Wrestling for Control in Painted Hills

The hills in Gansu Province’s Nantai Village are painted in a myriad of colors. Column of red, orange, yellow, white, pink, and purple lines zigzag across the uneven earth. After rain, the colors would turn more vivid than usual, as if the earth is grateful for the rare shower in this part of China.

For years, local farmer Lei Xingyi thought the colorful hills in his backyard was how all hills should look like. Not until in his mid-thirties, when he was elected a village head that he had a chance to travel outside for study trips and realized the multi-hued rocks were unique.    

When I met Lei, he has already relinquished official post a long time ago. He is now running a guesthouse cum guide service for photography enthusiasts and tourists in awe with the landscape right behind his home.

“I’d rather be a herder than remaining an official,” he told me he quit the village head post before his term was up in 1998. Disillusioned with officialdom – which he said was curry favor for the big shots by exploiting the common people – he resigned and bought 100 sheep to become a shepherd.

He roamed the colorful but barren hills from one end to the other, in search of a small patch of grassland for his herd. It was during those shepherding days that he learned the routes around the hills by heart, and by chance he met a photographer who changed the course of his life.

“The photographer asked me to show him around the hills for the best viewing spot, and later he gave me the idea of becoming a tour guide,” Lei recalled.

Over time, words of mouth spread, Lei became well-known among the photography enthusiast circle, more and more people contacted him for guide service, and eventually visitors started requesting for accommodation and catering services as well. 

Back in year 2000, the only way to tour the hills was on foot. Again, it was his guests who gave him the idea of constructing trails for driving tour around the vast landscape. In 2005, he sold all his sheep and applied for a loan to raise a total of 40,000 yuan to build several trails leading deep into the hills.

For the investments he chipped in, all he asked then from self-drive tourists was a mere 10 yuan per person if they required his guide service; otherwise, the over 20 kilometers long trails he built was free access for everyone.

However, two years ago in 2008, the local government started to take note of the economic potential of the landscape, and claimed the rights to spearhead the area’s tourism development.

“The government says the landscape is a state resources, individual has no right to develop the area,” he told me the local government paid him 20,000 yuan for the road and facilities he had built, and took over the area.

Thus, today the area is barricaded behind walls and fences, even the locals, except tour guides and drivers, have to pay entrance fees to admire the sight. The local government has also commissioned a private company to run a hotel and a restaurant right beside the ticketing booth.

I asked Lei if he was feeling soar about the turn of event, he replied: “When I was the only one running tourism services here, many officials passed through my door, they came for free food and drinks in the name of doing field study. Now, they can all go to the officially run establishment, save me the trouble.”

Photography enthusiasts and backpackers, however, continue to look for Lei. His family-run guesthouse could hardly coup with the growing tourists during the peak season between May and October.

With facilities so lacking in the tiny village (apart from the official establishment, there’s only one other guesthouse apart from Lei’s around the vicinity), Lei could have opened up a convenient store, café, and souvenir stall to meet the needs of tourists, but he seemed hesitant in expanding his business scope.

“It’s too much trouble to get all sorts of permits to run different businesses,” he reasoned. He lamented that the moment the local authorities noticed any business expansion, they would come knocking on his door, demanding this and that licenses, and all sort of taxes.

“Why bother going through all the efforts, at the end, the gains would all go to paying different fees,” he said. 

Lei’s tale somehow aggravates my resentment against how tourism sites are being developed in many parts of China. More often than not, natural settings including deserts, unique rock formation, ancient towns, etc, are being barricaded and charged entrance fees (some exorbitantly).

I am not against entrance fees as much as the shadow of planned-economy model and monopoly involved in tourism sites development.

In many cases, once a place is officially designated a “scenic spot”, instead of having an open-policy of encouraging locals to set up their own tourism-related businesses, the local authorities would usually assign one contractor to fully manage the entire site – from collecting fees to controlling the rental of businesses located within the site.

Can you imagine India’s ancient city of Varanasi having ticketing booths at all entrances? Or Turkey’s Cappadocia which has unique rock formation being surrounded by fences to prevent free and easy access? Or the Gobi dessert in Mongolia having staff stationed in sand dunes to collect entrance fee?

All the above places without entrance charges have a thriving tourism industry, driven by private initiatives, and its economic benefits are channeled down to the enterprising locals. Yet, similar “scenic spots” in China appear to be much more centrally managed, and have much less individual businesses.          

Many Chinese whom I spoke to often used the excuse that “China has too large a population; the entrance fee is a deterrent factor to prevent too many tourists flooding the scenic spots and causing environmental damages”.

“Huge population” has always been the scapegoat for nearly all the problems facing the country. I feel that due to the large population, all the more private initiatives like what Lei did should be encouraged, and not curbed, so that the economic benefits could be distributed to a larger population.

June 17, 2010