Through the Lens: The Changing Lives and Choices of Herders
Late September in the Greater Khingan Mountains brought a slight chill. Perhaps due to global warming, the white birch forests of Jagdaqi had not yet turned yellow. Until a few decades ago, these forests served as the hunting grounds for the Oroqen people.
Gathered within the forest was a group of filmmakers; this year’s “World Nomadic Film Festival” was held in Jagdaqi, deep in the Khingan Mountains. The festival was co-founded in 2021 by documentary directors Gu Tao and Gu Xue, evolving from the “Inner Mongolia Youth Film Week”.
Traditionally, certain ethnic groups practised seasonal migration for grazing and the use of land and water—a way of life vastly different from sedentary agricultural societies, which in turn fostered a distinct cultural mindset. Many of Director Gu Tao’s previous documentaries focused on traditional nomadic communities. Consequently, he expanded the original concept of “nomadism” into a broader meaning. Through the film festival, he seeks to highlight the freedom, fluidity, and authenticity of life for people in both contemporary and traditional settings. The “World Nomadic Film Festival” attracts more creators and films focused on nomadic themes than other festivals, providing a concentrated look at how filmmakers portray the transformations within pastoral regions on screen.
How to tell the story of the grasslands and the lives of the people who dwell there has always been a subject of interest to me. Funded by Foodthink’s 2024 “Joint Creation Program”, the documentary *Whose Table, Whose Pasture*, filmed by Jiao Xiaofang and Qiong Wudanzeng, was also selected for this festival. Thus, I accompanied Director Jiao Xiaofang to attend the event.
Under the tide of urbanisation, traditional life in pastoral areas is undergoing violent upheaval. These life experiences, which remain unspoken in mainstream narratives, require more filmmakers—those with actual experience in pastoral areas or a genuine interest in them—to immerse themselves, integrating their observations and understanding into their work so that the stories grow from the heart. As more creators use their lenses to tell these stories, and more importantly, to question them, these marginal nomadic experiences can be seen and understood in a more vivid and profound way.
I. Camels on Mongolian Pastures
However, compared to the traditional nomadic life of “following water and grass”, the way herders graze their livestock has changed significantly. Aolunna observed that after several decades of the grass and livestock dual-contracting system, local herders now further divide their pastures into different blocks using fences according to their own needs. The role of the camel in their lives is also shifting: the function of camels and horses as modes of transport is gradually being replaced by cars and motorbikes. Some families now use vehicles to transport furniture to the next pasture in advance, before driving the camels, cattle, and sheep across.
Through her growth and education, Aolunna gradually drifted away from pastoral life. She is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Minority Arts at the Minzu University of China. In recent years, she has continuously researched and filmed the pastoral areas of her hometown, a process that has allowed her to rediscover her roots. Through filming, she felt her responsibility as a member of the younger generation of Mongols to record and understand her local traditional culture.
Aolunna chose to enter this world through the local Camel Culture Festival. The Mongols of Haixi Prefecture began holding this festival seven or eight years ago. Compared to the horse, which carries immense cultural meaning and symbolises the Mongolian spirit, the camel is more of a utilitarian animal, used primarily for carrying heavy loads over long distances and producing camel hair and milk for daily needs.
At the festival, the role of the camel in daily life is showcased through a series of competitions that condense related customs and skills: camel racing, similar to horse racing, where contestants compete for speed; camel beauty pageants, where the most aesthetic camel is chosen based on coat colour, hair, and temperament; and camel handicraft competitions, where contestants create items such as nose rings and reins within a time limit, judged on the quality of the final product.
The most thrilling part is the camel taming. Seemingly docile, a camel can become so frenzied that even a crowd of people cannot hold it back. Young camels must undergo a taming process before they can be used. In the festival’s competition, the organisers select young, untamed camels (mostly males); contestants attempt to mount them bareback, without a saddle, to see who can stay on the camel’s back the longest. Watching the contestants being bucked off time and again, I couldn’t help but marvel at their persistence. In recent years, women’s camel racing has also been added to the programme.
Even the act of moving house via camel has been turned into a competition: contestants load furniture onto the camel, which must then run a designated course and return before the furniture is unloaded. The winner is the one who completes the task the fastest.
