"We can no longer sit on the ground as we wish, we can no longer make bonfires as we are used to, the reindeer no longer walk easily around us. Opening the ront door, we can no longer see the forest, all the familiar scenes have changed. Perhaps we will have televisions, or telephones, so what?" Niurika, who is now in her second year of college.

Members of China’s last surviving hunting tribe began moving from their homes in Inner Mongolia’s Xing’an Mountains last Saturday to the rural outskirts of Genhe, the administrative center of the regioEleven Ewenki families, 37 people in total, became the first group to settle in brand new houses built specially for them in Genhe, according to a local official, on Sunday.

On Monday morning, reporters saw only one family was living in the new houses. “No other family are livin here,” a security guard of the community told reporters.Changing ways

Eighty-two year old Maria Suo would not make eye contact with the reporters who had come to cover the relocation of the Ewenki. She believed that all the strangers who had suddenly descended on the town were there to try to persuade her to leave her home.

Her son He Yingjun, who has been to college and settled down in Genhe long ago, told the media that the reason his mother does not want to move is simple: she does not want to leave the place she calls home.

Maria Suo’s home is halfway up the mountain. Outside, her two granddaughters were sitting on the swings. There was a contented smile on her face as she watched them play.He Yingjun said that many of the Ewenki felt reluctant to leave. They are accustomed to life in the forest, surrounded by their reindeer. “They are even used to the flies and mosquitoes in the summer time, that are as numerous as the leaves on the trees.”It was noon, and the horseflies were out in force. Maria Suo lit several piles of leaves and stalks, as an insect repellant for the reindeer, a number of which emerged from the forest on smelling the smoabout the tent.

According to He Yingjun, interaction with the reindeer was an indispensable part of his mother’s daily life. Another elderly woman, who also remained silent, was named Laoba. In 1981, Laoba’s daughter, Liuba, was acepted into the Central Academy of Fine Arts. She was the first of her community ever to attend college, and the first to go to live in a big city. After graduation, she went to work at a fine arts press at Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia.

However unable to adjust to city life, she eventually quit her job and returned to live in Aoluguya. She began drinking, at first a little, later heavily. In August last year, she got drunk one day and drowned.

It was this tragedy that started Damana, another member of the community and the representative of the Municipal People’s Congress, thinking long and hard about the future of her fellow tribe members. he next generation should not live like their parents, they should enjoy modern life, she decided. Damana, and a like-minded friend went to speak to the town head, to ask that something be done to help her people.

Farewell to arms

The local government, meanwhile, had also been considering the future of the Ewenki hunters. Living deep in the forest, their children were out of reach of education facilities and they had no access to medical care.

Damana’s elder son often went alone with his gun into the forest to try to bring some meat back to the table, but as often a not, he would return empty handed. The forest covering the Xing’an Mountains became smaller year by year. The wild animals became fewer, as the number of poachers grew. In winter, the valley froze, and breaking ice forwater was a daily routine. After breaking the ice, they had to walk miles in the mountain to get back to their tent.

Fifty-year-old Arong told reporters that he was the first to agree with the relocation project. Before moving, he had no opportunity to see his new home in Genhe, but he packed all his bes tent, the iron stove and chimney, thinking that sooner or later, he would need to use them again.

On Tuesday at the new community, the simply-decorated houses were all empty, except for No. 47 ?Arong’s. The only furniture were a fold-up bed, a table and two old benches. Asked how he felt about his new home, Arong said his living codition was better than that on the mountain, yet his 20 reindeer had gone without food for two straight days. The township government was organizing people to cut grass and tender tree leaves for feed, but reindeer do not eat grass, they eat a type of lichen known as reindeer moss, and the leaves were only enough to feed the two adult reindeer.

The government was reportedly preparing to provide feed to the hunters for their reindeer. Yet Du Jing asked, “The reindeers are used to livng in the wild on lichen, now they are caged and fed food they are unaccustomed to eating, can they survive?”Maria Suo’s son-in-law made a rough calculation for the reportes. In recent years the price for reindeer antlers has been falling. The annual income from one reindeer is around 200 yuan. When they were raised in the wild, there were virtually no extra expenses, and they also had time to go hunting. Income from hunting was around 1,000 yuan per year.

But according to the regulation, when they move away from their mountain home, they have to hand in their guns, which means they lose that 1,000 of annual income. Meanwhile, raising reindeers in pens may cost them over a thousand per year. For families with no other income, it might prove beyond their means to continue raising reindeer.

Some hunters were reportedly considering handing their reindeer over to the government, in return for a living allowance. However for most of the Ewenki, reindeer are the only real assets they possess, surrendering them would require quite a leap of faith.

New lifestyles

The youngsters seemed mostly oblivious to the worries of the older members of the community, with thfestyle not yet engraved on their minds.

Twenty-year-old Niurika is sophomore in college. Since high school, she has come to her grandma’s place on the mountain every vacation. “I’ve accumulated many photographs,” she told reporters, “I hope someday will help outsiders to understand the culture of the Ewenki hunters.” She said it was not that her grandma did not want to leave the forest. It would be better for the young generation to grow up where they had access to a better education, however, leaving behind everything they knew was not an easy decision to make.

The red roofs and windows of the new houses in Genhe look very beautiful, yet the 200 kilometers seperating them from Aoluguya represents a much longer journey, in terms of changing the lifestyle and way of thinking of this small group of people.

The Ewenki, sometimes known as Evenki, or Tungus, live in the far north-east of China, in Inner Mongolia and Heilongjiang Province. One of China’s 55 minority nationalities,they number around 26,000 in total population.

Most live in agriculture-based communities, or raise livestock, but one tribe, the Yahute, make their living by hunting in the dense forests of the Greater Xing’an Mountains and raising reindeer.The once-nomadic tribe migrated south from the Ergun River on the Sino-Russian border and settled in and around the town of Aoluguya in 1965. There are about 500 people living in the town, 230 of them Ewenkis.

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