After the Gods Have Departed: The Origins of Fieldwork in the Southwestern Frontier

Prologue: An Unresolved Question

For a long time, when discussing ecological crises such as climate change, forest degradation, and species decline, mainstream discourse has tended to attribute them to technological backwardness, policy implementation failures, or capital’s excessive exploitation of resources. The solutions also seem crystal clear: designate more strictly isolated nature reserves, enact stricter environmental laws, install a denser network of surveillance cameras, and establish carbon trading markets.

However, this “problem-solving approach,” rooted in Western modern science, presupposes a hidden philosophical premise—that “nature” and “humankind/culture” are sharply dichotomized.

Within this dualistic framework, which dates back to Descartes, humans are subjects endowed with reason and sovereignty, while mountains, forests, and flora and fauna are reduced to objects and resources that merely occupy physical space. Even in the context of environmentalism, nature is often viewed merely as an external entity that requires human “management,” “protection,” or even “isolation and preservation.”

However, when humans stand “outside” or even “above” nature to establish rules, have we overlooked a more fundamental dimension? What has sustained the symbiotic relationship between humans and the land for millennia has never been merely cold administrative regulations and economic calculations, but rather a complete system of sacred order and reverence deeply rooted in a cosmological worldview.

The Collapse of Order: When Awe Is Reduced to a Modern Formality

From an anthropological perspective, many indigenous civilizations have never recognized this arrogant dichotomy.

In an animistic worldview, forests are not timber reserves, and rivers are not water management projects; they are non-human agents with souls and personalities. Sacred mountains and forests are not merely spatial nodes of faith but also inviolable ecological and ethical boundaries. A person dares not cut down trees at will or pollute water sources—not primarily out of fear of a fine from a forest ranger, but out of a deep reverence for the covenant with the spirits and ancestors.

Yet the torrent of modernity is reshaping the frontier at an unprecedented pace.

When profits from monoculture crops sweep through the valleys, when foreign monotheistic religions and secular rationality supplant indigenous animistic beliefs, and when traditional priests give way to village regulations and market contracts—what we witness is not merely a change in surface vegetation, but the dissolution and restructuring of an entire “ontological order” that sustains the relationship between humans and the land.

Once reverence is lost, nature’s “sacredness” is thoroughly demystified. When sacred trees are seen merely as timber to be monetized, and when ancient rituals are reduced to spectacles for tourists, the modern ecological defenses we’ve built solely on administrative orders and economic incentives often prove far more fragile than we imagine.

This is not some distant, academic speculation, but a reality currently unfolding with dramatic intensity in the southwestern frontier of China.

Fieldwork Quartet: A Fifteen-Day Cross-Section of the Frontier

To answer these questions, I decided to temporarily set aside academic literature and theoretical models, pack my bags, and venture into the dense forests and villages of Yunnan. Over the next 15 days, I will follow a route spanning southwestern Yunnan, delving into four field sites, each of which is representative in its own way:

1. Mangshi: Religious Substitution and Discontinuity

When an external monotheistic religion enters a community where multiple ethnic groups intermingle, how does the shift between old and new beliefs alter villagers’ reverence for the sacred forest? In the interplay between monotheistic theology and traditional animism, what kinds of fractures and reconstructions emerge in ecological ethics?

2. Cangyuan: Religious Compression and Order Displacement

Deep in the Awa Mountains, how are state law and the market economy (sugarcane, nuts) gradually squeezing out the traditional “Ghost Forest”? As the ancient tribal law “Awa Li” and the authority of shamans give way to modern administration and barbed wire, how do villagers balance and compromise between profit calculations and reverence for the spirits?

3. Jingmai Mountain: Religious Embedding and Symbiotic Resilience

This area offers a rare positive case study. How have the Blang people’s “Tea Ancestor Belief” and animistic worldview been seamlessly “embedded” into the ecological wisdom of forest-tea symbiosis? Why has the ancient spiritual order, in turn, become a moat defending against homogenizing commercial capital?

4. Xishuangbanna: Extreme Modernism and “Landscaping”

From the 1950s, when rubber plantations replaced rainforests as part of a state-driven strategy, to today’s “landscaping” of Theravada Buddhism and tropical rainforests amid the cultural tourism craze—when religious symbols are stripped of their sense of reverence and reduced to spectacles of consumerism, can they still retain their genuine efficacy in protecting the ecosystem?

Before Setting Out

This series of articles consists of my firsthand observations and reflections from this field investigation.

It will not be a superficial travel diary, nor will it be a draft thesis laden with jargon. Through oral history, details of spatial transformations in villages, and authentic dialogues between priests and farmers, I hope to document the faith, the land, and the people being reshaped in the cracks of modernity.

We seek to ask:

When deities have withdrawn and traditional order has been eroded, what exactly should modern people rely on to rebuild their ethical covenant with the earth?

The fieldwork is about to begin—I invite you to join me on this journey.