Today, in Aolunna’s hometown, most herders still maintain the tradition of keeping the five livestock, adjusting the proportions of each animal to suit their circumstances. They use them seasonally according to the animals’ different characteristics. In Aolunna’s view, the relationship between the people and their livestock is akin to a “contractual relationship”: humans care for the animals to ensure they thrive, in exchange for the resources the animals provide for human survival. In pastoral life, “mutual interference between humans and animals is a necessary way of survival on the grasslands.”
The relationship between nomadic peoples and their livestock is a blend of taming, exchange, and mutual care. However, as this relationship enters the modern market, it is beginning to break down.
II. Imported Meat Controversy and Herders Caught in the Market
The lens captures how people in different roles within a complex meat supply chain respond to this shock: frozen beef and mutton, travelling across the globe from the other side of the earth, are actually cheaper than the meat sold by local nomads. In the film, people attempt to provide their own rationalisations for this situation: some believe imported meat, labelled as ‘grain-fed’, seems more premium; others feel that local production lines are non-standardised, whereas imported meat has clear standards and ‘professional production lines’. These clashing narratives mirror the frictions inherent in a shifting reality.
The influx of imported meat has triggered a series of chain reactions: as many customers opt for cheaper imports, the market price of local beef and mutton has plummeted repeatedly. Grazing, as a traditional livelihood upon which nomads depend, has been dragged into an increasingly complex supply chain. The role of the nomad has shifted from that of an active producer to a passive link in the chain. In the documentary, Manai, a sheep collector, expresses the current dilemma facing nomads: ‘If I sell, the price isn’t enough; if I don’t, the grass isn’t enough.’
Behind this phenomenon lies a series of complex realities: the modernisation of life in grazing areas in recent years has increased the nomads’ need for cash in their daily lives, making them more dependent on liquidating their livestock. Under the pressure of imported prices, local meat has depreciated; nomads must now raise more livestock than ever before to secure a sufficient income, which in turn increases the pressure on the grasslands. Many nomads have tried to manage this by renting pasture from others or buying fodder, only to sink deeper into debt.
Through the documentary, we can catch a glimpse of the paradox surrounding Tibetan nomads as they are swept into the larger meat market. Traditionally, nomads grazed and slaughtered their own livestock for food and cash, yet Tibetan religious beliefs hold the concept of ‘non-killing’. This created a unique division of labour in the market—the roles of slaughtering and selling meat were largely filled by the Hui people. Consequently, a strange situation emerged in the grazing areas: nomads, unwilling to kill, sell their livestock to the Hui people, convert them into cash, and then go to the market to buy meat—even imported meat.
Production methods based on natural grazing have shifted further towards industrial meat production, giving rise to the ‘fattening’ process. Fattening agents buy livestock from nomads and feed them large quantities of grain in feedlots over a short period to increase their weight before selling them to the market for profit.
Under this trend, it has become increasingly difficult to tell whether local meat in the market was raised through traditional grazing or through fattening. This method of husbandry directly affects the quality of local beef and mutton, as well as people’s willingness to buy local meat.
Amidst these complex issues, I was moved by certain moments in the documentary: a young nomad deftly throwing a slipknot rope to catch a yak; when the sheep collector is about to take the animals away, the young man points to two sheep and explains that they are twins, his voice tinged with reluctance. After selling them, he says, ‘If I had the money, I certainly wouldn’t want to sell. We can’t bear to part with these animals; after all, we’ve been good friends for years…’ After spending years with their livestock, nomads develop intimate bonds; in their eyes, every animal has unique individual characteristics, whereas to the sheep collector and the meat supply chain, they are merely pieces of meat on a chopping board.
From these details, we can glimpse a way of life in traditional grazing areas that has not yet been replaced by modern commercial logic: a young Tibetan nomad can simultaneously need to sell his livestock and be unable to bear parting with them; many nomads, after selling their animals, go to temples to light butter lamps and ask monks to chant sutras for them.
Although nomads sold livestock for income to sustain their livelihoods even before being drawn into the modern meat market, this relationship was not a simple exchange of value. Modern market logic, however, simplifies everything to commodity value. Under the impact of this logic, the relationship between nomads and their livestock is gradually changing; the simple affection nomads hold for their animals, as shown in the film, is becoming increasingly useless—and increasingly rare.
