Mountain Life in Naxi Stone City (Part II): Stewards of the Land
Editor’s Note
— Farmer Seed Network
I. Their Fields and Their Homes
Beyond running the family guesthouse, Sister Xiuqin is also the village doctor. Her home serves as the village clinic, where people frequently come for medicine or injections. Once, she was the last midwife in the village. Sister Xiuqin did not attend school as a child; it was only at seventeen that she went to Lijiang for a vocational secondary medical degree. She told me how much she regretted not studying earlier, as learning to read and write proved incredibly difficult. Because her mother wanted the children to be educated, her older brother and sister went to school, but she had been reluctant, finding it hard and fearing the teachers, who would shout and beat students with stinging nettles—the pain of which would last for a day and a night. Her most vivid memory was of a teacher saying: “When the Four Modernisations arrive in the year 2000, if you people don’t study hard, the cars will drive in, and you’ll be left here carrying baskets of manure, stepping aside to let the cars pass.” Yet, surprisingly, more than twenty years have passed since the “Four Modernisations of 2000” the teacher spoke of, and the villagers are still carrying baskets of manure to the fields. Although cars have indeed arrived, they can only park in the lot at the top of the village; essential supplies and agricultural produce are still moved in and out on the backs of people and horses.
Sister Xiuqin began learning midwifery around 1987 and delivered roughly three to four hundred babies in the village until 2005. While training at the town health centre, doctors had the interns practice on women undergoing induced labours. During the family planning era, women caught for exceeding birth quotas—even those eight or nine months pregnant—were forced to undergo induction. Such cases were common; one or two occurred daily at the health centre. Sister Xiuqin told me about one woman who, while waiting for a busy doctor, had her water break; she kept quiet to save the child, endured the agony, and secretly slipped out into the fields at night to give birth. In the past, women here gave birth at home because roads had not yet reached the village. Once the roads arrived, people began leaving the village, and births moved to hospitals. However, childbirth costs of around 10,000 yuan, without insurance coverage, now place a significant burden on village families.
Sister Xiuqin is exceptionally gentle and never loses her temper, though she seems to lack confidence. She often says, “I can’t do anything,” “I’m the most useless person,” or “I’m the worst at dancing,” adding, “Everyone else is so much more capable.” Yet, while saying this, she silently takes on all the housework: waking up early for the kitchen, preparing three meals a day, feeding the pigs and chickens three times, washing dishes, cleaning, farming the vegetable plot, and sorting vegetables at home. To her, cooking and cleaning aren’t “real work”; only labouring in the fields counts. In Naxi tradition, men do not enter the kitchen. As with many other ethnic villages, men typically earn money or handle major affairs—for instance, rituals to pray for rain or honour heaven are forbidden to women. Men rarely concern themselves with the heavy, tedious domestic chores, yet women must still carry heavy back-baskets along steep mountain paths. Perhaps the women of the village, like Sister Xiuqin, have not yet realised how vital their domestic labour is. It is precisely because of her tedious efforts—cooking, washing, sorting vegetables—that the land and the dining table are truly connected; it is their uncelebrated daily labour that sustains the vitality of the land and the ordinary lives of their families.
I saw many admirable qualities in the other women I met in the village. Zhang Xiuyun is known as the “Corn Mother”. She grows over a dozen heirloom maize varieties in her field and has developed several of her own waxy maize varieties through hybridisation. As the manager of the Lishi Hotel in Stone City, Sister Xiuyun manages a hotel while also tending several mu of land, yet she always smiles with an optimistic, hearty laugh, believing that farm work is not arduous, but joyful. Her maiden home is in Hailong Village, further downstream on the Jinsha River, a three-hour drive from Stone City. She told me that when the roads were not yet built, she once carried her newborn eldest son on her back to her parents’ home—a journey that took two days on foot. Women like Sister Xiuyun, who marry far from home, often migrate with seeds during their journeys between their marital and natal homes. In her parents’ garden, she grows “Xiuyun No. 1”, her own hybrid waxy maize. In her wheat field, she grows Shandong wheat brought back by a cousin who married into a family in Shandong. In May this year, with the support of the Farmer Seed Network, Sister Xiuyun visited the Potato Park in Peru, where she observed traditional maize and potato varieties of all shapes and sizes. However, if traditional local varieties travel halfway across the globe, they may not adapt to the new soil and climate. Therefore, in her seed trials, Sister Xiuyun carefully observes and selects the best seeds before sowing to ensure every grain is full of vitality. This is how seeds flow, following the footsteps of people.
