Yunnan's Deang ethnic village prospers with cultural tourism
Chudonggua village is located in Santaishan township, Mangshi city, west Yunnan's Dehong Dai and Jingpo autonomous prefecture.
The village is adorned with cobblestone paths, yellow walls, and black tiles. It doesn't take long to walk from the village gate to the wooden house of Li Yan, a post-90s young man of the De'ang ethnic group.
Chudonggua village traces its roots back to the Ming and Qing dynasties. The village preserves many distinctive ancient De'ang ethnic buildings, making it a core area for studying and promoting De'ang ethnic culture and developing-themed tourism in China.
Many ethnographers, film crews, and international visitors have visited Chudonggua village.
"Many professors and students come here for field surveys and stay for up to a month." However, due to its remote mountainous location and limited transportation access, the village struggled to develop," said Li Zhunxing, deputy head of Santsaishan township. "The turning point came in 2021 and 2022 when we received consecutive assistance funds from the Shanghai-Yunnan pairing project."
With over 25 million yuan in funding from the Shanghai-Yunnan pairing project, Chudonggua village upgraded its infrastructure, decorated the traditional buildings with ethnic elements, and built its first high-end homestay. Now, electricity, water and sewage, roads are all settled well.
With proper conditions for developing tourism and bolstered by the Shanghai-Yunnan cooperation project, the centuries-old Deang ancient village found its new development model. That is, to develop rural tourism by leveraging its ecological and cultural resources and Deang ethnic characteristics.
Chudonggua village collaborated with a professional company to jointly establish a tourism company. A specialized team operates tourism within the village, aiming to increase the collective economic income.
According to the local conditions, the village focuses on nuts, pineapples, and sour tea to develop a leisure agricultural tourism project. The integrated project aims to enhance the visitors' experience by providing various services, including sightseeing, leisure, entertainment, and education activities.
"What makes this place unique is the Deang ethnic culture," said Kang Yulong, the first secretary stationed in Chudonggua village.
In addition to constructing infrastructure, Chudonggua continues to unearth traditional Deang ethnic culture. "By combining Deang sour tea, water drum dance, and other intangible cultural heritages, we have established a sour tea tasting and viewing platform, an intangible cultural heritage academy, and a water drum square in the village. Visitors can watch the water drum dance, buy De'ang woven brocades and experience making sour tea."
In 2022, "The craftsmanship of Deang sour tea making," as a sub-project under the broader category of "Traditional tea processing techniques and associated social practices," was added to the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Today, enjoying scenery halfway up the mountain, sipping sour tea in a wooden house, savoring local cuisine, experiencing ethnic brocade weaving, and immersing in the historical culture of the De'ang ethnic group have become must-do activities for many tourists visiting Mangshi city.
"In the future, we will collaborate with other social organizations to do brand design and promotion for sour tea and other agricultural and special products, promoting the development of the sour tea industry," said Wang Jie, the deputy mayor of Mangshi city, who was dispatched from Shanghai's Qingpu district to Dehong.
According to Wang, tea planting, sour tea processing, and tourism services have enabled Chudonggua village to achieve integrated development across the primary, secondary, and tertiary industries.
Source: People's Daily；trans-editing by Guo Yao