Borrowing to raise sheep: Qinghai’s herders endure another year
I. The Summer Pasture: The Final Pastoral Song
Niang-e-jia’s family is a typical Tibetan nomadic household in the Qinghai Lake region, still practising traditional grazing. They were among the protagonists of the documentary I filmed last year, *Whose Table, Whose Pasture*. A year since the filming, I returned to Qinghai, wanting to show the subjects the finished film and to gain a deeper understanding of their current situation.
As the summer season on the grasslands draws to a close, Niang-e-jia’s family moves to this collectively shared summer pasture in Caohun (phonetic). Few outsiders ever visit this place; aside from Niang-e-jia’s third uncle, who lives on the mountainside a kilometre or two away, the nearest neighbours are several kilometres distant. Almost no one is in sight, save for the distant glimpse of white tents across the pasture. Aside from the cattle, sheep, and Tibetan mastiffs, the most common creatures are the plateau pikas and Tibetan snowfinches—and the occasional wolf that pays a visit under cover of night.
Yet, beyond the postcard-perfect scenery, the livelihoods of the herders on the grasslands have become increasingly precarious. In 2023, while working on community imagery with herders around Qinghai Lake, we learned about the sharp drop in cattle and sheep prices and the impact of imported frozen meat on local markets. Consequently, I joined Foodthink’s Lianhe Project, seeking to document how these new market shifts were impacting the lives of the herders. Last November, my partner and I completed the filming after a circuit of Qinghai Lake.
Although Qinghai Province is not the primary cattle and sheep production region of China, it is one of the five major grazing areas and the province with the highest market supply of yaks and Tibetan sheep. More than half of the income for farmers and herders around Qinghai Lake comes from the Tibetan sheep industry. A drop in prices directly affects their survival. Herders recall that they have already struggled through four or five years of this bearish market.
National data also shows that mutton prices entered a downward cycle in 2021, with the price of live sheep continuing to fall. Cattle prices have plummeted as well; in 2024, domestic beef prices hit a five-year low, while live cattle prices dropped to their lowest level in nearly a decade.
Under this pressure, some herders, unable to weather the market trough, have sold off all their livestock and left the industry entirely.
This year, Niang-e-jia’s family has not yet sold their sheep; they plan to move to the winter pasture and wait for buyers. They have heard that prices have risen slightly since last year. But will a price recovery make life any easier for the herders? My follow-up visit began amidst this flicker of hope.
II. Qiejixi Road: The Game of Trade
National market data is similar: throughout September, the average price of beef nationwide was 70.90 yuan per kilogram, and mutton 69.59 yuan per kilogram. However, compared to 2023, beef and mutton prices have still fallen by around 10 yuan per kilogram.
I entered the shop to ask why meat prices had risen. The clerk told me that winter livestock are mostly feed-fed, while summer livestock graze on grass. The rearing method significantly affects the taste of the meat. Generally, fattened cattle and sheep are too fatty after slaughter, with too much abdominal fat and thick layers of blubber. For local consumers accustomed to ‘shouba’ (hand-torn) meat, grass-fed meat is naturally more popular. Thus, prices are usually a bit higher in September.
Leaving Xining, my official return visit began in Gonghe County, 142 kilometres away. Along the G6 highway leading to Gonghe, rolling grasslands stretch out on both sides, with signs warning to ‘watch for livestock’. Herds of yaks and Tibetan sheep stand or lie across the pastures. Gonghe County is the capital of Hainan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture; by convention, Qiejixi Road in Gonghe has become a livestock trading hub where surrounding herdsmen come to sell their sheep.
Last year, it was on this road that I happened upon another subject—Makli’s father. At the time, he and his partners were waiting on this road to buy sheep. These ‘collectors’ act as intermediaries in the livestock industry, most of whom are local Hui people. The cattle and sheep raised by herdsmen enter the market and eventually reach dinner tables through them.
The grass-fed season in summer is one of the busiest times of the year for collectors. I had arranged to meet Makli in the evening, but he cancelled at the last minute to collect debts at Heishui River. So, just as I did last year, I had to return to Qiejixi Road to try my luck.
