Guo Binghong, a cultural official in Anshun City, said they had reported the plan to the State Administration of Cultural Heritage and expect to receive approval.

Yunshan and Benzhai villages are located not far from Anshun City. Each contains a group of buildings that includes village walls, civil residential housing, temples and opera stages that were built in the Ming (1368 - 1644) and Qing (1644 - 1911) dynasties. They were put on the state cultural relics protection list in 2001.

Yunshan and Benzhai are just two examples of the 300-plus garrison villages that fan out through an area of 1,340 square kilometers around Anshun City. These villages now have a combined population of more than 300,000, most of whom are descendants of Ming Dynasty garrison troops.

Zhu Yuanzhang, the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty, sent 300,000 soldiers to put down riots in the southwest--modern-day Yunnan Province--in 1381.

After two years of war, these soldiers settled down to guard the frontier. They continued military training while taking up their hoes to farm.

The emperor later relocated 200,000 civilians from Yingtian (today’s Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu Province), and some parts of Anhui, Zhejiang and Jiangxi provinces to strengthen forces in the Anshun area.

Over the past 600 years, people in the area have adhered to the traditions and customs that were practiced by people in Nanjing, Anhui, Zhejiang and Jiangxi during the Ming Dynasty. For example, many of the locals dress in Ming-style clothes, like loose long gowns in sapphire blue, even today.

Ethnologists refer to the residents of the Anshun area villages as “Tunbao” (literally, “garrison troops fort”) people.

The Tunbao people have created and maintained a culture that distinguishes itself from that of over 20 nearby ethnic groups: they live in stone-and-wood fort-like houses, amuse themselves with dixi, a form of traditional opera that mainly depicts stories of battles and wars in ancient times, and make lanterns as offerings to their dead ancestors. They have their own distinctive folk songs and speak the same dialect their ancestors spoke more than 600 years ago.

Professor Zhang Xiaosong of Guizhou Education College, a specialist in Tunbao culture, pointed out that a group that had managed to preserve its own culture in an environment where it is surrounded by many powerful ethnic cultures, in a fragile ecological environment on a karst land, is extremely rare.

She called for further study and protection of the Tunbao community.

(Xinhua News Agency March 23, 2004)