Different Kind Of Childhood

"Existence of this village, which is the last unexploited place on the Earth, proved that human beings had such a peerless livable habitat in the past", the UN official once described Hemu Village, a northwestern border village of China.This "last unexploited place on the Earth" is Hemu Village, in Hemu Kanas Mongolian Township of Buerjin County in Yili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. It has become a favorite place for the tourism development of the borderlands of China. This frontier village, named in the advertisement as "Private Plot of God", is home to the Tuvan people who are called "a tribe in the midst of the clouds". This small border village has become the gorgeous sparkle of the tourism in Xinjiang. Belonging to the Kanas Tourism District, Hemu Village received more than0.9million tourists during2011and got96million RMB of the ticket proceeds in the same year. In the summer of2012,1.5thousand people among379families in this village received3thousand people a day on average.How could the village of a thousand people carry nearly one million tourists a year? If this area still is the homeland for its people, how could this phenomenon influence the children who would be the host of this place in the future? What is the mutual impression between the children and the tourists? In the mean time, would it influence the growth leading system of the children and the cultural inheritance?According to the Taoism philosophy, children are able to realize the idea of "the softest can conquer the hardest in the world". Children are not only the hope of the families, the nation and the country, but also are the life and humanitarian information carrier of ancestors and nature into the future. Therefore, based on the anthropological perspective, this thesis investigates the relationship between the tourists and the children in the target community. Through describing their fate, the paper also attempts to reflect, how the society should protect the cultural and ecological homeland of the frontier ethnic minorities, cooperating with the families and the schools, looking for ways to get to mutual benefits, and co-existence with common prosperity amongst the different nationalities within this cooperation living in the region.This thesis is divided into six chapters:Chapter One introduces the origin and significance of this research. The coincidence between the tourism and anthropology is that both of them need to illustrate and present the people, the culture and the nature of strange lands. With the goal of travelling and fieldwork, the author had been to Hemu Village twice during the summers of2011and2012, discovering the different life experience in children’s childhoods there. Starting from the experiences of the author, the thesis highlights the element "children", and then, through the deep description, indicates that under the traditional development concept and pattern, it is difficult for modern tourism to prevent the frontier ethnic minorities from being marginalized and to improve their social status and political power. Without consciousness of respect, self-discipline and autonomy, the contradiction of regions, social classes and ethnic nationalities can be intensified by the influence of culture hegemony towards the children (as the key victims).Chapter Two describes the ecological and humanistic environment of the Altay area and Hemu Village, and then shows the ecological perspective of the people in this village.Chapter Three includes two parts. The first one records the three typical types of children’s daily life, reflecting the passive influence from the tourism and the tourists. The second part represents two very aged people, who represent the childhood of Hemu Village in the past. This chapter shows the negative impact of the modern tourism through the comparison of two generations.Chapter Four illustrates the growing predicament of the local children from three aspects:government, school, and family. Even facing the tourist boom, the leading roles of these scenes, officials, teachers and parents are trying their best to operate the growing environment for the children. Through the helplessness of the teachers and parents, this chapter is aimed at illustrating how the tourists’ reckless statements and actions unconsciously hurt the children there.Chapter Five, with the discussion of the dilemma, declares that tourism is the main reason for the troubles in the village. Meanwhile, this chapter raises issues about protecting the ecological homeland of the ethnic minorities and the cultural homeland of the children, to emphasize the social sense of duty of the tourists as a kind of tutor for the local children (they should offer the children something not just destroy them).Chapter Six presents the necessity of concept transition from "Enrich the People and Protect the Scenery" to "Safeguard the Rights and Protect the People" about the tourism development in the Hemu Village. At the same time, it also discusses the necessity of a paradigm transition in the development view from that of history of social development to cultural ecology in the ethnic minority borderlands of China. The local people have undergone three processes, from obeying the law of natures, to pursuing the economic development, and to the third step of falling into the state and coupled sense of homeland crisis. A recent related report to the18th National Congress in China paid more attention to the ecological progress, and it stands for (emphasizes) the determination of the society to transform the development pattern. This transition raises the request that the local government and the tourists need to respect the ethnic minorities, while protecting their homeland. The story of Hemu Village is the epitome of the developing ethnic minority frontiers in China, requesting the local government and accord to a people oriented principle while exploiting the local resources and pursuing economic development. Our country needs to reflect deeply on and then fully demonstrate the national principle of having faith and promoting good will through maintaining the rights of ethnic minorities, at the same time rebuilding the social moral dignity and recovering the natural ecological balance.