An Oroqen hunter is ready for a trip into the depths of the forest. The ethnic group in Northeast China is trying to preserve its traditions. Lu Tao / for China Daily

Top: Wu Xueying (left), village head of the new Oroqen town, learns to make a fur coat from Ge Changyun, an Oroqen cultural heritage bearer. Left: Mo Guizhen teaches a little girl to sing Oroqen folk song at a local festival. Mo, 63, and friends mostly in her age group are collecting the songs of hunters and writing down their folklore. Above: Dancing is part of the tradition of the Oroqens, along with making clothes from animal skin and furs. They are the "people using reindeer". Photos by Teng Jun / for China Daily

Oroqen ethnic group in race against time to safeguard traditions, Li Yao reports in Heilongjiang.

Mo Guizhen was 5 when she saw a real bed for the first time. She refused to sleep on it, accustomed as she was to deer furs laid on the ground of hunters' huts in the depths of the Greater Hinggan Mountains in northeastern China.

It was 1953 and she was moving out of the mountains with more than 1,000 other members of the Oroqen. The ancient ethnic group, on the verge of extinction, was being settled in government-provided houses at the foot of the mountains.

Nearly six decades later there are more than 8,000 Oroqen people, but Mo feels nervous about their future. "We are losing our culture. My childhood stories sound like fairy tales to young Oroqens."

Hunting was at the core of their culture. Oroqens - "people using reindeer" - were fierce hunters who wore animal furs and skins and lived in huts covered with birch bark. Their ancestors were recorded as early as in the 4th century. They have their language, though no written script, and their shamans.

Oroqens are mainly farmers today. Mo and her friends are busily collecting the songs of hunters, writing down their folklore and teaching the language to whoever wants to learn.

"Old people are living fossils of the Oroqen culture," she said. "Time is running out."

'No ordinary fish'

Mo remembers moving frequently as her father led clan members on hunting expeditions. Women usually stayed behind to dry meat, prepare food and take care of the elderly and the children.

Setting up their shelters beside rivers, the Oroqens were excellent fishers. "Once my mother fished out a giant fish that fed us for a week," she said. "But she was too frightened to take a single bite. She suspected the creature with big open eyes was no ordinary fish but a dragon."

Mo, now 63, remains mystified by many shaman practices pertaining to the hunting life.

When children became impatient for the hunters' return, Mo's mother would ask a "goddess" by making a simple wooden frame that roughly resembled a person's shape. Two women pulled threads tied to the edges to make the "goddess" dance and respond to questions about the hunters' return two or three days later.

"The goddess leaned forward when my mother said 'three', and it indeed happened so," she said.

In the summer of 1952, the river Mo's family lived beside flooded and sent their birchbark boat downstream. Her mother and aunt gathered the children, knelt and kowtowed to the drifting boat, praying that a merciful god not take it away and leave them to starve.

"No matter how devoutly we prayed, the boat disappeared," Mo said, amused.

A hard life

Mo was 9 and already a fine horseback rider when she joined her extended family on their last group hunt in 1957. She enjoyed catching fish without a hook and had unusual playmates, such as a wounded baby sable.

"I fell into running water twice while crossing rivers," she said. "Both times my father risked his life and saved me. He used to be the head of our clan and an excellent hunter."

In retrospect, Mo believes that being constantly on the move and chasing wild beasts ruined the hunters' health and caused untimely deaths.

"Hunters caught cold easily after stalking deer in winter for days. Many later suffered from coronary diseases and emphysema after a lifetime in harsh surroundings." Mo's husband was 48 when he died of illness in 1993.

Her mother gave birth to eight children. The first had a disabled leg and died within months. The third lived only hours in the cold winter.

Mo's mother died in 1984, at 63. "She looked so old and worn out when she left because of all the hardships she had suffered."

Lifestyle transitions

Mo and her siblings kicked and screamed to protest sleeping in the bed when they first moved downhill. Until 1958, a few stubborn seniors preferred traditional shelters in the courtyard to the brick and tile housing.

"When people sat around a fire in a makeshift shelter, they may have felt warm on the front but it was icy cold on their back. We have no more such hardships in a brick house today," Mo said.

Since their resettlement, Oroqens are provided free housing, subsidized healthcare and education. They live mainly by farming.

In the 1990s, hunting was banned for most of the year to protect the declining number of forest animals. Government authorities collected hunters' shotguns and redistribute them to be used for about a month every winter.

Hound dogs are still a common sight in people's courtyards. But they are quiet, most sleepy and unresponsive to strangers' curious faces and noises.

"Nothing stirs them up except when they see men prepare horses to go hunting," Mo said. "But that excitement comes rather rarely for them."

Will they be blamed?

