Distinct Culture Fades : Nomadic Life a Memory for China Oroqen

“Would you like to hear a song of the Oroqen people?” Mo Jinmei asked with a beaming smile.

The guests said yes, and Mo’s 6-year-old niece, Jiani, needing only the slightest encouragement, sang several verses to the tune of a beautiful old Oroqen folk song.

But when Mo translated the words from Oroqen into Chinese, it became clear that although the melody was traditional, the words had been changed.

‘Wore Animal Skins’

“In the old society,” Jiani had sung, “we Oroqen people lived in shelters of bark and branches, wore animal skins as clothes, ate the meat of wild beasts and led a wandering life. Then the Communist Party came, and under its leadership we Oroqen people started to lead a settled life. We started to live in houses, and the children began school.”

The words of the song are quite accurate: In 1953, the Oroqen people were told in no uncertain terms that they would have to move from their familiar forested mountains to lowland settlements, where they would live much like the Chinese.

About 100 Oroqen now make their homes in this Sino-Soviet border town, out of a total of 4,000 scattered in towns and villages across northern Heilongjiang province and Inner Mongolia.

China’s official policy toward its 55 formally recognized national minorities is one of respect for minority customs and language, but the actual experience of minorities has varied from region to region and according to how severely ethnic customs conflict with the demands of the society around them.

The traditional nomadic, hunting-oriented life style of the Oroqen people was seen in the early 1950s as having no place in a Communist society. Some Oroqen had drifted into banditry, and relations between Oroqen and ethnic Chinese were marred by conflict.

Now, after 36 years in small settlements or scattered amid ethnic Chinese, the Oroqen people have lost most of what made them unique. They are well on the way to assimilation.

Jiani’s mother, Mo Jinfeng, 34, said she now speaks Chinese better than Oroqen. Her daughter speaks so little of the ancestral tongue that she cannot understand the words of the songs she sings, she said.

“I do think that Oroqen should not be forgotten,” she went on. “There is an Oroqen language class now at the local school . . . but the problem is that most of the people here prefer to study English. All the universities require English, not Oroqen. My daughter, too, will study English or Russian when she’s older.”

Indeed, assimilation is a fate that may await many of China’s smaller nationalities. They have survived through the centuries partly because of poverty and isolation. But when economic development brings contact with the wider society around them, they easily start to lose their language and identity.

The Chinese news media, while preferring not to focus on this issue, occasionally provide a glimpse into what is happening. The official New China News Agency, for example, recently described how change has come to the 10,000 Jino people of Yunnan province in southern China.

“For many years, agricultural experts have been trying to get the Jino people to grow sharen , a kind of Chinese herb, and other economic crops,” the news agency said. “However, they failed to persuade the stubborn Jino people, one of China’s smallest nationalities, to abandon their traditional slash-and-burn agriculture. But in recent years the Jino have started to enter the 20th Century.”

The news agency reported with approval that many Jino people have begun to raise cash crops and quoted a man named Cheqie to illustrate the benefits:

“ ‘It never occurred to us that sharen could bring so many things,’ Cheqie said with a smile as he stood in his new house equipped with a sofa, color television set, sewing machine and wardrobes. The Jino . . . have leaped over several historical stages in only four decades. Straw huts have given way to modern houses. . . .”

For most of the Oroqen people, the end of the old ways came rather suddenly in 1953.

Guan Chunsheng, 65, an Oroqen-minority Communist Party official who played a major role in the relocation of his people, recalled in a recent interview how difficult it was to persuade many to abandon the life they knew.

“There were meetings held by Communist Party organizations to persuade us to come out of the mountains,” Guan said. “They discussed with us whether we would like to move out of the mountains and settle down in Oroqen villages. Some people had their doubts, saying, ‘It won’t be convenient to hunt once we start living together in one place.’ ”

Personally, Guan favored the move, but he was in the minority.

