Instead of running away, she stood to attention with arms akimbo and gave a serious smile. The giant wooden basket on her back almost made her fall as she tried to straighten her body.

When I raised the camera, Yang Jiaxiu was walking along a narrow, muddy mountain path in a virgin fir forest, carrying about 50 kilograms of water. She twisted her body to pour the water into a large tank when she finally arrived at her house.

Then the Miao woman put down the basket, cleaned her hands on the colourful embroidered apron around her blue dress, and to my surprise, asked in awkward putonghua to see my camera.

I gave her the camera, hoping she wouldn’t throw it into the tank. She raised the machine carefully and pressed her face on it.

“People look so beautiful through it,” she said with great admiration as she gave me back the Nikon after about 10 minutes. “They have my photo in the Ôbig house’ I am good-looking there.”

Yang, 34 and mother of three children, is a Qing Miao in one of 12 villages in Soga County, Liupanshui, Southwest China’s Guizhou Province.

The group of Miaos, with a population of more than 4,000 people, distinguish themselves with ox horns worn on the head. They were driven into the inaccessible mountains by the stronger Miaos and Dongs about 300 years ago and have lived there ever since.

Every day, Yang used to get up in the dark to walk two kilometers to a spring to carry water, make breakfast for the family, work in the potato and corn fields, and then make lunch.
　　　　　
Cultural mission: Xiong Huaqing (right), 23, representative of the special branch of Miaos in Soga County to the Guizhou Provincial People’s Congress, greets Su Donghai (left), researcher of the Chinese Society of Museums who helped build Soga into ChinaÕs first eco-museum.

In the afternoon she would draw patterns on wax-printed cloth and dye the cloth, carry the excrement of bulls and men to the cellar where they were fermented into fertilizer, and make supper. In the evening she would take the children to bed, embroider beside an oil lamp or grind the corn while her husband drank and chatted with other villagers.

She had never left the village, never been to the fair five kilometers away and never dared to go there until the year of 2000 when some “strange-looking” outsiders came and took away a young woman from the village.

The young woman returned two months later with some “boxes” they had never seen before. Yang and the curious villagers found they could see themselves through these “boxes” and even make “copies” of men and women.

When they looked through the “magic boxes”, something about them and the world around them dramatically changed.

Xiong Huaqing, then 21, was the young woman who traveled to the outside world. The persons who took her away were Su Donghai, researcher with the Chinese Society of Museums and member of the International Council of Museums, and the Norwegian museologist John Gjestrum.

The researchers were building the Soga County and three other counties in Guizhou into “eco-museums.”

In the “living” museums, which were formally established in 1997, residents were encouraged to document their local culture, ethnic history and lifestyles with writings, photos and videos, and also retain traditions handed down by their ancestors while developing the economy at the same time.

Xiong was chosen because she was the best-educated woman in the village. She studied for three years at a high school in Liuzhi, a city 60 kilometers from Soga, before getting married at 18.

Researchers wanted to send her on an international course in Norway to study modern photography and video techniques, but the young woman refused to go at first.

“I thought myself ugly then with my strange clothes and large head,” she said.
　　　　　
Mountain Life: Longga Village of the Miaos in Soga County, Guizhou is located in inaccessible mountains.

The Miaos in Soga wear two wooden horns, both about 60 centimeters long. The women wind their three-meter-long hair and woolen threads, which weigh about 11 kilograms in total, around the horns and fastened them with white bands.

Their dress is very eye-catching among those in jackets, trousers or even jeans in the fairs at the foot of the mountain, said Xiong.

In the fairs they changed their corn and potatoes into necessities such as salt and soap.

“We had no concept of money until recent years, and were satisfied by such deals as a chicken for a candle,” recalled Xiong Zhenqing, the former zhailao, or the village master.

The young in the village felt more ashamed of their costumes when they watched television in the fair. They thought themselves “primitive” and walked long distances to nearby towns to peep into bars and discos, said Su.

“It’s urgent to do something at this stage of social development. Otherwise the cultural heritage of the tiny group will die out quickly once the villages are merged with mainstream culture.”

Finally Xiong Huaqing was persuaded. She put her hair and horns into a suitcase and went to Norway, a country “further away than Beijing” with young men and women from the Dong, Bouyei and Han ethnic groups in Guizhou three years ago.

After two months’ training, she brought back several “shining boxes.” “She came to our house, aimed the Ôbox’ at my grandma and asked her to tell legends of the Miao King,” said 10-year-old Yang Jiamei.

“My grandma told her not to play any more and to go back to her loom.”

Xiong found herself several helpers-educated young men and women of the village-and asked them to record moments of their daily life.

Yang Daiping, 19, grasped the expensive camera with her hands dyed blue, held her breath and peeped through the viewfinder.

“I will send your Ôface’ to the town and find you a good husband,” she said, aiming the camera at her little sister weaving at the loom.

The girl immediately stood up and smiled nervously.

Days later Yang tried to take a picture of her grandmother who was working in the potato field.

“Don’t waste it on me,” said the 56-year-old woman. “I am too old to find a husband in the town.”

Yang’s camera became the family’s topic, and she had only one photo taken of her. Her husband took it when she was drawing patterns on the waxed cloth.

The women of Soga learn to draw on waxed cloth and to embroider at four or five, said Su. In addition to flowers, birds and fishes, the patterns are often intertwined lines, circles, quadrangles and dots.
　　　　　
Hair and now: A Miao girl helps her sister shape the hair. The Miao women in Soga, Guizhou wear ox horns on the head and wind their long hair and woollen threads around the horns.

“They say the patterns are our writings. But the women didn’t know how to write until recently, so we forgot the meaning,” said Yang.

It’s always a festival when “Director Xu” returned from the town with developed films and prints, she said. “Everyone rushes to see what they look like in the photos.”

According to Xu Meiling, former curator of the Soga eco-museum, the trained young villagers have now taken 1,100 photos of their daily life, art and customs. They have videotaped 12 hours of data and sound-recorded nine discs of oral accounts of history and legends in their own languages since 2000.

Many of the photos and videotapes are about festivals, wedding and funeral ceremonies. The photographers are busiest from January 4-14, when grand parties are held in which boys and girls chase each other.

Xu said the young villagers have visited 16 village elders and recorded their oral accounts. “They have never before been patient enough to listen to the old talking about their own history before,” he said.

The photos, videotapes and discs, which fulfilled the first phase of the “memory” project, are now displayed and stored in the documentation center built in the village, which is equipped with modern facilities. The villagers refer to it as the “big house.”

“The villagers often come to see their photos in the documentation center. They have put their embroideries and wax-prints there, and the village master has put in the bamboo slips on which he made marks to record the history,” said Xu.

In addition to documentation, the researchers have worked with local authorities to pump water and divert electricity up the mountain since 1997. They also helped build a “Project Hope” primary school with donations from staff of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage in 2000.

“We do not intend to freeze the natural development of the ethnic group. Only when their basic living conditions are improved are they able to take care of their culture,” said Su.

The villagers now plan to set up a “museum shop” where they will sell their embroideries and wax-prints as art works, labelled with the artists’ names. An anthropologist visiting the inaccessible village early this year bought a complete set of the embroidered costumes, which the young used to find embarrassing, for 8,000 yuan (US$970).

They have voted Xiong Huaqing to speak for them. The young woman has just attended the People’s Congress of Guizhou Province held this January.

“No one can teach a tiny ethnic group to have confidence when discovering mainstream culture. They must find it themselves,” said Su. n The author is from China Daily.