Hi everyone! My profuse apologies
for my prolonged absence. The past few weeks have been SO BUSY!! I literally
dream about my research every night – there’s no escape! Right now I’ve started
fieldwork, the beginning of which involves a lot of stress with planning and
figuring out how to modify my original plans to fit the messy reality in front
of me. (Haha plus I’m really out of shape, so mountain-climbing is really
exhausting, especially in a disturbed tropical forest with lots of spiny lianas
and other mean-spirited plants with vicious curved thorns for drawing blood
from innocent, good-hearted people trying to save their habitat – I actually
have a list of plants I now hate.)
Besides learning to live in clouds
of mosquitos and hammering out methodology details, early fieldwork involves
juggling the constantly changing schedules of my field team members and
fighting for their time with other professors. On top of all this, I’m still
reading a lot to refine my research proposal for the 5 grants I have due in the
next 1.5 months. In short, I’m really looking forward to what I imagine my life
will be like in a couple months: organized, and with a little time for myself
in the evening (hahaha we’ll see).
Backing up a bit, I realized that I
haven’t actually told many of you what research is about:
I am studying the changing relationship
between indigenous communities and their traditionally protected sacred
forests, its effect on land use practices, and the ecological implications of
this evolving relationship for biodiversity conservation.
I’m working with indigenous Dai
communities in Xishuangbanna, a prefecture in southwest China that contains the
world’s northernmost tropical rain forest and China’s richest biodiversity. However,
these forests are disappearing very quickly in the face of expanding rubber
plantations.
Right now, Dai sacred forests called
Holy Hills are virtually the only remaining forest fragments outside government
nature reserves, and they have been documented to contain rare species and ecosystems
that are often underrepresented in current protected area networks.
Besides their conservation
potential, we also need to consider that there are competing interests at play
in Holy Hills. On one hand, it is understood in Dai culture that maintaining
Holy Hills improves community well-being by appeasing ancestor spirits. On the
other hand, converting Holy Hills for increased rubber production improves
material security and Dai social standing in Chinese society.
Ultimately, I’m trying to understand
when and how community goals for protecting sacred forests are compatible with
conservation goals. This is important for engaging with conservation science and policy-making in a way that can both
conserve biodiversity while still allowing for cultural self-determination.
But besides
research, the past month has had some fun things happen too. This was my first
Christmas away from my family, and despite missing home and people I love, it
was actually really great here. There’s actually a huge community of foreigners
at XTBG (Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden) where I’m based. In some
ways, it was one of the most Christmas-y holidays I’ve had. I think that
because we are all far away from home, no one takes the Christmas holidays for
granted, so we all know that if we want to celebrate it, we need to work hard
to make it happen. We also work hard at going through all our holiday rituals
to remind us of home, so we had lots of Christmas baking and caroling and
parties. XTBG even threw us a special Christmas party for foreigners! Plus there is such a mix of foreigners here that I get to experience Christmas from all sorts of countries, haha and this year with a particularly strong Welsh influence.
New Year’s
is less of an explicitly celebrated event in China because it is overshadowed
by Chinese New Year, but this year I got to celebrate with a friend’s wedding
on Dec 31. These are pictures of Nana and Ben at their ceremony – aren’t they
adorable??
This is a
picture of me at a string-tying ceremony in the wedding. They have these in
Thailand too, I’m told. The older generation goes around and ties string on our
wrists to wish us good luck and health, and we have to keep the string on for
at least 3 days. It was really fun! Though my string got a bit stinky by the
time I took it off…
The wedding (with 1000 guests!!) also involved some dance performances from all the young ladies and old ladies
(haha they seem to explicitly exclude no middle-aged ladies). That’s me and my
friend Rin eating dinner during the show.
I’m also
really enjoying the food here. This is a picture of one of my favourite things
to eat: algae! It’s scraped from the rocks in the Luosuo River, and then it’s
hand-washed, spread in sheets on woven mats (as shown in the picture), dried in
the sun, seasoned with all sorts of yummy spices, and deep-fried! It’s SO GOOD.
I’ve also
been trying out the local moonshine. This is a picture of them making some from
corn, though they will also use sticky rice.
I also went back to visit some of
my old contacts in Dai villages from previous years, and I found that one of
them had put up the pictures I mailed his family back in 2011! Isn’t that so
sweet?? That’s me in the blue dress with the orange flowers in my hair, from
when they had me try on some Dai clothing :)
Ok, that’s in for now because I need to sleep early for fieldwork again tomorrow. Man, I’ve barely scratched the tip of the iceberg for my work, and I’m already pooped!
Much love,
Lily
Ok, that’s in for now because I need to sleep early for fieldwork again tomorrow. Man, I’ve barely scratched the tip of the iceberg for my work, and I’m already pooped!
Much love,
Lily