“At first there were some who didn’t intend to move out of the mountains, for they didn’t trust the houses set up for them,” he said. “ ‘Won’t we be smothered to death in them?’ they asked. Elderly people wouldn’t leave the mountain, for they were not accustomed to houses. They preferred simple shelters. They didn’t leave the mountain until half a year later. . . . But by the end of 1953 all the Oroqen people had come down from the mountain.”

Wang Dejun, a Heihe city official responsible for minority affairs, agreed that at first “most of the Oroqen people wouldn’t come out of the mountains because they were so accustomed to hunting.”

Even after reluctantly moving into the wooden houses the Chinese government built for them, many people doubted their safety, he said.

“Although they moved into the houses, they wouldn’t sleep in them,” he said. “They would still stay in the simple shelters they set up in the courtyards.”

Guan worked hard to ease the mistrust between nationalities.

“I told the Oroqen people they should work hard and unite with the ethnic Chinese people, and not curse them and fight them,” Guan said. “I talked like this: ‘Don’t disrupt unity. It’s no good to be without the ethnic Chinese. Without them, there would be no grain to eat. The Oroqen don’t know how to plant fields. The Chinese plant fields, so you can’t say they’re no good.’ ”

Such talk had its risks, however.

“In doing this work, sometimes bad people wanted to beat me up,” Guan recalled. “They’d call me a ‘stupid turtle’s egg.’ They’d say of me, ‘He’s always on the side of the Chinese.’ I’d say: ‘I’m just being fair.’ ”

Guan also knew that he had the strength of the Communist Party behind him, and during that period the party often used mass meetings to knock down opposition.

“I’d say, ‘Go ahead and beat me up. Beat me up today, and I’ll get even with you tomorrow. I’ll beat you up at a big meeting. Let’s see who wins in the end,’ ” he said.

Wang, an ethnic Chinese, said that relations between Chinese and Oroqen have improved considerably.

“The ethnic Chinese believed that these people were savages, very fierce and malicious,” Wang said. “The Oroqen, after they’d been drinking, if they happened upon a Chinese person in the mountains, they would beat him up. The Chinese felt the Oroqen were uncivilized and that it was easy to trick them into trading a deer for just one bottle of liquor. And when there were just a few Oroqen among Chinese, then the Chinese would sometimes beat up the Oroqen. There were many cases of Chinese cheating the Oroqen.”

Wang and Guan both said that most urbanized Oroqen, like Guan himself and the Mo family, now live in very much the same way as ethnic Chinese.

Even in Oroqen settlements, there is little left of Oroqen culture, Guan said.

“Traditionally we eat porridge with chopped meat in it,” Guan said. “But now their customs are just about the same as ethnic Chinese. When I visit, I say, ‘Why are you cooking meat dishes the Chinese way?’ ”

The Oroqen still love to go on hunting expeditions, especially for roe, which provide their favorite meat. The hunting of rare species, such as black bear and elk, is now officially banned, but some of the old Oroqen unruliness survives, and such rules are sometimes ignored.

“If you really want to eat elk, you can still eat it,” Guan confided. “Recently they hunted one down secretly.”

Guan said that in his view nothing is different between Oroqen and ethnic Chinese.

Wang, however, insisted that even today “there are some special characteristics of the Oroqen people.”

“For instance,” he said, “their dogs are hunting dogs; that’s one point. And, second, they have hunting horses. Besides this, they still have some birch-bark bowls as decorations or keepsakes. They have deerskin blankets. And older people, when they see each other, speak the Oroqen language.”

Wang said that while the health of Oroqen people has improved since they left the mountains, the average life expectancy is still less than 50 years, largely because of the ravages of tuberculosis and alcohol.

“They spend 50% of their household income on liquor,” Wang said.

Guan, laughing, said Wang’s estimate was a bit low. “It’s more like 60%,” he said. “When they get a glimpse of liquor, they can’t leave it alone.”