Library researcher spends retirement documenting ethnic minorities
Wang Hongzhi (right) talks with a local woman in the Lugu Lake area of Sichuan Province in May 2021.
A Shanghai retiree has spent about two decades visiting each of China's 56 ethnic groups to record their achievements in eliminating poverty.
Wang Hongzhi, 78, a former senior researcher at Shanghai Library, has taken some 50,000 photos documenting the cultures and lifestyles of minority groups. He spends at least six months every year traversing some of the more inaccessible terrain of China to visit their villages.
In interviews, he records their history, architecture, literature, customs, clothes and other unique cultural aspects.
To record the last ethnic group, he visited Taiwan in 2009 to meet the Gaoshan minority.
Over the years, Wang has donated about 560,000 yuan (US$85,904) of his limited pension funds to help support the education of ethnic minority children.
"I'm happy to be part of the national anti-poverty campaign and to witness the great changes of their lives," said Wang.
Ethnic minority groups, apart from the Han Chinese majority, occupy about 60 percent of the nation's vast land mass, living mainly in the autonomous regions of Xinjiang, Tibet, Ningxia, Guangxi and Inner Mongolia.
Wang first became interested in ethnic groups in 1966, when he was studying English literature at Peking University in Beijing.
Under the directive of then Premier Zhou Enlai, he and 400 other university students were sent to support development of backward areas in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region for about three months. The hospitality and sincerity of the ethnic people deeply moved him.
Wang Hongzhi talks with villagers of Buyi minority.
Wang joined the army after graduation and was sent to work for a company in Inner Mongolia, where he often lived in yurts, traveled on horseback and shared the traditional milky tea of the Mongolian people.
Before retiring from the army, he was sent to serve in Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi, where he met people of the Yi, Miao, Zhuang and Bai ethnic minorities.
He was assigned to work in Shanghai Library in 1987, where he had access to documents and photos about ethnic groups. He started spending his holidays traveling to visit some of the groups.
After his retirement in 2004, Wang set himself the goal of visiting every ethnic group in China. He never failed to be impressed by the uniqueness of their cultures but was also shocked by the extreme poverty in some of the remote regions he visited.
"I told them to trust the Communist Party of China, which would make alleviating poverty a top priority," Wang said.
When he visited the Li minority in Hainan Province in 2005, he found the people living in shabby, thatched houses, eating meatless rice dishes and raising undernourished children.
Poverty alleviation became his key focus. In his earlier travels, he talked with Party cadres and other local officials about the situation. Some officials expressed willingness to address the suffering of people; others were reluctant for fear of too much media attention, Wang said.
Major changes occurred after the 18th National Congress of CPC in 2012, when President Xi Jinping launched a comprehensive, nationwide anti-poverty program, according to Wang.
Wang Hongzhi and people of Dulong minority.
This year, China declared it had met the goal of eradicating absolute poverty in the world's most populous country, home to over 1.4 billion people.
Per capita income of the rural poor increased from 6,079 yuan (US$953.8) in 2013 to 12,588 yuan in 2020, according to a white paper on poverty alleviation released in early April.
During Wang's visit to the Oroqin and Evenki nationalities in northeastern China, he noticed that the community predominated by hunters was being relocated from forest areas that could no longer sustain their lifestyle.
The government built new houses and allocated rich farmland to the displaced, while preserving their traditional hunting culture wherever possible.
"I realized what a challenging task it is," Wang said. "The anti-poverty campaign should not only alleviate physical poverty but also help them culturally. Many of them are given further education to assist them."
Ethnic people are offered training in how to market agricultural and heritage products such as embroidery and weaving, Wang said.
Tourism is also being promoted in ethnic areas as part of the fight against poverty, he noted.
When he revisited the Du nationality in northwestern Qinghai Province, he found environmental-protection slogans, such as Xi's remark: "Clear waters and green mountains are as good as mountains of gold and silver."
Modern garbage-disposal systems have been installed, and the natural environment is now under strict protection.
Wang Hongzhi and a leader of an ancient Tibetan tribe.
"Booming domestic ecotourism has brought more prosperity," he said. "The ethnic people now talk about tourism, the environment and their plans to attract visitors."
Wang's trips have often involved hardships and even danger, but he has never given up.
In 2020, right after the domestic lockdown for the coronavirus pandemic was lifted, he set off for a mountainous region in Guizhou Province to visit a village of the Dong minority.
He slipped and almost fell off a cliff. He managed to grab a small tree to stanch the fall and had to wait for a passerby to help him up.
Wang has also had close calls in a marsh in Xinjiang, on a remote mountain in Hainan and at the Nujiang River Grand Canyon in Yunnan. He credits his survival to the skills he learned in military service and to his many years of traveling alone. And most of all, he is grateful to ethnic people who have pulled him out of difficulties.
Despite pitfalls, Wang just never gives up. His next trip will be to southwestern Sichuan Province next month to visit a remaining matriarchal ethnic society along the Yalun River.
Wang talks with an ethnic minority woman.
His donations to needy ethnic families come from savings that he and his wife have accrued through frugal living. He reckons the couple can spare about 20,000 yuan every year.
His financial support has helped a middle school student in the Miao Autonomous Prefecture in central Hubei Province finish her studies and go on to university. She now is a teacher, providing income to help her once poverty-stricken family.
"I'm reluctant to even buy a pair of shoes for myself because I would rather donate the money to help ethnic children," Wang said.
But he does admit spending 300 yuan buying a new pair of walking shoes last year after the accident in Guizhou. The soles of the old shoes were worn after decades of traveling.
Many of his neighbors, friends and old library colleagues have joined him in making donations to ethnic communities.
Wang said he plans to compile a book of his stories and photos, and have it translated into English to inform the world about China's ethnic cultures. His son-in-law, a graduate from Shanghai International Studies University, has volunteered as translator.
"I am not publishing the book for profit," he said. "I just want to share the stories of my years studying ethnic cultures."
Wang shakes hands with a Tibetan man.
