The Baima people are an ancient, primordial, mysterious tribe with a sacred culture rooted in nature. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a wave of migrant workers swept through the countryside. Able-bodied young people left their fertile fields and headed south to Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Guangdong, and Hunan, or west to Xinjiang and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in search of work. The Baima Tibetans also left home to join them.
As time went by, the Baima people’s way of life changed greatly. These changes gradually eroded Baima culture. Village life was no longer a necessity, but a choice, a psychological retreat to fall back on.
How had once-vibrant villages become so desolate? The young people’s departure robbed the villages of their future, while the children’s departure left them hopeless. More disheartening still, women today no longer want to have children.