Live sheep trading generally only takes place in the morning. On this day, only one sheep appeared. Five or six collectors gathered by the roadside, occasionally checking videos of livestock sent by herdsmen on their phones, appraising them and chatting. They weren’t worried about business; in this season, trading usually happens up in the mountains. The younger men have gone there, where they can collect seventy, eighty, or even a hundred sheep at once, meaning herdsmen no longer need to come to the market.
But they were all disinterested in this particular sheep. The collectors said there was something wrong with it—a problem in its head. That’s why its eyes were squinting and it walked crookedly, unable to walk in a straight line.
To me, however, the sheep didn’t look sick; it was more likely a disagreement over the price. Experienced collectors can instinctively estimate the meat yield of each sheep after slaughter and then make a reasonable offer based on market prices. If the bid is too high, they lose money; if it’s too low, another buyer will snap it up.
According to them, this two-year-old ewe was too thin and small, with only about 20 jin of meat. Based on this year’s wholesale prices of 25 yuan per jin for sheep and 27 yuan per jin for yaks, it was worth at most 600 yuan.
The owner of the sheep was a Tibetan man. He insisted the sheep wasn’t sick! To sell it, he had driven a mini-truck from thirty or forty kilometres away early in the morning. He asked for 900 yuan, which deterred several collectors who stepped forward to look. After several groups of collectors spoke in low voices with the man, they all left.
By midday, the collectors stationed on Qiejixi Road had dispersed, and the lone sheep ultimately failed to find a buyer.
III. Herdsmen Trapped in Loans
Falling prices also reduced their income. Meanwhile, fixed breeding costs and annual expenditures did not decrease. Every herdsman I filmed mentioned that their own pastures were insufficient; to ensure their livestock had enough food, they either had to rent more land or buy feed. When the selling price of cattle and sheep is unfavourable, they often increase the scale of their farming to maintain their income levels, creating a vicious cycle.
The remaining tens of thousands were used to repay his loans. By the time I returned this year, 200,000 yuan of the debt remained. Every year on the repayment date, he is forced to borrow from relatives and friends first, paying them back only once his new loans arrive. This cycle of borrowing has continued for seven or eight years.
By Wang Sheng’s own calculations, it will take at least another four years to clear the debt.
That is, provided these days of stealth grazing can continue.
IV. The ‘Bachelor Alliance’ of the forbidden grazing zones
To save on feed costs, the villagers have adopted guerilla tactics, returning to the pastures to graze in secret. Without doing so, their lifestyle of financing livestock through loans would be impossible to sustain.
Almost all these herders live in disaster relief tents, far from their families. The furnishings are sparse: a bed, a stove, and a simple table or shelf holding daily essentials, instant noodles, and biscuits. The tents migrate with the flocks. Wang Sheng has a house in the village dozens of kilometres away, but it has long since fallen into ruin from lack of use; ‘there’s no money for repairs’.
Moreover, the sheep cannot be left alone. Every morning, Wang Sheng drives the flock to the pasture to forage, and in the evening, he brings them back—a daily cycle of herding and gathering. He must also keep a close eye on the health of the flock, buying medicine and treating any sick sheep promptly.
On 13 September this year, when I reached Wang Sheng’s location, he was gathering his sheep.
The flock was foraging among waist-high jijica grass by the shores of Qinghai Lake, where the vegetation had already been grazed down. Wang Sheng had to ride his motorcycle to where they were feeding, joining other villagers in charging into the flock on their bikes, shouting loudly from time to time. Startled, the sheep would scatter in all directions. The herders watched the movement of the flock, chasing or blocking them to guide the straying sheep back to their respective groups.
It took over an hour before the village’s 3,000-odd sheep had finally all returned home.
“Any Cordyceps?” During my time in Qinghai, I had heard of other herders supplementing their income by digging for Cordyceps. “We don’t even have Cordyceps here.”
What about migrant work? “A hundred-something yuan a day—when would I ever pay off (the loan)?”
