Grassland guardians of culture
Riding across Inner Mongolia, caravan of traditional performers connects the region
At the beginning of September 2019, I received an invitation from the Wulanmuqi art group of the Alxa League in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region to accompany them for a photoshoot of their performance in Alxa Right Banner’s pastoral region.
Wulanmuqi means “red cultural working team” in Mongolian. It appeared in 1957, undertaking the tasks of performing, publicity, tutoring, and service for the people of Inner Mongolia. It has been referred to as “hussar on the grassland”.
On Sept 7, I arrived at Alxa Left Banner and prepared to set off with them the next day to continue photographing a theme on Wulanmuqi. On Sept 8, Wulan Bateer, chairman of the Alxa League’s music artists association and choreographer and director of Wulanmuqi in Alxa League, led the team of nine in two small offroad vehicles. The Wulanmuqi artists drove by themselves. We set off with tents, kitchen utensils, food and other items, and after seven hours we covered a distance of 400 kilometers and arrived at Guriban Tula Gagacha, Alateng Obao town in Alxa Right Banner.
As soon as we arrived at the encampment, the Wulanmuqi artists started to put on their special performance as an expression of gratitude to the herdsmen. From Sept 8 to 12, more than a dozen shows were performed within the banner, where the artists had kept traveling from site to site for a distance of 940 kilometers.
On Sept 10, on the way from the first encampment Huhe Erge to the second camping site Buridgacha Duguinuo, our vehicle was unfortunately caught in the desert while passing through the sand. The Wulanbuqi artists had to step out of the car and pull the vehicle out of the sand so many times that all members were eventually worn out.
At about 5 pm, 40 kilometers away from the second encampment, the engine of one of the cars suddenly stalled and we could not move forward. At that time, the sun had just set, and it was pitch dark in the
depths of the desert. Our team lost no time in unloading the kitchen utensils and food from the car. Some collected
firewood and lit a fire, and the others chopped vegetables and cooked our meal.
At this critical moment, Wulan Bateer led two team members to Tamusum Sumu, more than 40 kilometers away, to look for help. At around 3 am, they returned with four vehicles and eight herders for the rescue. Everyone was exhilarated. After more than an hour of loading the vehicle and cleaning up the garbage, we were sent to the second camping site at 5 am. The team members set up their tents and went to the herdsmen’s house to continue their performance after breakfast.
I have asked the herdsmen many times at the Wulanmuqi performance site if it is more convenient for them to watch their show on TV and the internet, but they said that it is more cordial to watch their artistic performance in person. They treat the artists as friends, and they love their sincerity and dedication.
Over the past 60 years, Wulanmuqi, a “redbud” that grew up on the vast grasslands of Inner Mongolia, has grown from a literary light cavalry team with more than a dozen people on a carriage at the beginning of its establishment to today’s 75 teams with more than 3,000 members. It has traveled more than 1.3 million kilometers, giving more than 360,000 performances to farmers, herders and people of all ethnic groups, and the audience numbers totaled 260 million. They have been rooted in the masses for a long time, insisting that their songs and dances be sent to the most remote regions, and they aspire to become “a banner of the national literary front”.
Be it riding a horse carriage or even going to the countryside on foot, as long as there was an audience, they were willing to trek for a long distance. And over time and with age, their performances have gained larger audiences. Its gene of wholehearted service to the people is passed on from generation to generation. No form of new media can replace this face-to-face, intimate communication. Herdsmen are eager for their performance, and these artists are also inseparable from the grassroots.
On Nov 21, 2017, President Xi Jinping wrote back to the artists in Sonid Right Banner, encouraging them to take root in the fertile soil of the grassland, promote cultural innovation and create more outstanding and down-to-earth artworks for the herdsmen.