The “great leap” of 17 Lahu households

Sitting in Menghai county, southern Yunnan’s Xishuangbanna Dai autonomous prefecture, Manban Sandui is a small village of Lahu people with only 17 households.

For centuries, they lived an isolated and impoverished life, depending totally on themselves. Their livelihoods, however, have been changed dramatically over the past few decades.

In this village surrounded by mountains and virgin forests, people could barely read and write; many even had no idea about their ages.

Beds and bedclothes were also absent since people had always been sleeping by fire places. Moreover, there was no hospital to go to when one got sick.

Today, after two times of relocation, roads, running water and electricity have all been available in Manban Sandui. Nearly every family owns one or two motorcycles.

 

  

Villagers’ accesses to social and medical insurances to have also been granted.

Apart from everyday life, people’s occupations have been greatly modernized.

Na Si, 31, was once the last hunter in the village. She started hunting in forests when she was around 13 years old.

  

Now, her main job is to plant and sell tea, in hope of bringing this local specialty to more people.

Zha Pei, another villager from Manban Sandui, said he had never seen automobiles until he was 7 or 8 years old. “They looked like ‘strange houses’ to me,” he smiled.  

  

He, however, is considering getting a driving license and eventually buying a car himself.  

Till the end of 2018, all 64 villagers from 17 households had been lifted from poverty.

  

The annual income per capita in Manban Sandui has been raised from 2,380 yuan (roughly 354 US dollars) in 2015 to 8,826 yuan (1,313 US dollars in 2019. People’s living conditions have been notably ameliorated as well.   

Planning by Tan Jingchun; reporting by Pu Meiling, Zheng Haiyan, Dai Zhenghua and Zhao Yutong; trans-editing by Wang Jingzhong; photographs by Chen Fei and Pu Jianbin