetans in the
\narea on conservation practices. From this we are collating the stories into a book
\nfor preservation and study for younger Tibetans and outsiders to better understand
\nGannan Tibetans.<\/p>\n

I, a native English speaker, am travelling with two GCB staff, one a Cantonese
\nand Mandarin speaker, the other a local Maqu Tibetan who has learnt Chinese
\nrecently. We have a great time together naming objects in each others languages and
\nattempting to get our mouths around the guttural sounds non-existent in English or
\nChinese. However, at times the conversation becomes a little more tangled when
\nquestions from local herdsmen need to be translated from Tibetan into Chinese and
\nthen from Chinese into English (and back again!).<\/p>\n

We interview a number of monks, herding families and also city residents. Many of
\nthe stories are interlinked with religious beliefs, for example;
\n\u201cWe never collect the water from the river with a dirty bucket. It needs to be free
\nfrom milk or blood otherwise the river gods get angry\u201d<\/em>
\nYet other stories showed Tibetans deep understanding of their natural world,
\n\u201cThe China Zokor has a little underground nest where it hides a
\nplant called Potentilla anserina, if you know where the burrow is you can take a small
\namount of the plant from inside, ensuring you leave enough for the animal also\u201d
\n\u201cIn the past there were many deer, wolves, bears, snow leopard,
\nTibetan antelope, who lived behind the monastery. It wasn\u2019t a safe place to go into the
\nforest. Now days there has been so many removal of trees for firewood the forest is
\ndisappearing, and with it the home for many of these big animals.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We pitch our tents inside a farmers shed to keep warm, but also to keep safely away
\nfrom the enormous and vicious Tibetan mastiffs. I later learn that that is not the only
\nanimal we need to be concerned about. On a walk through the fields one afternoon we
\nsee a large flock of birds of prey. Jinba, our Tibetan colleague, tells us that they are
\nvultures and when gathered like this it usually means they are coming into feed from
\nthe remains of something a wolf has killed. Running over the neighbouring hill we see
\ntwo wolves that have attacked a yak calf by ripping through its neck. A fully grown
\nyak can fetch up to 3000-4000RMB at market, so it\u2019s a great loss to the herder\u2019s
\nfamily.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The people in the community live simply as they have to transport all their
\npossessions when they move from winter to summer camp each year. Their winter
\nhomes have traditionally been made of mud brick, but now some have cement also.
\nInside is just one room, which acts as kitchen, living room and sleeping quarters for
\nthe entire family. Most of the villagers cannot speak Mandarin, and have not been
\neducated past primary school. The women and girls especially do it tough by having
\nto engage in domestic labour, such as drying yak dung for fuel. As these tasks take up
\nmost of the day, many families do not send their daughters to school. We are hoping
\nto set up a women run clean energy team. As they already take charge of dung drying,
\nwe want to include them in training for maintenance of newly installed solar panels,
\nand see what other opportunities for learning we can help provide them with.
\nLooking forward to my next visit already!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maqu, Gannan, \u0f62\u0fa8\u0f0b\u0f46\u0f74\u0f0b\u0f62\u0fab\u0f7c\u0f44, \u739b\u66f2 8 hours via bus from Lanzhou lies Maqu in Gannan prefecture, a Tibetan area known for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcbcn.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcbcn.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcbcn.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcbcn.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcbcn.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcbcn.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":226,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcbcn.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220\/revisions\/226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcbcn.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcbcn.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcbcn.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}