When I first arrived in Stone City, I brought several packets of heirloom tomato, lettuce, and basil seeds—varieties foreign to this region. After experimenting on my small balcony at home for a few years, I planted them in the mountain soil of Stone City. Under the abundant sunshine, the tomatoes grew particularly strong. After three months of seedling care, transplanting, staking, and fertilising, I finally enjoyed the rich flavour of home-grown tomatoes. The sweet basil, originally from Europe, was a taste unknown to this land and its people, yet it proved very popular; Sister Xiuqin often adds a few leaves to her dishes, adding variety to the table. These “new varieties” are being saved in Sister Xiuqin’s vegetable garden; perhaps they will persist on these mountains long after I have left.
II. Secretary Mu and his Nostalgia
Secretary Mu’s story begins in 1993. At just 19 years old, a twist of fate led him into the tourism industry, where he began leading foreign hiking groups through his village. The route took them from Stone City through Taiziguan, trekking from the towering mountains beside the Jinsha River all the way to Lugu Lake. Even then, foreigners were drawn to this unknown, exotic land—perhaps because Joseph Rock had already revealed the mysteries of the beautiful ancient Naxi Kingdom to the West back in the 1930s. Consequently, foreign trekking enthusiasts set foot here long before Chinese tourists did. As a local guide, Secretary Mu learned English early on to communicate with these visitors from afar. It was during his early days as a guide and the operator of a family guesthouse that Stone City’s tourism began to grow, driven by these foreign hikers. After 2000, Secretary Mu served as the village head of Stone City and was later elected Secretary of Baoshan administrative village. He holds firm views on the development of rural cultural tourism. He is acutely aware of the destruction that rapid, large-scale investment would wreak upon the village’s way of life and its ecology. He has always believed that things must be kept small and slow to truly endure.
He is just as sincere in his dealings with others, though he does love to joke. Secretary Mu often says, “My humble temple is too small to accommodate the likes of you from the big cities.” I know this stems from the fact that he has seen too many people come and go through Stone City. Whether they are tourists stopping for a short while, students and scholars conducting research, or interns and volunteers like me who come for a period through a non-profit organisation, there is always a stream of outsiders arriving for various reasons. Throughout July, I joined Secretary Mu in hosting several groups of visitors. Some arrived with specific expectations or preconceptions about the place, and some felt a sense of loss when the reality failed to meet those hopes. Today, the countryside has become a “field” for various academic disciplines, arts, and the cultural tourism industry; but for those who have always lived here, this “field” is their home. Regardless of the changes they bring, the outsiders simply pass through and leave. Yet Secretary Mu is well aware of the dangers the village faces. Like many other mountain villages, the young people who leave for education and work no longer return to the hardship of farming. The youngest farming labourers in the village are already over 50. In this generational divide between urban and rural life, the indigenous wisdom of cultivation is becoming increasingly difficult to pass on.
When I first arrived in Stone City and went for walks along the mountain paths with Secretary Mu, he would often pluck various wild plants by the roadside to tell me about their uses and medicinal properties. At the time, he mentioned that it had long been his wish to organise and record these plants. I, too, began to pay closer attention to the diverse flora in the mountains and fields, learning their Naxi names and various uses from them. Eventually, we decided to collaborate on collecting and documenting the local wild plants of Stone City, aiming for 50 of the most common and useful species, which we then compiled into a small booklet. Secretary Mu believes that even if the fields are eventually left untended, these wild plants will continue to grow in the mountain terrain they have already adapted to. For me, getting to know these plants is, in essence, getting to know a way of living and working unique to this place. When I began to instinctively grab a handful of “hua zhan” (Rumex hastatus) leaves from the roadside to rub onto a mosquito bite, I felt as though I had established a deeper connection with the local land.
For Secretary Mu, the village has changed immensely over the last thirty years. Roads were built, electricity arrived, and homes were filled with modern appliances like refrigerators, washing machines, and rice cookers. Yet, along with this progress, many of the ways of life from his childhood vanished, becoming the source of the nostalgia he often reflects upon. Secretary Mu is a gifted writer and frequently pens short essays of a thousand words, recounting stories from his memory: recollections of lunches in the fields, the cacti of Stone City, and the games of skipping stones from his youth. He even wrote an article for me titled “Sowing and Integrating”. I made a pact with him that once he had completed twenty pieces, I would produce a small book for him. I have always loved the process of bookmaking; whether it is a small guide to the wild plants of Stone City or a collection of Secretary Mu’s nostalgia, a physical book serves as a vessel for friendship.
III. Afterword
What are the views of the universe, nature, and life held by the villagers of Stone City?
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Discover the culture of the Naxi people
About the Agroecology Internship Programme
To date, three recruitment cycles have been completed, supporting over 60 participants in internships lasting from three months to a year across more than ten ecological farms nationwide.
Editors: Guan Qi, Mei Ying