E-commerce? Slaughtering and processing it themselves, or even bypassing the sheep buyers to find their own customers? Any other subsidies? Every solution I could think of was shot down by them.
“Then what happens in the future?” I pressed, feeling a sense of urgency on their behalf.
Their answer was simple: hope. Hope for sheep prices to rise—hoping from this year to next, and from next year to the year after.
V. A Way Out?
When I returned to Qinghai and contacted Dazeng Zongzhi, I found he had moved to Gonghe County, renting a small room for 190 yuan a month where he lives with his wife and nearly three-year-old son.
Coincidentally, his current home is very close to Qiejixi Road, where live sheep are traded. Stepping out of the gate, I could hear the bleating of sheep from neighbouring yards.
Prices have recovered slightly this year. Speaking of the cattle and sheep he sold last year, Dazeng Zongzhi sounded somewhat helpless. “The prices were terrible then, but if I hadn’t sold, there wouldn’t have been enough grass. It was a real loss.”
I was curious how Dazeng Zongzhi made a living in Gonghe County. The answer was unexpected. After facing rejection in various job hunts, he chose to deliver food, completing at least 30 orders a day. This was the first time the twenty-something man had left the pastoral regions to work in the city. City life often left him feeling drained; no matter how late he woke up, he felt exhausted, whereas in the pastoral regions, he was full of energy every day.
“Herding is so much simpler than this.” From a free herder to a delivery driver trapped by algorithms, he has had to struggle to adapt to his change in identity. In his eyes, the job is fraught with danger; he must ride his bike fast to avoid delays. Not long ago, he was fined 200 yuan for a late delivery—equivalent to two days’ income. Danger also comes from theft. Since becoming a delivery driver, he has had meals stolen, and in the last few days, he lost his own phone through negligence, leaving him to continue working using his wife’s phone.
He also tries to avoid conflict with rude people while delivering. Once, a customer humiliated him, asking, “Aren’t you just a delivery boy?” He was so enraged that he threw the customer’s food on the ground.
I had planned to continue Dazeng Zongzhi’s story based on last year’s narrative. He happily agreed and let me shadow him the next day. Unexpectedly, when I arrived at the rented house at the agreed 9 am, he hadn’t woken up. My instinct was to assume he was just a young man who liked to sleep in. However, a while later, he emerged sluggishly, washed his face, and told me that he had taken an overnight shift last night and only returned at 6 am. He was exhausted and could not take us filming.
He misses the herding life deeply. “The most comfortable thing is herding at home. But the lack of pasture is a huge problem. If you have too few livestock, a family of five or six can’t survive on it. Out of desperation, I wondered if there was another way out, which is why I chose to work here.”
Perhaps this attempt to find a way out will ultimately end in failure. He told me that in a few months, he plans to return—perhaps to herd once again.
Yet, even though prices have risen slightly this year, the fundamental market contradictions have not shifted; for instance, imported meat continues to flood the market. In the first three quarters of 2025, cumulative imports of beef and mutton remained steady, with beef alone reaching 2.125 million tonnes, a year-on-year increase of 1.0%.
Although the price of imported meat also rose significantly—the average landed price of beef was 5,225.12 USD/tonne (approx. 37.88 yuan/kg) and mutton was 3,846.16 USD/tonne (approx. 27.88 yuan/kg), a year-on-year increase of 23.5%—even after mark-ups from the port to retail, there is still a significant price advantage over local meat, which costs 60–70 yuan per kilogram.
Consequently, there is a trend of exit from beef and mutton farming nationwide. By the end of the first three quarters of 2025, the national cattle inventory was 99.32 million head, down 2.4% year-on-year and 0.6% quarter-on-quarter; the national sheep inventory was 290 million head, down 6.9% year-on-year and 3.7% quarter-on-quarter.
Will the better market prices the herders long for ever truly arrive?
On 19 December at 19:40, the documentary *Whose Table, Whose Pasture*, directed by Jiao Xiaofang and Qionwu Danzeng, will be screened at [Fengnianqing Space], Guangzhou Pazhou South TOD. Director Jiao Xiaofang will join for a live online Q&A session following the screening. All are welcome!
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