The Baikal natives welcome tourists but refuse to destroy, pollution destruction does not work
Lake Baikal is the deepest (1642 m) and largest freshwater lake in the world (about 22-23% of the total surface area), with an age of 25-3 million years, making it the oldest lake in the world.
For the Chinese, Baikal is nothing new, but if you ask who the inhabitants of Baikal are, then no one thinks about it.
Before the 19th century, the Buryats were considered the first Mongols to live on Lake Baikal, and around the 13th-14th centuries, they established their own state near Lake Baikal. The University of Ulaanbaatar sent archaeologists several times to verify this, but the final conclusion was that the Buryats were not the first indigenous people, but the first people known as the Kuligans, the so-called "Guligan people" in China.
In the twenty-first year of Zhenguan, that is, 647 years, that is, the Guligan people lived on Lake Baikal for six or seven hundred years longer than the Buryats, and their population was so large that the Tang Dynasty named it "Xuanque Prefecture", which was the first tribe on Lake Baikal. In the 13th century, a Buryat detachment migrated from the Mongols to Lake Baikal and married and married the local Guligans.
Russian scientists have confirmed through genetic analysis that their ancestors are the Yakuts, but the Yakutia is not the name of a single ethnic group, there were about 80 tribes scattered in the east of Siberia in the early days, and after the establishment of the Soviet Union, they were all called Yakutia, so the ancestors of the Guligan people are still unknown.
In Russian history, they are labeled as "unknown in number", which is why they are known as the most mysterious race in Siberia.
It is only known that on the island of Olkhon in Lake Baikal lived a small group of skeletal people, thousands of people on the island of Olkhon, one named "Oyhon" and the other called "Olhan", and both of them were very sure that it was left by their ancestors.
In 1988, Russian archaeologists excavated two burials on the island, which were sorted by DNA, from different ethnic groups, the Guligan and the Buryats. As for why they migrated to the island from the coast, it is that their descendants want to protect the sacred lake.
Olkhon covers an area of 730 square kilometers, from north to south, a total length of 71 kilometers, and there is a strait of more than 3,000 meters between Irkutsk and the nearest section is also more than 2,000 meters. Geographers believe that Olkhon was originally a mountainous area, but as the Siberian plate moved, Lake Baikal began to grow larger and larger, and eventually became what it is now.
Today, about 1,700 local residents live here, most of them Buryats.
In Irkutsk, I got into a relationship with Amistan, one of the few people on Olkhon who had a Guligan ancestry, and who also happened to work for the bus company from Irkutsk to Olkhon. In the car, she said to me: "There are only a hundred or so Kurigans on this island, while on the other side of the river live six or seven hundred, each with his own territory, and has never received the benefits of Russia." ”
It takes more than five hours to get to Olkhon Island by bus from Irkutsk, and the road is fairly brand new with only three or five villages within more than 700 kilometers. Amsdan said to me: "This road was originally intended for the construction of Olkhon Island, and at that time the Kurikan people proposed **, but it did not work. ”
Why are you reluctant to develop tourism?My past experience has taught me that only by developing tourism can we make the life of mountain people better.
When Ammustan was in the village of Huzhir (which is the largest village on the island), he was going to follow the carriage home, and he asked me to meet her cousin, a twenty-five-year-old girl, who had been eating and was not drunk at all.
Akarina is Russian, Serena is English, Chinese Lina is a top student of the prestigious National Academy of Foreign Chinese Tomsk, fluent in English, Chinese, German, Arabic. Listening to her, this bone man seems to have an innate language ability, her brother, who is seven years younger than her, can speak three Chinese, and her mother, who has never read a school, can also communicate with her in English at a basic level.
The Lina family is a large family near Lake Baikal, with two small separate houses, a large house across the river, and ten kilometers around the family's property, and it is said that her great-grandfather led a group of people to fight a tough battle with foreign invaders.
I drove Linna's hotel, ** for 400 rubles a day, which is 38 yuan.
Of course, there are very few rooms for 38 yuan, which Lina specially booked for me, and Olkhon Island is at the peak of tourists in August, with as many as thirty or forty tourists coming here a day.
Under Linna's guidance, they tasted "fish dishes" on the island of Olkhon, which is actually made with wild fish from Lake Baikal mixed with spicy sauce, probably because of the locals, and the fish here is very cheap, only 375 roubles for two people.
The most famous snack on Olkhon Island is the smoked grilled fish, which is gutted, dried and placed in a large pot, then lit in a special smokehouse and slowly grilled until two weeks later. From Lina, I learned that the Guligan people first lived by hunting, and after winter, when their prey became less and less, they began to fish, and the rest were made into smoked small fish, ready to be hunted when the snow melted.
I have to say that this smoked grilled fish is the most smelly I've tasted so far, I put it in a bag and stuffed it into my hand, waking up in the morning with a smoky smell still on my body.
As a Chinese, Lina specially told me that when Chinese companies built drinking water factories near Lake Baikal, it was they who proposed **, and Russia ** also took it so seriously for the sake of their locals, and they also spread the ancient adage that "Baikal Lake must be protected forever", so the waterworks were finally temporarily suspended.
In fact, there have been many times in history about the boycott of the development of Lake Baikal by the Guligan people, for example, in 2008, a paper mill was attacked by local residents, which led to the closure of the factory;The oil pipeline from Siberia to the east coast of the Pacific Ocean is stillborn under the ** of the two countries;For example, Russia in 2006 was preparing to build a uranium mine upstream of it, and Mongolia was planning to build a large hydropower plant upstream of it, but in the end it was unsuccessful.
How can there be an opinion?Don't you have to fish to survive?
"We natives are very welcome to tourists from all over the world, but we must not cause any harm or pollution to Lake Baikal!"”
In fact, since the 1950s, Lake Baikal has suffered from various man-made damage and environmental pollution, which has led to the growth of a large number of algae, which has led to a sharp decline in the number of species in the lake, and the extinction of more than a dozen endemic and rare species. Corpses, fires and smoke have dramatically increased the number of microbes in the lake, but other organisms thrive here, like the coastal areas, which are full of algae, which are more than 200 times more abundant than normal algae.
According to Lina, the number of Chinese tourists to Lake Baikal is more than any other country in the world, which is a special feeling of Chinese people for Baikal. However, considering the preservation of Lake Baikal, the locals still do not want so many people to travel here, after all, the more waste tourism brings, and a large amount of garbage is transported to Irkutsk every day in tourist resorts like Olkhon Island for disposal, and the indigenous people are reluctant to transfer this cost to tourists, so they have been living on that meager income.
It is impossible to leave, and after the departure of the natives, the security of Lake Baikal is entrusted to them.