0225 - Minority Nationality In Northern China. Living in the remote thickly...Back

Minority Nationality In Northern China. Living in the remote thickly forested mountains in China's northern border province of Heilongjiang, the 3,000-odd Orogen (Olunchun) people, one of China's minority nationalities, now have had permanent homes; Nomadic hunting is a thing of the past generations. The Orogen nationality is distributed in the forests of the Greater and Lesser Xingan Mountains in the Nei Mongol (Inner Mongolian) Autonomous Region and Heilongjiang Province, where the annual temperature averages 20 degrees centigrade below zero with the lowest at 50 degrees centigrade below zero in winter. In the past, people of the Orogen nationality lived as mobile hunters all the year round in pursuit of their game, and the whole family huddled together in makeshift sheds made of bark and animals' skin at night. The year of 1958 found all the Orogens settled down with the help of government. They are engaging in agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, fishery and sideline production. Now, the Orogen hunters have changed the method of "making of fire to lure animals". They no longer kill the valuable animals, instead, they keep them in captivity for breeding and reproduction. Primary schools and medical clinics have been set up in all the Orogen villages and townlets to raise he general level of the people's health and culture.