Hu Zhengyong, head of Qishuping village. [Photo by Yang Jun/China Daily]

Population outflow

With a population of about 31,000 nationwide, the Qiang is one of the smallest of China's 56 ethnic groups.

Most Qiang live in a mountainous region in the northwest of Sichuan province, while about 1,600 people live in Guizhou. As mountain dwellers, they have little flat arable farmland, which means conditions are tough.

"I understand people's decisions to seek opportunities elsewhere. They would have little to do if they stayed in the village," Hu said.

Until four years ago, Qishuping was mired in poverty. The average annual income was just 1,000 yuan ($145), and many residents had left to seek work in large cities and towns. Moreover, access was difficult because a dirt road connecting it to the outside world was laid in 2003, but wasn't sealed with tarmac until last year.

"Before, it was difficult for young men in our village to find wives," Hu said.

Loss of identity

Qishuping's migrant workers sent much-needed money to their families in the village, but the residents face a dilemma. The outflow threatens the survival of the group's traditional culture, and even their identity in the long term.

Hu noted that most young people from the village work as painters and decorators in urban areas, but only a few have started their own businesses.

He said the inability to speak the Qiang language started with his grandfather's generation. Most of his contemporaries are unable to play traditional musical instruments, such as the Qiang flute, which has no official name because the group's language has no written form.

The exodus of younger people is also common in villages settled by the Mulao ethnic group, a traditionally animist people who inhabit a river valley in Guizhou. According to China's last census, conducted in 2010, the group numbered about 21,600 people.

Jin Yuanxiu, a 31-year-old mother of two in Fuxing, a Mulao village in Guizhou's Leishan county, is one of the few young people who have opted to stay in the settlement, which is about an hour's drive along snaking mountain roads from the nearest town.

To support her family, Jin began making traditional tofu using the group's age-old recipes. Now, her products have made their way onto the shelves of the county's supermarkets.

Ten years ago, Jin, who speaks Mandarin fluently, spent about six months as a migrant worker, but the fact that she had to leave her children and parents eventually prompted her to quit and head home: "I kept worrying about my parents or my children getting sick and wondering who would take care of them."