The Research On The Tibetan Nomads Settlement In Gannan

Since the late 1950 s, ecological environment in the western region of China was rapidly deteriorated, which attracted high attention and concern from the government as well as the mass. Facing the increasingly serious grassland ecological deterioration problem in the western region, the settlement of nomads becomes the focus of the whole society. Driven by the government forces, the settlement life style of nomads began to be implemented in the western region where the ecological environment is fragile, Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Gansu Province is no exception.As China’s key inland transport routes to Tibet, Gannan becomes an important intermediate zone from the mainland to Tibet. However, the nomads accounts for certain percentage in Gannan. Thus, any measures to the nomads in this area are very important without allowing any mistakes, because they are concerned with stability of Gannan and security of the border.However, to our great surprise, problems occurred during the process of the practice of this Nomads Settlement policy with best intentions from government, so, I hope we can find reasons for these problems by the research of the typical Nomads New Village of Chengnan Xinqu of Luqu, and restore the settlement practice of Tibetan nomads in the new village by the point of view of Anthropology. The settlement of nomads is a gradual process, it is also a complicated project concerning political, economic, cultural and educational factors. Based on the theory of ecological civilization construction, the sustainable development view and the theory of cultural diversity, study the nomads settlement problems in the New Village objectively will help us have a deeper realization of the process of making and practice of the settlement policy and problems occurred during the practice.The traditional nomadic Tibetans who used to the grassland and water to live can benefit from the settlement. Tibetan ethnic group has the tradition of respecting their teachers and those who are well-educated and knowledgeable. The tradition will be reflected in their support of their children’s education after settlement by government as well as individuals.The Tibetans often suffer from occupational diseases, such as cardiac disease and rheumatism because of their traditional nomadic life style. The death of people because of late treatments to these acute diseases would lead people to pay more attention to the improvement of Tibetan area’s health system.The settlement of the nomads is a symbol of the improvement of medical systemThe settlement of nomads also results in many problems and profound considerations, especially the worry about the traditional nomadic culture and some negative effects of this policy. The settlement of nomads will destroy the traditional nomadic Tibetans’ social structure, which will lead to the disintegration of their production system, life system, cultural structure and social system. The traditional nomadic Tibetans’ lifestyle and culture are exposed to unprecedented shock and impact.The relationship between the traditional culture and social change is the important issue for study in the academic field. How to balance the traditional culture and modern culture is the point we are trying to work out. How to develop the restructure of traditional culture so that the traditional culture will not end up suddenly and the carrier of traditional culture can survive during the dramatic changes is the issue we must face. The settlement policy has altered the basement of traditional Tibetan nomadic culture, which attracted worries and concerns from scholars. Launched settlement policies did not bring benefits to the grassland and Tibetan nomads as expected, however, the policies causes series new problems in New Village, for example: stay-at-home elderly, stay-at-home children, and large consumption of water resource, and etc.The reasons for the new problems occurred continually during the practice of settlement policy, is related to the incorrect understanding of current social development theory and nomadic culture, and the neglect of the traditional economic interest-focused modernized development.Cultures are equal, the co-existence of diverse cultures should be a normalcy.But due to the inherent prejudice of modern people to nomadic civilization, people tenaciously believe that farming civilization is superior to nomadic civilization, So with regard to the reform of the nomadic civilization, people always try to use the farming civilization way to exam and weigh the nomadic civilization, however, the logic of thinking from agronomy will result in biased error when it is applied to the grassland animal husbandry of great difference. Confronted with ecologically fragile, cold and arid grassland in western area, faced plateau pastoral areas which give priority to nomadic life with less developed modernization and urbanization, What measures we should take to restore the grassland ecosystem, improve the life standard of nomads and maintain the harmonious, sustainable and healthy development and attain maximum benefit for nomads is an important issue. At first, we should make clear that the society we want to construct is a sustainable development and ecologically civilized society., in other words, is a society which human beings can co-exist with animals harmoniously and different cultures can appear simultaneously. So the proper choice of management of grassland and nomads should rely on the theory and way of thinking based on nomadic herding itself. We are not trying to protect and keep a culture with long history but push the culture carrier to the edge of poor living condition with destruction of ecological environment. We just want to give this way of life and production a necessary respect. We want to respect them on the context of equal dialogues. We respect their choices and shall agree with their final choices and decision, even though we sincerely look forward to their modernization and their new life style identified by us.