Villager Mo Caiqiang, 33, longs for the annual hunting season in Xinsheng township, Heihe. With 12 years' experience, he has learned skills from older generations and talks with great authority about tracking animals.

The best time to hunt is during the first snowfall, he said, but authorities issue permits and shotguns late. Hunters can take only what the poachers leave.

"Game was abundant years ago," he said. "Deer and boars roamed the forests. Now there is little to be found, because of poaching and deforestation. People will blame the Oroqens for overhunting one day when there is no more game running in the forests.

"I hope a nature conservation area will be built here and managed by Oroqen people. We are natural protectors of the forests and can keep poachers away while bringing our traditions back to life."

'I feel proud'

The first school-age Oroqen generation, which included Mo Guizhen, received an education amid a majority of Han Chinese. The Oroqen tongue quickly lost appeal, even in family surroundings.

Mo's mother had difficulty speaking Mandarin and usually took Mo grocery shopping. "I dreaded the task at that time, for fear of being laughed at by my classmates when I talked with my mother in the Oroqen language," Mo said.

Decades later, she feels compelled to learn the ethnic language. She petitioned to Heihe's mayor for the establishment of a singing and dancing troupe in Xinsheng township and has led a performance team since 2008.

The troupe gives tourists a snapshot of the Oroqen people's dying culture, offers greetings with homemade koumiss (fermented horse milk) and presents unique clothes, collections of household utensils made of birch bark, singing and storytelling in Oroqen and sometimes Mandarin.

Wu Nan, 22, said that joining the team helped her embrace her roots. "At school the stereotypes always offended me when my classmates said Oroqens were fierce and malicious savages."

Wu had felt little connection to Oroqens beyond her brother's stories from hunting trips. Today's hunters use trucks, not horses, to transport food and other supplies during a one-week or longer stay in the forests.

The troupe's performance schedules require members to pick up the ancestral language. Wu uses her English-learning techniques, writing Mandarin characters to remind herself of the pronunciation and meaning of Oroqen words. Now she can sing dozens of folk songs and has a growing vocabulary.

"I feel integrated . . . and proud of being Oroqen. We are a people good at dancing, singing, hunting and shooting. The downside is that we are too honest and often cheated," Wu said.

For lack of funds, the troupe has no stable full-time members, especially male performers. Sometimes Wu's boyfriend, who works at the township clinic, and Mo's son help out.

Critical losses

Guan Jinfang, 55, leads a singing and dance troupe that was set up in 2005 in Huma county, Heihe. She was named the national heritage bearer for Oroqen folk songs in 2009 and has collected more than 500 folk songs in three decades.

"Our culture is going toward extinction, unless extraordinary measures are taken to keep it alive. As old people are dying, soon children will only be able to find past traditions in books, museums and video programs," Guan said with a sharp urgency.

Guan went on to enumerate the fine character of Oroqen people: They were survivors, living by wits in harsh conditions. Respecters of nature, hunters looked only for enough to sustain the family. Their prey was divided equally, including the aged, the sick and the disabled.

Guan's troupe recreates the scenes of a hunting life. "We are also singing new songs that give modern contexts to traditional tunes," Guan said, explaining her vision to attract a wider audience.

Members of her troupe are village volunteers. Guan said they portray Morikun, the heroic hunters whose battles with devils and beasts were praised in folk songs.

To improve their performing standards, Guan hopes to arrange training by music professors at Harbin Normal University in Heilongjiang's provincial capital, Harbin.

Guan counted her strengths: fluent in the ethnic tongue and a gifted storyteller and singer. "I keep challenging myself - have I tried my best? - and will continue the efforts until my last breath."

Her husband died 10 years ago, and she lives with her children and grandchildren. At home the family communicates in Mandarin.

As marriages with Han Chinese are on the rise, younger generations grow up in a Mandarin-speaking environment. The Oroqen language is as foreign to them as English. In the process, they lose access to folklore such as songs, art and literature.

No modern relevance

Meng Shuzhen, 61, has also devoted more than three decades to collecting folk songs, but sometimes feels she is striving for a lost cause with no real folklore revival.

"The best scenario is that there will be a place for Oroqen heritage in museums and performances to represent part of China's diverse culture. But in reality, the role of Oroqen traditions is minimal," Meng said.

For example, birchbark housewares from infants' cradles to boats and traditional garments made of animal fur and skin may be put on display but will never regain their relevance to daily life.

"Oroqens have a weak culture that is being assimilated," she said. "Today Oroqen people are little different from Han Chinese. They want the same things from a comfortable life and fall victim to the same social ills, such as disrespect to parents and selfishness."

Before the 1950s, Meng said, "selfish" was not part of the Oroqen vocabulary.

Write to the reporter at liyao@chinadaily.com.cn.

(China Daily 12/30/2011 page1)