shaxi: yunnan

Shaxi Township, Jianchuan County, Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan (大理白族自治州剑川县沙溪镇)

Beginning in the Tang Dynasty the Southwest China Silk Road, also known as the Ancient Tea and Horse Caravan Trail (茶马古道), wound through Yunnan and Sichuan to Tibet and India. Different ethnic groups, among them Tibetan, Bai, and Hui, traded goods such as tea, horses, and salt. One of the major stop-off points along this route was located within Shaxi Township.

Tucked around the beautiful Hei Hui River (黑惠江), Shaxi valley boasts, among other sites, Tang dynasty grottoes in Stone Treasure Mountain (石宝山).

The township, as of 2004, has a population of 22,411 people, eighty five percent of whom are ethnic Bai. Sixteen natural villages (自然村) make up the township, and seventy percent of residents work in agriculture. Ouyang (欧阳), the locally-famous son of a caravan chief, summed up his fellow villagers in the following way: “What local people are accustomed to is farming . . . as long as there is food to eat, it is acceptable. So the people here are very honest, simple, and hardworking.”

In 2002, the World Monument Fund included Shaxi’s Sideng Market Area (寺登街) in its list of the world’s 101 Most Endangered Sites. Representatives of the Fund lamented the lack of due recognition of Shaxi’s history as well as physical damage caused during the pre-1949 civil war and later Cultural Revolution, especially to the now-rare local Bai architecture.

In response, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) and the People’s Government of Jianchuan County launched a joint USD 1.3 million Shaxi Valley Rehabilitation Project, which concluded in December 2006. This comprised six steps: marketplace restoration, historic village preservation, sustainable valley development, ecological sanitation, poverty alleviation, and dissemination of project activities and achievements. The ETH website states that one of the main goals of the plan was “encouraging responsible practices in cultural conservation, environmental protection, and eco-tourism.”

Yang Fubao (杨富宝), a Jianchuan County government official who worked on the project, says it is difficult to assess how much it accomplished. In terms of eco-tourism, he notes that there are no longer project funds to support longer term work. With slightly over 10,000 tourists a year—a rate that has not increased in the last two years—there is not enough business to justify government-sponsored eco-tourism activities.

Some locals are finding that eco-tourist activities can be profitable, however. Wu Yuxin (吴运鑫), a Jianchuan schoolteacher in Duan Jia Deng (段家登) village, three kilometers from Sideng, is currently building a guesthouse across from a 204-year-old pagoda and stage that was restored by the rehabilitation project. His English website advertises housing and services such as treks, fishing, and chances to teach English in the local elementary school. The great majority of his clients are foreigners.

Tourists who enjoy these quiet activities rarely appreciate an explosion in the number of like-minded travelers. Allen Zhang (张明健), a Chengdu native who has lived in a Shaxi guesthouse since February 2007, came seeking a peaceful place. He described the village’s tourists as “more educated and not part of tour groups . . . (They) do not have a big impact; they come quietly, and leave quietly.”

Zhang is building a bar in Shaxi but says that the village’s atmosphere is more important to him than making money. “If there is a large change [in tourist numbers], I will leave,” he says.

Lu Yuan, from the Yunnan Centre for Cultural Learning and Development, is also against rapid tourism development and commercialization: “Shaxi needs to go its own road . . . it can’t receive (too many tourists),” she says. Her NGO plans to train Shaxi locals as well receiving students and scholars studying agriculture and minority cultures.

Li Baosheng (李宝生) is a local resident who has been involved with Lu Yuan’s work in Shaxi since 2003. He chooses to concentrate on farming and raising livestock, and says that stagnating tourism would not worry him. However, like most Shaxi residents, he acknowledges the benefits that tourism has brought. Not only have there been improvements in the economy, but also in sanitation, trash disposal, roads, and infrastructure.

The county government is currently interested in developing not only tourism, but also Shaxi’s walnut, meat and dairy industries. In Yang Fubao’s opinion, “This is a coordinated development. You can’t put all your money into one industry . . . [we] need to develop everything—local people are, first of all, still farmers.”

Nonetheless, tourism is set to grow further. Transportation has been one of the main hindrances to Shaxi’s tourist development, Sideng being at least four hours’ drive from the prefectural centre, Dali. Now, the construction of the 214 national “should help the tourism of Shaxi and the whole of Jianchuan county,” predicts Yang.