Three: The Nostalgia of Nomadic Descendants
The short film “A Sea on the Grassland” offers a glimpse into the life of a Mongolian boy living in the city who returns to his ancestral pastoral home for a few days. Through the eyes of a child, we see a world both familiar and strange: Mongolian textbooks he cannot read, peers playing across a vast, snow-covered plain, and adults discussing the plummeting price of livestock at the dinner table. At the end, before returning to Shanghai, the boy dyes the family’s sheep blue—turning them into a sea to accompany the friends he leaves behind.
The family in the film is a microcosm of the multi-generational migration of Mongolians from the pastoral lands to the city. The story is drawn from director Tong Cheng’s own life; he was educated in the city from a young age and returned to his home in the pastoral region during winter and summer breaks. His hometown is the 57 Army Stud Farm in Holingol, a semi-agricultural and semi-pastoral area where Mongolians and Han Chinese live together. There, pastoralists were drawn into modernisation earlier. Since the 1990s, many young people from these regions began moving to cities for work, taking jobs in Holingol’s coal plants.
Moving constantly between the city and the pastoral lands during his upbringing made Tong Cheng more sensitive to the lived experiences of those caught between these two starkly different environments. He meticulously condensed this transition into the languages spoken by three generations of Mongolians: the grandparents live in the pastoral area, speak Mongolian, and while they cannot speak Chinese, they can understand it; the parents switch between a blend of Mongolian and Chinese; by the time it reaches the grandchildren, they can understand but no longer speak Mongolian. This leads to a scene in the film that is strange yet logical: communication is achieved through two entirely different languages—the grandson speaks Mandarin to his grandparents, while the grandparents speak Mongolian to him.
The boy’s small braid is another significant symbol. Mongolian boys wear a braid at the back of their heads, which is cut off when they turn thirteen. Tong Cheng specifically included this detail; to him, it is the only remaining physical trace of Mongolian identity on the new generation. When it is cut at thirteen, the final link to their “Mongolian” identity is severed.
An a cappella song at the end (a classic Mongolian song, “Father’s Grassland, Mother’s River”) echoes the sense of loss felt by the new generation: “Though I can no longer speak in my mother tongue, please accept my sorrow, my joy. I too am a child of the highlands; in my heart is a song, and in that song are my father’s grasslands and my mother’s river…”
In his story, pastoral life has receded from a direct physical experience to a background presence—an existence defined by nostalgia. Compared to the pastoral areas of Tibet, those in Inner Mongolia were swept into the process of urbanisation much sooner. How do those caught between the experiences of city and steppe understand, adapt to, or reshape their environment? Should they stay in the pastoral lands or move to the town? This is perhaps the question that haunts every contemporary pastoralist, and it is a theme Tong Cheng intends to explore in his future work.
Tong Cheng told me that whether in the city or the pastoral lands, people adjust themselves to their external environment to better adapt to their current lives. The move from the steppe to the city is another form of “nomadism”: “People change themselves through their environment,” he says, and some “nomad to a soil and culture that is more suitable for them.”
However, I remain somewhat sceptical of interpreting the migration from pastoral lands to cities as another form of “nomadism”. Is this truly nomadism, or is it merely another unoriginal iteration of rural urbanisation amid a massive tide of city growth—or perhaps a misuse of “nomadic” culture by contemporary commercial promotion? In what sense can a true “nomadic spirit” transcend the context of traditional pastoral life and enter contemporary existence through physical experience?
Through these films, we can see the transitions and dilemmas facing traditional pastoral regions today. In these shots, the fragmented, easily overlooked emotions beneath massive social upheavals are magnified and made visible. It is these very emotions that constitute the deep fabric of traditional nomadic culture.
Beyond these three short films, the Nomadic Film Festival featured several other works set against the backdrop of pastoral life. Director Solrang Chodzin’s “Ama” turns the lens toward her own mother, exploring the physical experiences of a traditional woman in the pastoral region; “Khangai” tells the story of a pastoralist who, having lost his land due to external factors, wanders the fringes of the traditional region; “The Silent Dahans” uses the oral histories of several Oroqen elders to recreate the internal rhythms of the Oroqen people’s former lives as forest hunters. These images act as prisms, refracting different perspectives of pastoral life.
Regarding nomadic culture and the various pastoral regions, there is still immense narrative space to explore the emotions behind these real lives. In the narrative space of film, the complexities and confusions of reality are gently accepted and slowly uplifted. This, perhaps, is the meaning of cinema.
Editor: Xiao Dan