简体中文
Residents of a village on the China-Kazakhstan border are adapting themselves to new roles ranging from nomadic herdsmen to rural tourism owners.
Located at the foot of Alatau Mountains, Mingetoleh village in Bortala Mongol Autonomous Prefecture of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region is currently a popular spot for rural tourism.
The past years have seen a huge transformation in the small border village.
A statue commemorating the westward migration of Chahar warriors in Bortala Mongol Autonomous Prefecture of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
Come to frontiers
Visitors to Mingetoleh are attracted by yurts scattered at the foot of the mountains. Several yellow houses decorated with special cloud-like marks on the roofs line a main road with the yurts complementing the well-organized compound.
All of the Mongolian elements tell where the idyllic village came from.
In the 18th century, Qianlong Emperor of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) dispatched a group of Chahar troops to the region.
“Our ancestors were Mongolian warriors. They came here from Zhangjiakou (now in north China’s Hebei Province) to guard the frontiers in the Qing Dynasty,” Monggon, a civil servant who grew up in Bortala told CGTN.
Since then, the soldiers settled down in the far west of China and gradually started their nomad life on the grassland generation by generation.
The garrison evolved to be a base for herders who roamed around the vast lands.
Go to settled houses
Most of the herders in Mingetoleh now have lived in permanent houses and built up an array of cotes at their backyards for their flocks.
“We have lived in settled houses with basic facilities now,” Jatsuluu said. The 35-year-old and his wife are descendants of the Chahar who lived in the village for generations.
Mingetoleh village
In the past, herders had to migrate from one meadow to another in search for grass and waters in different seasons. However, spending months of times in the remote and vast area made them isolated from the modern life.
“It is fine for young adults to pasture in remote lands, but the nomadic life is hard for children and the elder people,” local official Batjab said, “The old and the sick need medical care services and the children need to go to school.”
Batjab added that the project is also parts of efforts to protect the grassland ecosystem as overgrazing is one of the major causes leading to land degradation.
“We encourage villagers to rear their livestock in pens. This is good for a sustainable development of pastures,” he said.
Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region started the settlement project in 2009. According to a ten-year plan of the project, Xinjiang aims to settle over 760,000 herders covering over 169,300 homes by 2020.
Take new jobs
With no need to migration in winter, villagers have now taken new jobs and seen an increase in their incomes.
“We set up two yurts and started catering to tourists in January,” Jatsuluu said. His yurts offers homemade roast lambs, dried curds and salted milk tea.
He said the Mongolian-style vacation site has already attracted people from other places in Xinjiang and even from the rest places of China.
Jatsuluu and other villagers celebrate the establishment of a new yurt.
Although he puts focus on tourism, the 35-year-old villager has also taken several days every month to patrol the border while herding his flocks.
The patrolling job also brings him a permanent salary of 2000 yuan (295 US dollars) per month.
Almost every household in the village has people employed as border patrollers.
“In the past, my family earned about 20,000 yuan a year while the monthly income now could reached 5000 yuan,” the owner of the yurts said, “We live a much better life than the past.”
(CGTN)
