Liu Shurun: Mongolians don't want to farm land, and they don't want to build houses. This nomadism is very stubborn.
The Mongolians have a proverb. The child asked his mother, why we always move around and work so hard, and the mother said: "If we are fixed in one place, Mother Earth will be in pain. We keep moving like blood is flowing, and Mother Earth will feel comfortable." This is the result of natural selection. What's interesting is that livestock seem to know the critical point of resource consumption and regeneration. Cattle and sheep don't reach this threshold, and they leave as soon as the peak is reached. When the grass and livestock are at a suitable line value, the livestock will automatically leave the grassland. It's that amazing! I used to be in the brigade below and moved every six days. Some herdsmen were too lazy to move. The brigade used a large horse-drawn cart to force the relocation. Why is it six days, and the reproduction of parasites takes a week? The Mongols escaped disaster by wandering. Why do people say nomads will never come back, I said they will come back, because this is the most cost-effective and labor-saving way. The ancient Mongols also took many detours, and they also settled down.
Reporter: The ancient Mongols also settled here? I've never heard of it.
Liu Shurun: The farming and settlement history of the northern ethnic groups is longer than that of the Central Plains, such as the Hongshan Culture and Xinglongwa Culture 8,000 years ago. The hometown of Yin Shang was Inner Mongolia, and finally the climate changed and it was not suitable for farming. When the climate changes, the northern peoples migrate, and when they stay, they change their way of life: fishing and hunting, captive breeding, and sedentary grazing. Before the Tang Dynasty, they still lived and grazed.
Reporter: Why did sedentary herding become nomadic?
Liu Shurun: Because the Dingmu grassland is broken, there is not enough food, and the livestock is sick. The real nomadic development began after the Bronze Age. The Mongols were fishing and hunting in the Shiwei era, and then they came out of the forest and changed from farming to nomadic. Nomadic pastoralism is more complicated than sedentary ones. If they adapt to the steppe, they will develop greatly, and if they do not go nomadic, they will perish. This is a process of natural and objective selection. At present, we still can't solve the problems caused by settlement. The actual nomadism is the most trouble-free. The yurt can be left as soon as it is carried, and it can be done with a horse pole. After settling down, many problems arose, such as epidemics and medical expenses increased greatly. In the past, the disease was gone, but in the new place there is no (germ). I used to be a nomad, no hepatitis, no cold. There was no measles in Mongolia in the past, and there was no source of infection in Laozou. Now, deficiencies are very common. Now the large herds of cattle in Daxing Banner do not eat grass, soil, or bones. Why? Make up the elements yourself. This has not been the case in the past. The mainland does not consider this issue because there is a lot of water and minerals can flow. Grasslands are not good, because the amount of evaporation is large, and there are element-rich areas everywhere, and some elements are lacking. For example, the grasslands are full of "specialty stores", and you have to buy everything and go everywhere.
why we're going back to nomad
Reporter: Then why are you so confident in the recovery of nomadic culture?
Liu Shurun: It will eventually hit a wall, and it is hitting a wall now. When I first settled down, I predicted desertification and grassland degradation. Didn't expect it to come so fast. In the past, a nomad raised more than 1,000 sheep by himself, but now in captivity, it is not enough to just feed the grass, and he lost money in the end. It doesn't work. Nomadism is a choice that people come over slowly, and it is also a choice under the general climate. It has been modernized, but it cannot change the climate. Do you have the money for artificial rainfall? If it rains here, what about other places?
Reporter: Why do those who formulate policies make such mistakes?
Liu Shurun: He never herded the sheep and didn't know the pastoral areas. How rich were herdsmen in the past! No concept of money, no worries about money, more than ordinary cadres. Not now, there are beggars, and they are too poor. In the past, a village had several million deposits. After selling the livestock, there is no other expenses. Sometimes I go to Beijing for a walk. There used to be tent hospitals where herdsmen could see a doctor while herding sheep, but now there are none, and the culture of thousands of years has been broken.
It started at the end of the Cultural Revolution. We Han people used our wrong ideas to set other people up, so we wanted to change them into rural people, but we didn't expect that our small farmers were backward. I am the only ecological expert who has this opinion, because they seldom go to the countryside and live with herdsmen. Moreover, they go in summer, and if they don't go in winter, they won't be able to fully understand it. To evaluate the grassland, the herdsmen and the grass must be put together, and they are viewed separately.
We do not study history, such as the Cultural Revolution. We don't pay much attention to the wealth gained in exchange for flesh and blood. For example, grassland farming and land reclamation began in the late Qing Dynasty. How many lessons have been learned. My teacher Li Bo said: Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, we have never failed to open up wasteland on the grasslands. Why do we repeat these painful lessons now? It is because we do not sum up.
Settlement and artificial pastures have been done in the past. Don't make them absolute. Some can be set up as semi-pastoral areas, and some can be set up as semi-agricultural areas. The Chinese love to go to extremes. For a while, the animal husbandry industry is accelerating development, and for a while it is completely enclosed. Both extremes cause strong pressure.
The advanced nature of nomadic culture
Reporter: Nomadic culture lasted for thousands of years, but we destroyed it in just ten years.
Liu Shurun: This culture is a huge culture in the world, and it happens to have many complementary aspects with farming culture, absorbing and promoting each other. Farming culture is a water conservancy culture, and several ancient civilizations are all water conservancy cultures. Our farming culture is Confucian theory, which is our great wealth. Kublai Khan was sinicized, and the Yuan and Qing dynasties strengthened totalitarianism. The farming culture in Europe is inherently weak and has a foundation of nomadic culture. For example, the Germanic people themselves are nomadic peoples. Coupled with the impact of the Mongolian people, the formed nomadic culture values human rights, individuality, openness and progress. Genghis Khan fought wars, hundreds of thousands of people died, and he valued life, democracy, freedom and legal system. The Renaissance is actually the sublimation of nomadic culture, and the commercial revolution is another form of nomadic culture: it is also adventurous, mobile, and shocking, but it is just getting off the horse and boarding the boat. But European nomadic culture combined with Darwin's theory of evolution produced a crisis of capitalism. I was originally a child of nature, but I forgot about it, and only learned the shocking side. I didn't learn the Mongolian attitude towards nature, only half of it. We are only in the first half of the nomadic culture now, killing, impacting and confronting, there is no soft side to nature, and wrong theories go to extremes.
Reporter: I understand that in the end, nomadic culture gradually separated from nature and forgot its nature, and the source of nomadic culture is still in Inner Mongolia.
Liu Shurun: The wolf totem is one side. The other side is the feeling of great hatred and great love, and harmony with nature. Europe is now introspective. Nomadic culture is a worldwide treasure, not primitive and backward as we say. We can't belittle the two cultures, it is a culture produced in a special environment. Yanhuang was a nomadic culture, Yao and Shun changed, Shang and Zhou became farming culture, and Tang Dynasty was a minority culture. The Tang Dynasty reflected the strength of the fusion of the two cultures.