Nengkaman shows a bag she made at her workshop in the township of Yaoji, Ya’an, Sichuan Province in southwest China, on 9 May(YU XIANGJUN)

Yaoji, meaning “a very high place” in Tibetan language, is a Tibetan township in Ya’an, Sichuan Province in southwest China. Situated at an altitude of 4,000 metres above the sea level in snow-capped Jiajin Mountain, the township has preserved the historical traditions of Jiarong Tibetans, a branch of the Tibetan ethnic group, and is a core area of Giant Panda National Park. 

The park was established in October 2021, three months after the giant panda was downgraded from “endangered” to “vulnerable” on the global list of species at risk of extinction. More than 95 percent of Yaoji’s land is included in the park, making it a veritable “panda village.” 

The existence of giant pandas for many years has brought changes in Yaoji. Ecological conservation has become an inseparable part of the routine life and work of the villagers, while the giant panda fever has helped to protect and pass on the traditional culture of the Jiarong Tibetan people as the region draws more tourists and visitors.  

Protecting the mountains 

In the village of Jiajinshan in Yaoji, a traditional Tibetan-style home is often filled with laughter. It is where 38-year-old villager Nengkaman and her husband run their agritainment business. 

“When the agritainment business first opened, many people in the village doubted it would succeed. They wondered why someone would visit this remote place,” Nengkaman said. However, after the establishment of Giant Panda National Park, more and more people are visiting the area to see the giant pandas. 

Visitors typically come with their children during summer and winter holidays. The couple would take them deep into the mountains to learn about giant pandas, as well as about other animals and plants, and tips to survive in the wild. Nengkaman serves as both their guide and an educator about nature.

“I accompany them to look for droppings and footprints of giant pandas and get to know this beautiful mountain and the vegetation and rivers of the area,” she said. “I love all the creatures here, and hope more people will fall in love with them.” 

With the support of the local government, more and more villagers like Nengkaman have started their agritainment business. According to Wang Dan, deputy head of the township government, the excellent ecological resources in the village have helped the area to become a special scenic spot with more than 170 Tibetan agritainment entities of the Jiarong Tibetan style. However, just a few years ago, the villagers’ main source of income was animal husbandry. 

For Jiarong Tibetans, who live a mixed agricultural and pastoral way of life, the yak is a symbol of wealth. The foot of Jiajin Mountain was once home to more than 30,000 free-ranging yaks. However, as the yak population spiked beyond the pasture’s capacity to sustain it, the villagers became aware that there was not enough food for their cattle. 

“They then realised that lucid water and lush mountains are all gifts from nature, and that depending entirely on raising yaks for a living was not sustainable. Only by loving and protecting the mountain can we embark on a sustainable development path,” Yang Hao, secretary of the Yaoji Township Committee of the Communist Party of China, told ChinAfrica.  

With the constant presence of giant pandas, villagers began to shift their approach to development by limiting the number of yaks to make room for pandas. According to Yang, Yaoji has stipulated the protection of pandas into village rules and regulations, and the total number of yaks in the township has reduced by around 10,000.  

To seize the opportunity and make full use of local ecological resources, the government of the township has led the villagers to develop tourism and, to further increase their income, launched deep processing of yak products. Tourism and animal husbandry are now playing equally important roles in bringing wealth to the villagers through green development. 

Nengkaman (second left) and her husband (left) serve as tour guides to children in the township of Yaoji, Ya’an, Sichuan Province in southwest China, on 6 July 2018 (YANG TAO)

Preserving traditional arts 

After the yak hair is shorn, it is turned into threads and then woven into fabric, which then is used to make finished products. This is how the thin and soft yak hair is turned into woven bags with cute panda patterns. Among her multiple identities, Nengkaman is an inheritor of the patterned belt weaving technique, a national intangible cultural heritage and part of the ancient weaving technique unique to the Jiarong Tibetan people. 

The number of people who have mastered this skill is declining because the skill is passed from person to person, instead of being taught in a school or institution. This and the impact of modern industrialisation have put the technique at risk. Nengkaman was worried that this traditional skill would die out. 

In 2016, she set up a handicraft workshop and invited a dozen women from the village to join her. Together, they explored ways to improve and innovate their skills in their spare time. They cleverly incorporated the panda element into backpacks, shawls, scarves, pendants and other woven items, and these handmade products have become a big hit on online platforms. 

The weaving work has changed the life of the women in the village. “With the increase in income, the sisters in the village have more confidence in traditional Tibetan culture and in creating a better life through their own labour,” she said. 

Nengkaman 

Opening a window 

The vibrant sea of flowers in spring, the lushness of summer, the flaming red leaves in autumn, and the magnificent snow-covered meadows in winter - these are the characteristics of the four seasons of the Jiajin Mountain area as seen by Nengkaman. 

In 2014, the From Our Eyes charity project, an initiative of Yunnan Province to encourage villagers to film their hometown, launched an activity to provide free videography training to rural women. Nengkaman, who had attended two years of senior high school, was selected. For the first time in her life, she picked up a camera and began to document her beautiful hometown. She was the first person in the area to make a documentary film. 

Her work Sertarmailong, named after a sacred local mountain, presents the magnificent scenery of snow-capped mountains and records the yak shearing festival in Yaoji. The documentary was shown at national and international film festivals. 

Over the past 10 years, she has filled seven hard drives with four terabytes of footage, making her a witness to the harmony between local people and wildlife. 

Currently, a brand-new building is under construction next to Nengkaman’s agritainment business. When completed, it will be used as a museum for folklore heritage and village videography to further promote local nature education, traditional handicraft studies and so on. All the images Nengkaman has collected of her hometown will be exhibited there, allowing more people to know the stories behind the Tibetan township’s coexistence with nature, pandas in particular.